I’m pleased to share footage of the premiere of Jenni Hogan’s new work ‘Gregor’ which I gave at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh in November 2023. It’s an intense and demanding piece, drawing on themes of psychosis, mental health and existentialism, and I’m happy with the interpretation I landed on.
Jenni Hogan - Gregor
Performed by Helen Whitaker
I was pleased to contribute once again to the Sussex Counselling and Psychotherapy magazine (Spring 2021 edition). Interesting to read discussions around music coming from those in other fields. A good read, although severely lacking in diversity.
It has been wonderful to begin sharing ideas and making music in the flesh again. I headed to Norfolk to work on a couple of very different new pieces by composer/flautist Jenni Hogan. The below picture comes from an exploration of multiphonics while battling the elements, and the other work sees me perform a complex marching band routine while channelling Lizzo. Excited to premiere these works online/IRL before too long!
Theatre
- Jenni Hogan
In 2018 I commissioned composer Helgi Ingvarsson to create some new variations to add to a performance I was giving of the celebrated work ‘Les Folies D’Espagne’ by Marin Marais. Over the last couple of years we have continued adding to and developing these new variations. In this video I perform 3 of these at Háteigskirkja in Reykjavík, Iceland. The middle movement has since been expanded into a stand-alone work for flute and electronics and integrated into the Helgi’s song-cycle ‘Glacier’s Elegy’.
Helgi and I were really happy to be able to bring our work ‘Glacier’s Elegy’ to the Eldur festival in Hvammstangi, North Iceland in July 2020. The work sets Icelandic poetry about nature, and specifically the glaciers in Iceland to a backdrop of flute and electronics. The work allows for improvisation throughout, but follows a narrative journey through these evocative words. Here is a short section!
Well, a lot has happened and changed over the last few months! Sadly a lot of live performances have been cancelled, but I’ve managed to stay in touch with many of my ensembles and will keep planning for the future! In the meantime I decided to make a playlist featuring some of the tracks I’ve recorded on over the years. Hope you enjoy having a listen to the various ways I’ve snuck the flute into pop tunes over the last 10 years!
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At the turn of October/November myself and Helgi Rafn Ingvarsson will premiere his operatic monodrama Harmljóð Snæfellsjökuls / Glacier’s Elegy at the Reykjavik Opera Days.
Glacier's Elegy is an unstaged operatic monodrama for voice, laptop and flute. Glacier's Elegy is a farewell, the final farewell. The Glacier steps forward and addresses humankind for the last time and uses references from several works of Icelandic literature to communicate. The references are from works by romantic poet Steingrímur Thorsteinsson, novelist Halldór Kiljan Laxness, modernist poet Steinn Steinarr, and from Bárðar Saga Snæfellsáss.
More here: https://operudagar.is/en/ljodadagar-2019/vidburdir/harmlj%C3%B3%C3%B0-sn%C3%A6fellsj%C3%B6kuls/
On the 12th and 13th October 2019 ALDAorchestra are heading to the beautiful island of Møn in Denmark! We’ll be performing at the World Literature Festival where the guest of honour is Icelandic poet Gerður Kristný. We will be performing a musical work which incorporates her epic poem Drápa. We were invited to form this collaboration by Poet in the City who hosted the premiere of this work at Wilton’s Music Hall in London on 9th September.
The work tells an abstract version of the story of a Gréta Birgisdóttir who was murdered by her husband in Reykjavík in 1988. The narrater of the story here is the devil, and the story aims to tell Gréta’s story rather than that of her killer. Gerður calls the work a tribute to all women murdered by violent men.