Tuesday 30 May 2023, 8pm
Atonal Kat is a new series of sonic soirees curated by Xenia Pestova and Ed Bennett. Join us for intense listening as we walk with our ears.
Versatile vocalist and improviser Lauren Kinsella weaves the most delicate sonic tapestries using her velvety voice to beguile and lull the audience into complacence, then surges and shakes us with unexpected power. Virtuoso violinist Darragh Morgan performs a set of exploratory and radical works for violin and live electronics, including the London premiere of Ed Bennett’s “Strange Sea” for eight violins and field recordings and Linda Buckley’s haunting “Exploding Stars”. Experimental composer and pianist Tim Parkinson plays his own intense and intriguing music, inviting us to enquire about the fundamental meaning of sound.
Lauren Kinsella is an Irish vocalist based in London. Her work as a composer, improviser, collaborator and performer has been described as “truly captivating” (For Folk’s Sake), “stunning” (BBC Radio 3) and with “inventive curiosity and imagination” (Irish Examiner). A regular performer at many of London’s celebrated venues and festivals including Kings Place, Cafe Oto, the Vortex, the Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre, Songlines Encounters and the London Jazz Festival, she has also performed at several European festivals including Unerhört Jazz (Switzerland), InJazz (Netherlands), Cool Britannia (Vienna), Klaeng (Cologne), Down With Jazz (Ireland), Ankara International Music Festival (Istanbul), 12 Points (Porto), Dublin Literary Festival (Ireland), European Jazznights (Oslo), Jazzy Colours (Paris), Belfast Literary Festival (UK), Südtirol Jazz Festival (Italy) and the Cardiff Poetry Festival (Wales). She specialises in improvisation and her unique style of vocalisation involves exploring the different types of vocabulary connected with vocal and instrumental sound. From singing to speech, utterance to lexicon, syllabic deconstruction to stream of consciousness, Lauren’s work celebrates the human voice in multi-faceted ways. “A modernist, Kinsella is pushing vocal improvisation into new areas” (AllAboutJazz)
https://laurenkinsella.com/
Irish violinist Darragh Morgan has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician at The Wigmore Hall, Aldeburgh Festival, Maerzmusik Berlin, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, BBC Proms, Osterfestival Tirol, Bang on a Can Marathon New York, National Sawdust, Philips Collection Washington DC, Beijing Modern Music Festivala and Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre. He has performed concertos with National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Ulster Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Istanbul Symphony and European Union Chamber Orchestra.
Darragh has been invited as Concertmaster with London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Les Siecles, The Philharmonia and Aurora Orchestra. He has recorded 50+ albums many of which have received Diaspon D'or and Gramophone Awards. Darragh has collaborated with as diverse composers as Scanner and Mira Calix, to Gerald Barry, Donnacha Dennehy and Michael Finnissy. He is violinist in the renowned Fidelio Trio and a former member of The Smith Quartet. Darragh plays an 1848 violin by Giuseppe Rocca.
Tim Parkinson 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.
https://www.untitledwebsite.com/