At the end of May this year Calum Storrie started to produce a graphic score with no idea of how it might translate into sound. The score, drawn and collaged onto manuscript paper, used a limited number of elements: a red circle, black lines, a film still, a rubber stamp, a stencil, zigzag lines, a fragment of musical notation and found and ‘Letraset’ text.
Storrie made a page a day over the next nine days. He sent the finished score to Steve Beresford, wondering if he might be able to take this visual exercise and turn it into a piece of music – coherent or otherwise. Beresford worked on the score at the piano over the following weeks, recording the responses to individual pages on his iPhone. The result is this suite of nine reflective studies.
The release is accompanied by a 20 page PDF manuscript of the score.
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Written by Calum Storrie
Performed & recorded on piano by Steve Beresford
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Cover design by Oliver Barrett
Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over fifty years, freely improvising on piano, objects, electronics and other things with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink and John Zorn. Long-standing groups have included Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack), The Melody Four (with Lol Coxhill and Tony Coe, both RIP) and London Improvisers Orchestra.
He has written songs, composed for large and small ensembles, and scored short films, feature films, TV shows and commercials. He was part of the editorial teams of ‘Musics’ and ‘Collusion’ magazines, writes about music in various contexts, and was a senior lecturer in music at the University of Westminster.
Steve has worked with Christian Marclay on various Marclay mixed media pieces. He has also worked with The Slits, Najma Akhtar, Stewart Lee, Ivor Cutler, Prince Far-I, Alan Hacker, Tania Chen, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Faradena Afifi, Blanca Regina, Ray Davies, Mandhira De Saram, The Flying Lizards, Zeena Parkins, The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Ilan Volkov, Rachel Musson, Vic Reeves, Lore Lixenberg, Valentina Magaletti and many others.
Beresford has an extensive discography - around 500 releases - as performer, arranger, free-improviser, composer, conductor and producer. He was awarded a Paul Hamlyn award for composers in 2012.
In 2021, Bloomsbury published a book by Andy Hamilton: ‘Pianos, Toys, Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford’.
In 2022, Siglio published the book ‘Call and Response’, which partnered photographs by Christian Marclay with notated improvisations by Beresford.
Calum Storrie is an artist, writer and designer. His art practice takes a number of forms from drawings of imaginary architecture to collage and spontaneous drawings of live performances. He has also created graphic scores for Steve Beresford, Douglas Benford and the Ligeti Quartet. He has designed exhibitions for, among others, the Royal Academy, the Museum of London and Wellcome Collection. His collaboration with Steve Beresford, ‘Nine Day Score’, is released on Cafe Oto’s Takuroku label.
