Pianist Alexander Hawkins' six movement composition is realized by the UK Riot Ensemble, known primarily for their work with notated contemporary music, adding Evan Parker's incredible soprano sax soloing, and filtered through Matthew Wright's live electronic processing, resulting in this amazing hybrid masterwork that bridges modern 21st Century forms.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2021 Country: Switzerland Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels w/ booklet Recorded at Challow Park Studios, in Oxfordshire, United Kingdow, on July 30th, 2020, by Will Biggs and James Towler.
4. Leaving The Classroom Of A Beloved Teacher 8:31
5. Ecstatic Baobabs 8:50
6. Optimism Of The Will 9:34
sample the album:
descriptions, reviews, &c.
"With Togetherness Music, British pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins presents a fascinating musical panorama, a distillation and synthesis of different traditions and influences, reflecting the broad spectrum of an extraordinary musical spirit. Released to celebrate Hawkins' 40th birthday, this six-movement quasi-orchestral work is an extensive expansion and revision of a piece which originated with a commission from conductor and composer Aaron Holloway-Nahum for the Riot Ensemble, to feature Hawkins and saxophone icon Evan Parker - with whom Hawkins has enjoyed a now more than decade-long musical association - as soloists. The new incarnation of the work features the original forces, augmented by additional acoustic improvisers and the electronic wizardry of Matthew Wright.
Whilst the Riot Ensemble are primarily renowned for their performances of notated contemporary classical music, and Parker is one of the seminal figures in free improvisation and the post-Coltrane jazz continuum, roles shift fluidly throughout this work, creating an entirely distinctive soundworld.
"Collaborations among improvisers and classical musicians can be fraught - a clash of cultures," writes musician James Fei in the comprehensive liner notes. "When it works, however, something unique and in-between becomes possible." Indeed: Togetherness Music shows new musical possibilities. A highly contemporary musical work, which points to the future. "-Intakt
"Ernst von Siemens Foundation Ensemble Prize winners, Riot Ensemble connects people to great contemporary music in concerts and events that are just as innovative, vibrant and rewarding as the music itself. The members of Riot are some of the top European soloists in new music, and with Riot they work as performers, curators, commissioners, and collaborators, creating and producing a diverse array of projects.
Based in London, Riot is particularly active in bringing emerging international voices to the British new-music scene and since 2012 has given over 200 World and UK premieres by composers from more than thirty countries. Their annual call for scores received 436 submissions in 2020, and in the past 6 years has resulted in almost twenty commissions. Additionally, they enjoy close working relationships with some of the most important composers of our time, including Clara Iannotta, Chaya Czernowin, Ann Cleare, and Georg Friedrich Haas whose evening length piece Solstices was commissioned by Riot in 2019.
Riot performs regularly at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Wigmore Hall (UK) as well as Dark Music Days (Iceland), Tampere Biennale (Finland), Nordic Music Days (Sweden), and November Music (Netherlands) with upcoming appearances scheduled at Darmstadt (Germany), Wien Modern (Austria), ENSEMS (Spain), Arctic Arts (Norway) and Tzlil Meudcan (Israel). In 2020, they began a new partnership with King's Place where they present their ReNEW series, focusing on bringing the most cutting edge international new music to London.
Their recent release on Huddersfield Contemporary Records, Speak Be Silent, was named one of the ten most important recordings of the year by Alex Ross in the New Yorker, and has been praised as 'one of the best recordings of 2019' by Sequenza 21 and 'a most impressive release' by Australia's Limelight magazine. They have also recently released a disc featuring Jonathan Harvey's Song Offerings, recorded at Deutschlandfunk in Köln and are currently working on a new release of Patricia Alessandrini's chamber music for HCR. Riot features regularly on BBC Radio 3 and enjoys radio broadcasts across Europe.
Their work has been generously supported by Opus 2 International and Arts Council England lottery grants, alongside numerous private sponsors, PRSF, Diaphonique, the Ambache Charitable Trust, the RVW Trust, and the Holst Foundation."-https://www.riotensemble.com/about