Alexander's Annexe and John Matthias plus guests

Date: Wednesday, 10 February 2010 | 7:30pm - 10:30pm

Location: Performance Space

Ticket Prices: £5

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An eclectic night of new music: Alexander’s Annexe, featuring Mira Calix, David Sheppard and Sarah Nicolls use the piano as source material for their electro-acoustic soundscapes. John Matthias, co-creator of The Fragmented Orchestra, has been remixed by the likes of Thom Yorke and Jem Finer.

ALEXANDER'S ANNEXE

The point of reference for the experimental performance ensemble, Alexander's Annexe, is an instrument rich in tradition: internationally renowned pianist Sarah Nicolls plays the grand piano whilst electronica artist Mira Calix and composer/sound designer David Sheppard take up and process her music through electronic instruments.

Jointly improvising, the ensemble works through delicate, electronic deconstructions of piano music with results ranging from fragile scratchings and squeakings to heavy and dark drones. familiar thought the piano may be, the different backgrounds of these three musicians together give rise to a sound spectrum that is startlingly novel. Alexander's Annexe have performed at international festivals including FUSE at Leeds, Ravello and MIT Rome festivals in Italy, Club Transmediale in Berlin, Electron in Geneva and Sonar 07 Barcelona. They are responsible for Warp record's first contemporary classic release with their debut 'Push Door To Exit' (2006).

John Matthias 

John Matthias is an award winning musician and composer. In 2008, he won the PRS Foundation New Music Award (the musical equivalent of ‘The Turner Prize’) for the development of a huge sonic installation entitled The Fragmented Orchestra (with Jane Grant and Nick Ryan), which also won an award at the Prix Ars Electronica 2009.

He has released three albums, Smalltown, Shining (2001) on the Accidental label, Stories from the Watercooler (2008) on the Ninja Tune/ Counter label and Cortical Songs (2008) (with Nick Ryan), a work for string orchestra and solo violin which includes remixes by Thom Yorke, Simon Tong, Jem Finer and many others, on Gabriel Prokofiev’s Nonclassical record label.

He has worked with many recording artists including Radiohead (The Bends), Matthew Herbert and Coldcut and performed extensively including at the Wordless Music Series in New York, The Pompidou Centre in Paris and at the Union Chapel in London. He has worked on the scores of several film projects including The Hamburg Cell (Dir. Antonia Bird), Three Degrees Colder (Dir. FlorianHoffmeister) and recently co-scored the straight 8 film ‘Out of Time’ (Dir. Duncan Wellaway) which was a winner at the Cannes InternationalFilm Festival 2009.

He is the deputy director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at the University of Plymouth, UK and is currently developing new instruments and compositional processes relating to sonic events and spiking neurons. These initiatives include orchestral composition, distributed systems and the development of a new Neuronal Music Technology.

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