The celebrated festival of experimental sound, Cut & Splice, returns with a Cafe OTO weekender performed by Ensemble Plus-Minus, Owen Green and curated by Joanna Bailie.

FRIDAY (Fields/Machines)

Henry Cowell — Aeolian Harp (1923)
Cathy van Eck — Groene Ruis (2007)
Luc Ferrari — Presque Rien No.1 (1970)
Clara Iannotta — The people here go mad. They blame the wind. (2013-14)
Simon Løffler — b (2012)
Michael Pisaro — Fields have ears 1 (2009)
Dawn Scarfe — listening glasses installation & Air Traffic (2006)
Agostino Di Scipio — Audible Ecosystems, n.3a (background noise study) (2004-5)

Sound and Music is the national charity for new music. Our vision is to create a world where new music and sound prospers, transforming lives, challenging expectations and celebrating the work of its creators. Our work includes composer and artist support and development, partnerships with a range of organisations, live events and audience development, touring, information and advice, network building, and education. We champion new music and the work of British composers and artists, and seek to ensure that they are at the heart of cultural life and enjoyed by many.

www.soundandmusic.org

BBC Radio 3 broadcasts high-quality, distinctive classical music and cultural programming, world music and jazz, alongside regular arts and ideas programmes. The station broadcasts more than 600 complete concerts a year - alongside daily speech programming, 90 full-length operas, over 25 drama commissions and over 20 new BBC music commissions a year. Radio 3 is the most significant commissioner of new musical works in the country and is committed to supporting new talent, from composers to writers and new young performers, through schemes such as BBC Introducing, New Generation Artists and New Generation Thinkers. www.bbc.co.uk/radio3

Cut & Splice 2015 links the work of the pioneers of the sonic avant-garde to the trail-blazers of today and explores the relationships between music machines and the environment. Moving from the centre to the edges of music-making practices, from the last century to our own, the programme seeks to explore these dual radii of influence, that somehow overlap, create interference patterns and forming a fuzzy and yet compelling continuum on which the programmed works lie. The digital and computer-oriented takes a back seat in favour of media archaeology and single-use technologies — from Aeolian Harps and Helmholtz listening glasses to sounding trees and hairdryer-powered orchestras of wind instruments. The surrounding, sounding world also plays its part in this year’s event, recorded, filtered, transcribed and forming the basis of its own audible eco-system.

Cut & Splice does not shy away from genre mixing — on the contrary it is its curatorial modus operandi. Work for classical instruments, experimental music, installation and electroacoustic pieces will all be presented on equal terms over the course of these two evenings at London's Cafe Oto. Cut & Splice audiences will be treated to an artist led journey toward the otherness of machine and nature, an otherness reflecting the unique qualities of human subjectivity.

Since 2003 Cut & Splice has run as an acclaimed international festival of sound art and experimental music. Co-Produced by Sound and Music and BBC Radio 3, Cut & Splice is broadcast on Radio 3’s Hear and Now programme. This year’s event is curated by the composer Joanna Bailie. A distinctive voice in international new music, Joanna’s work has been performed by groups such as Ensemble Musikfabrik, L'instant Donné, EXAUDI, Ensemble Mosaik, The Nieuw Ensemble, Apartment House and The London Sinfonietta.

Together with composer Matthew Shlomowitz, Joanna is the founder and artistic director of Ensemble Plus-Minus.