Talking Music is an exploration of the power of the spoken word. This has been a centre of interest for lovemusic over the past two years. This programme brings together four radically different works we have commissioned by Helmut Oehring, Michelle Agnes Magalhaes, Erin Gee and Philip Venables, all taking a different approach to the idea and identity of language and how this can be incorporated into musical performance.

Helmut Oehring’s new piece is based on speeches given before the war in March 2022 by the Russian President and Foreign Minister, also drawing on the composer’s mother tongue – sign language; Philip Venables explores the power of liberated verbal expression, approaching Simon Howard’s texts from a musical perspective; American singer and composer Erin Gee explores non-verbal communication by using the voice as an instrument of open sound production, rather than a vehicle of identity; and Michelle Agnes Magalhaes’s The Word, invocation for a language that revives invites each member of lovemusic to take part in the creative process, using translations into their mother tongues to update and colour the original Brazilian Portuguese text created in collaboration with poet Micheliny Verunschk.

Talking Music has been performed at Musica Festival in Strasbourg, Festival d’Automne in Paris, Klangwerkstatt Berlin, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Cité Musicale - Arsenal in Metz.

Programme

Philip Venables [Texts by Simon Howard]
Numbers 81–85 (2021)
Numbers 91–95 (2011)
Numbers 86-90 (2010)
Numbers 96–100 (2021)

Helmut Oehring
[iɱˈfɛrno] (from: MAPPA) Contrapasso I – V (to: Wladimir Putin / Sergej Lawrow)
(2022)

Michelle Agnes Magalhaes
The Word, invocation for a language that revives (2022)

Erin Gee
Mouthpiece 37 (2022)

Emiliano Gavito flute
Adam Starkie clarinet
Linda Jankowska violin
Léa Legros-Pontal viola
Lola Malique cello
Christian Lozano guitar
Rémi Schwartz percussion
Grace Durham voice
Finbar Hosie live text projections