The Squid's Ear Magazine


Smith, Linda Catlin: Flowers of Emptiness (Another Timbre)

The 6th album on Another Timbre from Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, a leading voice in contemporary chamber music, presents eight exquisite works performed by Apartment House, including the 1st recordings of three string quartets, alongside a violin duo, a clarinet quartet, an early string trio, a cello and piano duo, and a bass clarinet solo; evocative and deeply expressive artistry.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Linda Catlin Smith-composer

Mira Benjamin-violin

Gordon MacKay-violin

Chihiro Ono-violin

Bridget Carey-viola

Anton Lukoszevieze-cello

James Opstad-double bass

Heather Roche-bass clarinet, clarinet

Kerry Yong-piano


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Label: Another Timbre
Catalog ID: at230
Squidco Product Code: 35478

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2024
Country: UK
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded between March and August 2024, at Goldsmiths Recording Studio, London, and The Old School, Starston.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Eight chamber works by Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, beautifully performed by Apartment House. The album is structured around the first recordings of three of Linda's string quartets (tracks 1, 6 and 8), along with a short violin duo, a piece for clarinet, violin, cello and double bass, an early string trio, a very recent work for cello and piano, and a bass clarinet solo written for Apartment House regular Heather Roche. Together the pieces present a compelling portrait of the chamber music of one of the leading composers of her generation.

This is the sixth CD of Linda Catlin Smith's music released on Another Timbre, following the CD releases of 'Dirt Road', 'Drifter', 'Wanderer', 'Ballad', and 'Among the Tarnished Stars', which was released alongside Messiaen's 'Quatuor pour la fin du temps'"-Another Timbre". "



Another Timbre Interview with Linda Catlin Smith

The pieces on the CD cover a period of 38 years (1986 to 2024). There are differences, but I guess that in a blind test many people would struggle to identify for sure which were older works and which were the most recent. Do you see a lot of continuities in your music across the decades, or are the differences very clear from where you stand?

I think of the early pieces on this recording - Flowers of Emptiness (1986) and As you pass a reflective surface (1991) - as early steps on a certain aesthetic path. And while I see them as quite different from later works, I suppose there is a thread of thought that runs through most of my work - a kind of reflective atmosphere, a concern with harmony and colour... Maybe I'm like a still life painter, looking at the same objects again and again over the years. But in each piece, I try to take myself - even in some small way - into something I hadn't quite done before.

'String Quartet No.6' is the longest piece on the album by some way, and I find it a really strong & beautiful work - one of my favourite quartets of this century. Can you tell us a bit about the piece?

I composed String Quartet No. 6 for the Penderecki Quartet in 2013. It's one of my few pieces with no title. I was exploring the medium of string quartet anew for myself - I think many composers feel like I do, that you are never done with the string quartet - and in this one, I was looking for a tangled, woven polyphony, a kind of messy texture out of which spare, almost astringent landscapes emerge. I wanted to try to get lost in the polyphonic thickets, both in terms of the independence of the lines, and the harmonic language. And maybe I succeeded in being lost, to the point where a title eluded me. Sometimes I just feel music speaks for itself, as in this case, and so I just let it be.

Some of the shorter pieces on the disc seem to me like essays or sketches - and are no less beautiful for that. Your music generally seems to have a lack of grandiosity or pretension, which I appreciate a lot. Is that a quality in your music which you recognise or have consciously sought?

I don't know if it's particularly conscious, but I do have an aversion to high drama in music - I like intimacy and focus, and the sheer sensuousness of sound. I like to try to create a state of being, a state of thought, or non-thought, where the piece suspends us for a time. And even in the short pieces, I wanted to create this sense of time that is larger than the few minutes they actually hold.

You've composed pieces for all genres, including an opera, symphonic and vocal works, but the overall of your work list is balanced towards chamber music. This suits me personally, but was it a choice, or is it simply due to where commissions came from? Looking back on your career as a composer, are there things that you wish you'd done more (or less) of)?

Chamber music is my world - it's where musicians who are devoted to new music are often found (Apartment House and the Bozzini Quartet are perfect examples) - and for many composers, these are our people. I love hearing music in a small space, where we can be close to the musicians - a hall that seats 60 people is a wonderful thing - we are intimate with the music. But at one point I felt I needed to work with a larger set of musicians to obtain a more complex set of colours and harmonies. My first three orchestra pieces I wrote just to see what I could do. (The last three were commissioned.) And it's amazing to compose for orchestra. I love writing for large ensembles, and for string orchestra, I love writing for unusual combinations. If I want to do something I will just do it; I wrote a piece for 9 violins, though no one asked me to. Sometimes we just have to write for larger forces so we can get at different material. The most difficult thing, (for me, anyway) are instrumental solos - I've written lots of them, and they are so challenging. But chamber music is the heart of it for me - I love nothing more than being in rehearsal with a fine chamber music ensemble, where everyone is working to understand this new thing.


Artist Biographies

"Linda Catlin Smith grew up in New York and lives in Toronto. She studied music in NY, and at the University of Victoria (Canada). Her music has been performed and/or recorded by: Tafelmusik, Other Minds Festival, California Ear Unit, Kitchener-Waterloo, Victoria and Vancouver Symphonies, Arraymusic, Tapestry New Opera, Gryphon Trio, Via Salzburg, Evergreen Club Gamelan, Turning Point Ensemble, Vancouver New Music, and the Del Sol, Penderecki, and Bozzini quartets, among many others; she has been performed by many notable soloists, including Eve Egoyan, Elinor Frey, Philip Thomas, Colin Tilney, Vivienne Spiteri, and Jamie Parker. She has been supported in her work by the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Chalmers Foundation, K.M. Hunter Award, Banff Centre, SOCAN Foundation and Toronto Arts Council; in 2005 her work Garland (for Tafelmusik) was awarded Canada's prestigious Jules Léger Prize. In addition to her work as an independent composer, she was Artistic Director of the Toronto ensemble Arraymusic from 1988 to 1993, and she was a member of the ground-breaking multidisciplinary performance collective, URGE, from 1992-2006. Linda teaches composition privately and at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada."

-Linda Catlin Smith Website (http://www.catlinsmith.com/)
11/29/2024

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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/)
11/29/2024

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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)
11/29/2024

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"Japanese-born violinist Chihiro Ono use music as a tool to explore human abilities, link people and places, and open human beings' minds."

-Musicity Sound Space (https://www.mscty.space/artist/chihiro-ono)
11/29/2024

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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)
11/29/2024

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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)
11/29/2024

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"James Opstad is a United Kingdom bassist, composer and one third of duck-rabbit music."

-James Opstad Twitter Feed (https://twitter.com/james_opstad)
11/29/2024

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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/)
11/29/2024

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"Kerry is a musician who lives in east London. He trained as a pianist and now also performs on keyboards and live electronics.

Kerry has performed at Audiograft, Chisenhale Arts Club, Kämmer Klang, Rational Rec, Borealis Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, ISCM World Music Days, Kings Place, City of London Festival, Music We'd Like To Hear, Nonclassical and in groups Apartment House, ELISION, Plus-Minus Ensemble and Ensemble Offspring.

Kerry studied piano with Stephanie McCallum at the University of Sydney (where he also studied composition) and at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He completed a doctorate at the Royal College of Music where he studied piano with Andrew Ball and researched Performance practices of music for piano with electroacoustics. He has also dabbled with the other side, playing with bands Apopalyptics, Casiokids and Half-handed Cloud and the Welcome Wagon.

Kerry also directs music at Grace Church Hackney (which meets in Hoxton), where they are happy to use ancient chants, traditional hymns and new works with choirs, bands, electronics, objects and the like."

-Kerry Yong Website (http://kerry-yong.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html)
11/29/2024

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Track Listing:



1. Waterlily (2008) 04:29

2. Blackwing (2018) 04:55

3. Flowers of Emptiness (1986) 12:12

4. Lamento (2010) 03:13

5. Das Rosen-Innere (2024) 06:21

6. As you pass a reflective surface (1991) 06:15

7. Nightshade (2021) 12:12

8. String Quartet No.6 (2013) 19:13

Related Categories of Interest:


Compositional Forms
Chamber Rock
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Large Ensembles
New in Compositional Music
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