Escape from Ekphrasis


IKLECTIK presents,

Escape from Ekphrasis

Tuesday 26 September 2023 | Doors: 8pm | First Act: 8:30pm
Our Kiosk opens 1 hour before doors.

Tickets: £10 adv / £12 otd https://link.dice.fm/G4d081341138

IKLECTIK presents a programme of three thirty-minute sets featuring exciting relationships between music, text, and technology. Songwriting, electronics, and text combine in the opening set by The Fargions, a sibling duo consisting of Francesca and Giacomo Fargion. Set two consists of four short solo and duo pieces, performed by the Zöllner-Roche duo. Most of these pieces have been written in collaboration with the duo and they investigate the relationships between performer, instrument, composer, and audience. Agnon’s Feel Free is based on a Nick Laird poem and features the poet’s pre-recorded voice, bass clarinet, and live electronics. What Can I Do? sets Zöllner-Roche duo’s political agency as the main character of a textual-musical narrative.

02.10.2016 is the date of the day after the referendum on the peace agreement with the FARC in Colombia narrowly failed. Ana María Romano Gómez’s work for solo accordion and electronics is a reflection on what this historic moment enfolds. Sina Fani Sani’s piece was originally an exploration of the physicality of music performance, movement, and speech, but it accumulated meanings as the protest wave grew in Iran during the course of its creation. For the third set the Zöllner-Roche duo are joined by vocalist Peter Falconer.

Technologically augmenting the trio, the set is made of six original microfictions (stories written in three hundred words or fewer) by Rose Biggin and Keir Cooper set to music by Olly Sellwood. Each story is a separate narrative, crossing between recounts of fictionalised events, interventions in systems of living, and depictions of human relationships. Thanks to Arts Council England for supporting the development of work in this programme. Performers: Giacomo Fargion, Francesca Fargion, Eva Zöllner, Heather Roche, Peter Falconer.

Programme:

Set 1: The Fargions

Set 2: Zöllner-Roche duo

Uri Agnon What can I do (2022)
Ana María Romano Gómez posdomingo 02.10.2016 (2016)
Uri Agnon Feel Free (2021) [Text by Nick Laird]
Sina Fani Sani A Strange Loop II: Drink your tea, the kids are dead! (2022)

Set 3: Zöllner-Roche duo + Peter Falconer

Olly Sellwood Microsong Cycle (2021-2023) [Texts by Rose Biggin & Keir Cooper]
1. “Linguine”
2. “Charlene from Big Data”
3. “Tales of George”
4. “Thingamy-on-Sea”
5. “Escape from Ekphrasis”
6. “Isn’t It, Just”

Zöllner-Roche Duo (Heather Roche, clarinets; Eva Zöllner, accordion)

The Zöllner-Roche Duo (Eva Zöllner and Heather Roche) is committed to developing an exciting new repertoire for their unusual combination of accordion and clarinet. Their love of working in close collaboration with composers takes them all over the world: recent tours include trips to Colombia, Sweden and Mexico, and this year will find them in Serbia and Brazil. They are regulars on the European concert stage, performing at HCMF, the Venice Biennale, Mixtur Festival Barcelona, the Darmstadt Summer Courses etc.
https://www.zoellner-roche.com
www.heatherroche.net
www.eva-zoellner.de

Peter Falconer

Dr Peter Consistently Falconer is a UK-based sound artist/composer, originally from Hartlepool. His work combines music, sound design, narration, historical research, and sonic journalism to tell parafictional stories about our own and possible alternative realities. He runs What Happened To Seaton Snook, an online archive of sounds and music documenting the history of an abandoned seaside town in County Durham, and is part of Sound & Music’s 2023 Adopt A Music Creator scheme. He is also a voiceover artist, providing narration for several New Music composers. He does not normally refer to himself in the third person.
www.peterfalconer.co.uk

The Fargions

The Fargions are a duo made up of Francesca and Giacomo Fargion. Together, they combine aspects of their own practices, drawing upon song-writing, humorous texts and electronics to create unusual, playful compositions. As described in Prxludes Magazine, they emanate a ‘childlike charm performing together.’ Their first collaboration, ‘Songs From A Warm Kitchen’ (2020) comprised of short pieces, each one written as a response to the last throughout lockdown. In 2022, they performed and released an album of short songs, ‘Happy/Sad’ and a piece for two bass guitars, ‘Au Revoir’. They also curate a performance series, ‘Good Company’.
https://thefargions.bandcamp.com/
https://francescafargion.bandcamp.com/
https://giacomofargion.bandcamp.com/

Olly Sellwood

Olly Sellwood is a composer of music for live performance that combines musical instruments with electronic technology. His works create specific set-ups that offer new and unfamiliar listening perspectives of acoustic instruments. Olly’s music has been performed by ensembles in the UK, Europe, and the USA, including the London Chamber Orchestra, GBSR Duo, Riot Ensemble, and Ensemble Fractales. Commissions include the Horniman Museum, as part of the Hear It Live! Programme (performed by Jane Chapman), and Line Upon Line’s Virtual Quartet series.
www.ollysellwood.info

Uri Agnon

Uri Agnon is a Jerusalemite composer, activist, and researcher currently based in the UK. His music examines the possible relationships between activist strategies and compositional practices, creating pieces that try to stretch the imagined boundaries of what a political piece does. Uri’s music has been commissioned and performed by Riot Ensemble, Yshani Perinpanayagam, Kathrine Tinker, Southampton University Student Orchestra, Tel Aviv museum of Art and the Israeli Music Festival. Uri is a PhD candidate at the University of Southampton.
https://www.uriagnon.com

Rose Biggin & Keir Cooper

Rose and Keir are artists living in London with a joint practice in performance and writing. Major projects include live poledance and guitar theatrework BADASS GRAMMAR feat. Penny Arcade (selected for Experimentica international live art festival; UK tour) and theatrical novel WILD TIME, published by Surface Press and supported by Arts Council England (UK tour dates 2023; Guardian’s ‘Hottest Front-Room Seats’). Keir’s new operatic project Star Quality (Arts Council England & Help Musicians) and Rose’s novel The Belladonna Invitation (Ghost Orchid Press) are both forthcoming in 2023.
https://rosebiggin-keircooper.bandcamp.com/album/wild-time

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https://amoenus.co.uk