It’s a very good week to be in London.

1) On Thursday, Letter Piece Company will perform Play at Chisendale Dance Space. On Friday, they will perform at the Soundwaves festival in Brighton, which is called, this year, “An Evening of Music, Movement and Dance.” Here is part of the show, as it was performed at the Transit festival in October 2010.

From this video and the others available on the site, as well as my own live experiences of Tom Johnson’s and especially Matthew Shlomowitz’s work, the intersections of movement, pattern, sound, and external references are highly thought-provoking and enjoyable.

Described as ‘duet-Tourettes’, Letter Piece Company brings together ideas and
elements from contemporary music, dance and theatre in genre defying
performance pieces. With shifting combinations of music, physical movement
and text (always with a beat!), prepare to experience abstract sequences of
virtuosic face dancing, vampires, cowboys, sporting moves, thievery and a
mathematical tale!

In 2007 Matthew Shlomowitz began a series of short duos for performer and
musician called Letter Pieces. Each piece has a score, positioning a small number of
physical actions and sound events in a fixed order. They are called Letter Pieces
because the scores use letters to represent these sounds and actions.

In 2010 Matthew developed these ideas with Shila Anaraki in two longer Letter Piece
Quartets as part of a one-hour show the Letter Piece Company created for the 2010
Transit (Belgium) & Huddersfield festivals. This July we present this show again in
London and Brighton.

The work transplants sounds and scenes from popular culture and the
everyday world into an alien space that allows the familiar to be seen again in
strange ways, creating a conceptually rich as well as light and humorous tone.

PROGRAMME

Anaraki / Shlomowitz – Five Finger Discount
Shlomowitz – Northern Cities
Tom Johnson – Narayana’s Cows
Shlomowitz – Australia, Bolton, Clinton, Dachshund & Echinacea
Anaraki / Shlomowitz – Mixed Doubles

DETAILS

Thursday 14 July 2011
Chisenhale Dance Space, East London
Show starts at 8pm
£8/5 – tickets on the door
www.chisenhaledancespace.co.uk

Friday 15 July 2011
Soundwaves Festival, Sallis Benney Theatre, Brighton
Show starts at 7pm (event also features other acts)
EVENING PASS £10 (Earlybird price £8)
arts.brighton.ac.uk/soundwaves

2) On Friday at 6pm, the ELISION ensemble is performing at St. Andrew’s Holborn.

Concert-City of London Festival
Date: Friday July 15th 2011
Place: St Andrew Holborn, 5 St Andrew St, London EC4 3AB
Time: 18:00hrs

Michael Finnissy • Aijal (1982) for flute, oboe and percussion
Percy Grainger • Random Round (1912-1943) for variable instrumentation
Liza Lim • Invisibility (2009) for solo violoncello
David Lumsdaine • Kangaroo Hunt (1971) for piano and percussion
John Rodgers • Amor (1996) for flute and oboe

ELISION musicians
Peter Veale | oboe, Richard Craig | flutes, Kerry Yong | piano, Peter Neville | percussion , Séverine Ballon | violoncello

Price: £10:00
Booking ONLINE: http://www.colf.org//events/Contemporary-Music/1113-Elision-Ensemble-at-St-Andrew-Holborn.cfm

Australia’s foremost international contemporary music ensemble, ELISION, perform a programme almost exclusively given over to a celebration of love, doom and music influenced by perceptions of the Australian continent and its inhabitants.

David Lumsdaine, 80 this year, is a major figure known as much for his remarkable recordings of the music from the natural world as for his concert compositions, and is represented here by his colourful Kangaroo Hunt. It is with pleasure that we return to the music of David Lumsdaine who in the early years of ELISION’s history composed and worked with the group in Melbourne, Australia.

The music of Liza Lim and Michael Finnissy draw upon understandings and experiences of Australian Aboriginal themes and aesthetics. Percy Grainger’s ‘Random Round’, described by the composer himself as ‘an experiment in concerted partial improvisation’, embraces an earlier period of Australian invention. John Rodgers, keen to reconceive instruments and their use is represented by ‘Amor’ – a duo for conjoined flute and oboe highlighting the plight of two lovers whose tale is told by Dante. Caught and killed in the act of adultery they are physically inseparable and melded forever in one of the outer circles of hell.

3) The third and final music we’d like to hear concert of the year is taking place a short walk from the ELISION concert at 7:30, and I’ve established that there will be time to get from the one to the other.

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This write-up on the facebook page sums up some of my own anticipation of the concert:

After a great turnout last Friday for a host of ocarinas, a resonant egg carton and various objects moving across the floor, it’s time for “any sound producing means” this Friday. And two violins of course, with the marvellous Angharad Davies and Sara Hubrich playing hotly anticipated Chyoko Szlavnics and Jürg Frey scores.

And here is the program:

VIOLINS with SOUNDS
performed by
Angharad Davies, Sara Hubrich (violins)
Parkinson Saunders (any sound-producing means)

CHIYOKO SZLAVNICS Interior Landscape
JÜRG FREY ohne titel
VINCENZO GALILEI Contrapunti
MICHAEL PARSONS Pentachordal Melody
CHRISTIAN WOLFF Material

£9 (£6 conc)

Curated by Tim Parkinson

I for one can’t wait.