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Parkinson, Tim / Apartment House: An Album <i>[Used Item]</i> (Another Timbre)

Collecting five chamber works from prolific London-based composer Tim Parkinson, written between 1998 and 2017 and performed by the Apartment House ensemble: one piece for solo violin performed by Mira Benjamin, two duos for violin & piano (by Benjamin & Siwan Rhys), a quintet for winds and strings and a septet, both featuring flute and bass clarinet.
 

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Personnel:



Tim Parkinson-composer

Mira Benjamin-violin

Siwan Rhys-piano

Kathryn Williams-flute

Heather Roche-bass clarinet

Mark Knoop-piano

Gordon MacKay-violin

Bridget Carey-viola

Anton Lukoszevieze-cello


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Label: Another Timbre
Catalog ID: at197
Squidco Product Code: 32704

Format: CD
Condition: VG
Released: 2022
Country: UK
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Goldsmiths Music Studio, London, and Dethick Church, near Matlock, Derbyshire, between September, 2020, and April, 2022, by Simon Reynell.

This is a USED (previously owned) item

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.
Previously played Squidco store copy, used for cataloging and samples, in excellent condition.

Another Timbre Interview with Tim Parkinson

Could you tell us about your musical background and how you came to experimental music?

Piano playing for domestic self-entertainment comes from my grandmother and mother's side. Buying records and curiosity about music probably comes from my Dad. After my formal studies I moved to London in 1997 and began to programme concerts. I've always liked finding music and art that excites me, that opens up a new space in my brain. Music either does that for me or it doesn't. I don't think about the categories. Some music is more critical, more exploratory than others, considers what it is and why it is and what it's doing here now, rather than just imitating past forms and tropes without question. But I like and listen to a lot of music.

Yes, your programming of concerts through vehicles such as Music We'd Like To Hear is wonderfully eclectic and diverse, and free of adherence to any particular style of music.

I'm happy that you think so. I'm always curious about music. Programming and performing concerts for me at first was a like continuation of my education. It's also a way of sharing the wealth. There's a lot of composers out there making wonderful and engaging work and there's not enough places to hear it. Then the concerts also end up functioning as invaluable meeting points for the community. I organised concerts mostly at the British Music Information Centre (BMIC), usually with one or two other musicians, until in 2005 I and fellow independents John Lely and Markus Trunk decided to unite our separate concert-making under one banner and call it Music We'd Like To Hear. With that nowadays the programming comes from a wider collective input. It is eclectic as you say, but it's all under the umbrella of shared broad aesthetics. The programming choices all orbit about each other, and some have a wider orbit than others. I like to be open and inclusive just as I like to be in my own work as well.

For me a lot of your music has an everyday quality of just being there rather than trying hard to be beautiful. Does that make any sense?

Yes, if that's your feeling then of course it makes sense. I can't answer what or why it is. I like what you say. A quality of Being. And the quality of "everyday" seems to me to be an acknowledgment of an elemental truth...?

You must have been pretty young when you wrote violin and piano piece 1998 and violin piece 1999, yet to me they don't sound radically different from the later works on the CD. What do you make of them now, and do you consider them to be 'early works'?

I was 24 and 26. I still recognise them and like listening to them. violin and piano piece 1998 is the first of five I've written since (the others from 2000, 2009, 2017, 2022). This one is from a period of work from 97 to early 99 working with ideas drawn from organic forms and structures. In this work the two equal parts are played simultaneously and uncoordinated, with re-occurring structured points of contact. It was first performed by Mia Cooper and me at the BMIC in London the same year. violin piece 1999 is one of two works for solo violin to date (the other from 2006). This one is from a period of work from late 1999 to 2005 working with more heterogeneous ubiquitous material which has probably arisen from the urban environment in which I live. It was first played by Brian Lee in a recording session the following year. Each period of work of has grown out of the previous and leads to today where it is ongoing.

Was it unusual to be composing so much with melody in the mid- to late 1990's? It feels like you were aside from what were the dominant strands in contemporary music at the time. And do you feel this has changed over the years?

I think of them as lines. It was just what was claiming my attention at the time, exclusively in pieces like this one and piano piece 1997 and the wind quintet, in various different ways. Everyone I was hanging out with around then (Matteo Fargion, Bryn Harrison, James Saunders, Matthew Linley) were all involved with their own separate pursuits, and I was too. I think of line as one of the fundamentals. What is line, and what is its meaning. Lines also appear towards the end of septet 2007, and in violin and piano 2017 the violin part is one continuous unbroken line.

To what extent do you start composing with a whole structure of a work in mind? Or do you just set out along a line and see what happens?

It's rarely the same working process each time. The initial image usually comes from the instrumentation. So then for me ensemble 2012 was a challenge because the Sonorités Festival wanted a piece for non-specific instrumentation. So there instead the thinking became to do with the idea of "ensemble", i.e. "together", and therefore "working together". So, how, and in what ways? My previous pieces from 2006 to 2010 were all made up of multiple panels, so for this one I wanted to focus on just a few instead, like three big close-ups. In the last section the performers have to choose a soloist to lead the way forwards, to make a line together. In the first performance it was trombone, but on this recording it's viola. I had another go at this starting point the following year in ensemble 2013 which is for the idea of a larger soundmass.

septet 2007 grew out of the instrumentation which was for quite a standard line up of flute, clarinet, string quartet, piano, which Apartment House had asked me to make for a radio broadcast in Cologne. I'd written another septet in 2004 which is for a more vagabond collection (flute, violin, piano, reed organ, 3 percussionists & audio track). But this line up for 2007 put me in mind more of that inherited old chamber music sound which is smoother and more homogenous. So I began by stockpiling it, all of it all at once, then leafed through it, then spread it all out until the sound ran out.

violin and piano 2017 began with the old notion of melody and accompaniment, which I think of as another found object which is just completely commonplace and everywhere. Here I started with the complete line end to end, then fitted the vertical supports. The final shape of it seems to me to have been carved out of all that potential coupled with what felt like certain inflexible non-negotiables I had to work around. That ended up being a very involved working process which took weeks.

So working processes change, since I change. There's still the thrill of limitless potential, even only with the sounds of these familiar instruments. But it's always finding the here and now of it, in this well-trodden arena strewn with ruins and ancient masterpieces, while living in an information tsunami and environmental apocalypse.


Artist Biographies

"Tim Parkinson (b.1973) has consistently pursued an independent path, seeking to engage with whatever it means today to be a functioning composer in the world. His music has been labelled as experimental, "reconstructing music from the ground up", and "sounding like nothing else", the work invariably returning to fundamental enquiries around the meaning of sound. He has been associated with other British independent voices of the same generation, such as Bailie, Harrison, Newland, Saunders, Whitty.

His music is mostly performed by a dedicated community of friends and musicians, but he has also written for various groups and ensembles including Plus Minus, Apartment House, [rout], Incidental Music, Dedalus, Edges, Basel Sinfonietta, London Sinfonietta; and for various instrumentalists including Stephen Altoft, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies, Julia Eckhardt, Tanja Masanti, Andrew Sparling, Craig Shepard, Silvia Tarozzi, Philip Thomas, Stefan Thut, Deborah Walker. His music has been performed in UK, Europe, USA, Armenia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Broadcasts of music have been on BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM, WDR Köln, and Schweizer Radio SRF2. Two albums of music have been released on Edition Wandelweiser (2006, 2010); in 2019 Piano Music 2015-16 was released on all that dust, and the electro-opera Pleasure Island was released on Slip as vinyl and download, followed in 2020 by Here Comes A Monster released on Takuroku. In 2021 songs 2011 were included on a split release Time Is Over with work by Travis Just on awavepress. In 2022 Another Timbre released an album of a selection of chamber works from 1998-2017.

Time With People, an opera, (2012-13) has received performances in London and Huddersfield (2014-15 by Edges), Los Angeles (2015 by Southland Ensemble); Chicago, Oberlin, Ohio and Beloit (2017 by a.pe.ri.od.ic, with set design by Parsons & Charlesworth); Cardiff (2016 by Good News From The Future); New York (2017 by Object Collection); Ghent (2018 by G.A.M.E.); La Chaux-de-Fonds (2018 French language version, translated by Louis d'Heudieres, performed by Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain); Helsinki (2019 multilingual version, at Tulkinnanvaraista); Basel (2020 in French as above, performed again by NEC).

In 2018 he was appointed a Creative Fellowship at the Samuel Beckett Research Centre, which led to string quartet 2019 in which during the performance the musicians are enclosed within a large box.

He is also active as pianist and performer, both independently and also by invitation, having been an occasional performer with Apartment House, and Plus-Minus, and having performed in venues such as Tate Modern, Barbican, Cafe Oto, Union Chapel, and in festivals such as Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Tectonics, Borealis, Frontiers, Roadburn, Donaufestival, All Tomorrows Parties, Audiograft, Edinburgh Fringe, Musica Nova, Cut & Splice, Sonorités, RDV de l'Erdre. As a soloist he has performed with Object Collection, Skögen, Apartment House, Set Ensemble, Incidental Music, Q-02, J.G. Thirlwell, Phill Niblock, Matteo Fargion, Lee Patterson, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies, Jürg Frey, Michael Pisaro, Michael Parsons, Gavin Bryars, Joshua Rifkin, Tom Johnson, and Christian Wolff, amongst others. Since 2003 has been regularly performing with composer James Saunders in the lo-fi electronics, auxiliary instrument and any-sound-producing-means duo Parkinson Saunders.

He has organised many public concerts to promote the presence, wealth and variety of present day music exploration, one thread of which is the concert series, Music We'd Like to Hear, co-curated with John Lely and Markus Trunk annually in London since 2005.

In 2011 he was visiting Professor of Composition at Brno Academy. He has also given lectures at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Oxford Brookes, Ostrava New Music Days, Huddersfield University, Bath Spa University and Snape Maltings, as well as teaching at Ashmole Academy and Primary School.

He studied at Worcester College, Oxford, followed by study with Kevin Volans in Dublin, and participated in the Ostrava New Music Days 2001, attending seminars with Petr Kotik, Alvin Lucier, Zsolt Nagy and Christian Wolff."

-Tim Parkinson Website (https://www.untitledwebsite.com/life)
9/13/2023

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"Mira Benjamin is a Canadian violinist, researcher and new-music instigator.

She performs new and experimental music, with a special interest in microtonality & tuning practice. She actively commissions music from composers at all stages of their careers, and develops each new work through multiple performances. Current collaborations include new works by Anna Höstman, Scott McLaughlin, Amber Priestley, Taylor Brook and James Weeks.

Since 2011, Mira has co-directed NU:NORD - a project-based music and performance network which instigates artistic exchanges and encourages community building between music creators from Canada, Norway & the UK. To date NU:NORD has engaged 79 artists and commissioned 62 new works. Through this initiative, Mira hopes to offer a foundation from which Canadian artists can reach out to artistic communities overseas, and provide a conduit through which UK & Norwegian artists can access Canada's rich art culture.

Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, Mira lived for ten years in Montréal, where she was a member of Quatuor Bozzini. Since 2014 she has resided in London (UK), where she regularly performs with ensembles such as Apartment House, Decibel, and the London Contemporary Orchestra Soloists, and is currently the Duncan Druce Scholar in Music Performance at the University of Huddersfield.

Mira is the recipient of the 2016 Virginia Parker Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. The prize is awarded annually to a Canadian musician in recognition of their contribution to the artistic life in Canada and internationally."

-St. Martin in the Field Website (http://mirabenjamin.com/about/)
9/13/2023

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"Welsh pianist Siwan Rhys enjoys a varied career of solo, chamber, and ensemble playing, with a strong focus on contemporary music and collaboration with composers.

She has played at prestigious British venues such as the Barbican Hall, Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, St David's Hall, Symphony Hall, and abroad at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Le Tambour Rennes, and Shanghai Symphony Hall amongst others. She has also appeared at the Aldeburgh Festival, BBC Proms, Principal Sound, Occupy the Pianos, Lille Piano(s) Festival, and has recorded many times for television, radio, and labels such as NMC, all that dust, and Prima Facie. Her recent recording of Stockhausen's KONTAKTE (with percussionist George Barton) was released in October 2019 on the all that dust label.

Recent concert engagements include performances of Charles Ives' 'Concord Sonata' in France as part of the Oeuvres Monstres series, Nono's ...sofferte onde serene... at the Principal Sound festival, Feldman's For Philip Guston and Why Patterns?, Stockhausen's KONTAKTE, and appearances at Occupy the Pianos and Lille Piano(s) Festival playing music by Vivier and Eastman.

Also a regular ensemble and orchestral pianist, Siwan has worked with the London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Colin Currie Group, Aldeburgh Festival Ensemble, Mahogany Opera Group, Music Theatre Wales, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with conductors Oliver Knussen, François-Xavier Roth, and George Benjamin among others.

Siwan works regularly with mezzo-soprano Lucy Goddard, and is a member of GBSR piano-percussion duo with whom she was a 2017-18 St John's Smith Square Young Artist.

She is an honorary member of the Welsh Gorsedd of Bards and an Entente Cordiale alumna. She teaches at the London Contemporary School of Piano."

-Siwan Rhys Website (https://www.siwanrhys.co.uk/siwan-rhys-piano-biography)
9/13/2023

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"Kathryn Williams is a flautist who performs solo recitals, chamber music, and with orchestras with a particular interest in new and experimental music. Recent performances include a Stockhausen masterclass with Kathinka Pasveer at Theater Basel, solo and chamber music performances with Ensemble Linea Academy at Cité de la musique et la danse Strasbourg, and a concerto with Manchester Camerata. She has performed with various orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic, The Hallé, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Sinfonia Cymru and plays regularly with new music group The House of Bedlam. Kathryn's current project, Coming Up for Air, has been selected for YCAT's Sounding Board: Project Mentoring.

As a music educator Kathryn specialises in experimental performance practice and early-years education. Recently this has included guest lecturing at the Royal Northern College of Music, contributing to courses with Aldeburgh Young Musicians, delivering performances and workshops for Live Music Now, and long-term residencies at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Manchester Museum and in a central Manchester nursery school.

Kathryn earned a BMus, MMus, and International Artist Diploma from the Royal Northern College of Music with teachers Peter Lloyd, Richard Davis, Katherine Baker, Stephen Preston, Karin de Fleyt and others. Prizes include RNCM Bach Prize, RNCM Concerto Competition (on two occasions), British Flute Society Young Artist Competition, and National Foundation for Arts Award (USA)."

-Kathryn Williams Website (http://www.kathryngwilliams.com/biography.html)
9/13/2023

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"Born in Canada, clarinetist Heather Roche trained in England, lived in Germany for 7 years and now lives in London.

She has performed at some of the major European festivals, including musikFest (Berlin), BachFest (Leipzig), Musica Nova (Helsinki), Acht Brücken (Cologne), the International Computer Music Conference (Huddersfield, Ljubljana), the Dias de Música Electroacústica (Seia, Portugal) and the Agora Festival (Ircam, Paris). She has also performed solo programmes at the Zagreb Music Biennale, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the New York Electroacoustic Symposium, at CIRMMT (Montreal), Unerhörte Musik (Berlin), Eavesdropping (London), and with the Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST).

She has performed with ensembles and orchestras including Musik Fabrik (Cologne), the WDR Orchestra (Cologne), mimitabu (Gothenburg), the London Symphony Orchestra (London), ensemble Garage (Cologne), ensemble interface (Berlin), the Riot Ensemble (London), the Alisios Camerata (Zagreb), and ensemble proton (Bern). She also plays across the UK in a trio with Carla Rees (flutes) and Xenia Pestova (piano) and in 2015 formed an duo with the accordionist Eva Zöllner, with whom she has played across Germany, the UK and in Portugal. She is a founding member of hand werk, a 6-person chamber music ensemble based in Cologne, and worked with the group from 2010-2017.

She has solo CDs out on the HCR/NMC and Métier labels. Please see the Discography for further details.

In 2014 she was awarded a DIVA (Danish International Visiting Artists Fellowship), and lived in Copenhagen for two months.

Since 2016 she has acted as the Reviews Editor for TEMPO, a quarterly journal for contemporary music published by Cambridge University Press.

Her website is host to one of the most widely read new music blogs on the Internet. In 2017 it had 75,000 hits from around the world. She successfully crowdfunded in 2014 in order to host her first composition competition. Six young composers were chosen out of 270 applicants to write new pieces, which were premiered in 2016.

She is a fervent advocate of collaboration, and her PhD research at the University of Huddersfield (under the supervision of Dr. Philip Thomas) explored the nature of dialogue within performer-composer relationships. She has given workshops in instrumental technique and/or iPad use in performance all over Europe, for example in London, Munich and Copenhagen.

Heather completed her Masters of Music (Orchestral Training) in 2006 at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, studying under Joy Farrall and Laurent Ben Slimane, in addition to conducting with Sian Edwards. Following her degree she completed residencies with the International Ensemble Modern Academy, at IMPULS in Graz and with ensemble recherche in Freiburg, the Darmstadt Summer Courses 2008 and 2010 and the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Innsbruck, Austria. She has performed in masterclasses with Michael Collins, Ernesto Molinari and Shizuyo Oka, to name a few. She completed her BMus in 2005 at the University of Victoria, Canada, studying under Patricia Kostek."

-Heather Roche Website (https://heatherroche.net/about/)
9/13/2023

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"London based pianist and conductor Mark Knoop is known for his fearless performances and individual interpretations. He has commissioned and premièred countless new works and worked with many respected composers including Michael Finnissy, Joanna Bailie, Bryn Harrison, Bernhard Lang, Matthew Shlomowitz, Jennifer Walshe and Steven Kazuo Takasugi. His versatile technique and virtuosity also brings fresh approaches to the standard and 20th-century repertoire.

Mark performs regularly throughout Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia and in New Zealand, South Korea, Mongolia, United States of America, Canada and at festivals including Transit (Leuven), Ultima (Oslo), Huddersfield, London Contemporary Music Festival, Borealis (Bergen), Spor (Århus), Athelas (Copenhagen), and MaerzMusik (Berlin).

He performs with various ensembles including Plus-Minus (London/Brussels) and Apartment House (London), and has conducted EXAUDI (London), Scenatet (Denmark), and London Sinfonietta. His recordings of music by John Cage, Richard Beaudoin, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Peter Ablinger, and David Lumsdaine have been critically acclaimed."

-Mark Knoop Website (http://www.markknoop.com/home)
9/13/2023

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"Violinist Gordon MacKay was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland before gaining a music degree at the University of London. He is currently a member of contemporary group Apartment House, and has also performed with the Kreutzer Quartet, as well as featuring as a guest player with Lontano and the London Symphony Orchestra.

He has recorded a solo violin work by Sylvano Bussotti for BBC Radio 3, and performed a violin duo by Effy Efthymiou with Madeleine Mitchell, which was shortlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize in 2018."

-Naxos (https://www.naxos.com/person/Gordon_MacKay/107234.htm)
9/13/2023

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"Bridget Carey studied jointly at the Royal Academy of Music and London University and has pursued a varied freelance career based in London, and has developed a particular reputation in the field of new music.

For 15 years she premiered new chamber opera for the Almeida, whilst working in dance scores with Siobhan Davies and Rambert companies, classical contemporary with Opus 20 and Music Projects/London and new complexity with Ensemble Expose. From 1995-2005 she was viola player with the Kreutzer string quartet. More recently, her chamber music interests include Okeanos and the RPS award-winning experimental music group Apartment House, with whom she continues to add to her chamber music discography. She has been a member of Britten Sinfonia for the last 20 years, and is a regular guest with London Sinfonietta and BCMG, among others."

-Okeanos Website (http://okeanos.co.uk/wp/?page_id=1017)
9/13/2023

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"Cellist Anton Lukoszevieze (born 1965 in the UK) is one of the most diverse performers of his generation and is notable for his performances of avant-garde, experimental and improvised music. Anton has given many performances at numerous international festivals throughout Europe and the USA (Maerzmusik, Donaueschingen, Wien Modern, GAS, Transart, Ultima, etc.etc.). He has also made frequent programmes and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, Danish Radio, SR2, Sweden, Deutschland Rundfunk, WDR, Germany and ORT, Austria. Deutschlandfunk, Berlin produced a radio portrait of him in September, 2003. Anton has also performed concerti with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the 2001 Aldeburgh festival and the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with many composers and performers including David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, Amnon Wolman, Pierre Strauch, Rytis Mazulis, Karlheinz Essl, Helmut Oehring, Christopher Fox, Philip Corner, Alvin Curran, Phill Niblock and Laurence Crane, He is unique in the UK through his use of the curved bow (BACH-Bogen), which he is using to develop new repertoire for the cello. From 2005-7 he was New Music Fellow at Kings College, Cambridge and Kettles Yard Gallery. Anton is the subject of four films (FoxFire Eins) by the renowned artist-filmmaker Jayne Parker. A new film Trilogy with compositions by Sylvano Bussotti, George Aperghis and Laurence Crane premieres at The London Film Festival, October 2008. In November will premiere a new hour long work by Christopher Fox for cello and the vocal ensemble Exaudi commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and will also present new solo works for cello and live electronics. Anton is also active as an artist, his work has been shown in Holland (Lux Nijmegen), CAC, Vilnius, Duisburg (EarPort), Austria, (Sammlung Essl), Wien Modern, The Slade School of Art, Kettles Yard Gallery, Cambridge Film Festival and Rational Rec. London. His work has been published in Musiktexte, Cologne, design Magazine and the book SoundVisions (Pfau-Verlag, Saarbrucken, 2005). Anton Lukoszevieze is founder and director of the ensemble Apartment House, a member of the radical noise group Zeitkratzer and recently made his contemporary dance debut with the Vincent Dance Company in Broken Chords, Dusseldorf."

-Kalvos Damian (http://www.kalvos.org/lukosze.html)
9/13/2023

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Track Listing:



1. Violin Piece (1999) 17:23

2. Septet (2007) 16:07

3. Violin And Piano Piece (1998) 15:19

4. Ensemble (2012) 15:46

5. Violin And Piano (2017) 10:08

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