Posted on

Voix Brutes Vol II

A recording of Songs for a Stranger: (v) in the midst has been selected for the documentary audio compilation Voix Brutes Vol II, to be released by Audition Records on 15th May 2014. The focus of the Voix Brutes compilations is the voice in live performance – its extended forms, techniques and possibilities.

More info including the list of selected artists is here.

[ar093] VOIX BRUTES | International Compilation | Vol.II listen

More info here about Songs for a Stranger.

And here’s Vol I – listen

Posted on

Theology CATS Award Nomination

Theology with Martin O’Connor has been shortlisted for a CATS 2013-14 award in the Best Music and Sound Category. Announcements will be made on 8th June 2014. See details and the full listings at CATS.

Reviews of recent performances at Behaviour Festival

**** Joyce MacMillan The Scotsman

Mary Brennan The Herald

Gareth Vile The Vile Blog

Posted on

Theology | Martin O’Connor

Composer/sound designer with Martin O’Connor for A Govan of the Mind/Theology, performed at The Pearce Institute as part of The Arches Behaviour Festival in April 2014.

Nominated for a CATS Award 2013-14 – Best Music and Sound Category

The show is in two parts: Part 1, Theology is a Glaswegian-dialect version of the Catholic Order of Mass, with composition by Oliver Searle, performed with a local male choir brought together for the production; and Part 2 A Govan of the Mind is a non-narrative epic poem celebrating the beauty of our everyday language.

Design: Rachel O’Neill, lighting design: Kate Bonney, choir leader: Matt Regan. See here for full team and more info.

Posted on

KPC Sound Mix/GI Festival of Visual Art

KPC Sound Mix is a sound artwork commissioned by Kinning Park Complex and Open Jar Collective for Broth Mix – a food-based project that will run in KPC for two weeks during Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art from 7th – 14th April 2014.

The sound artwork is a collage of field recordings, interviews, and music clips that presents a snapshot of KPC. The piece  will be available on MP3 players with headphones at KPC during the two-week period and can be downloaded here at KPC Sound Mix.

Many thanks indeed to all the contributors!

Interviews and field recordings

Ammy Jay, Amrik Kanr, Anne Davidson, Catherine Weir, Chris, Clem Sandison, Helen Kyle, Kinning Park Complex, Lindsay Keenan, Nicole’s dance class, Reuben Chesters – Locovore, Women’s cooking/gardening group

Music Clips

Death Rattle/Tricky
Erin Scrutton, Nichola Scrutton, Kirsty Ewing, Barbara Chalmers, Michelle Drumm

Luskentyre and Stevie Jones
Martin Douglas (tuba)

Sokobauno Puppet and Object Theatre
Shane Connolly (composer; reading; performance – accordian, percussion), Stevie Jones (recording), Alasdair Roberts (guitar), Georgie McGeown (flute)

Posted on

Lateral at here.now.where Marrakech

Lateral has been selected for here. now. where? – a project in which a collection of soundscapes from different ‘sensibilities, languages and formats’ will be diffused inside local taxis through the sound and radio art platform Saout Radio. The project is curated by Younes Baba-Ali and Anna Raimondo and seeks to explore a notion of ‘delocalisation in the present moment through the experience of listening in the urban space’.

Posted on

HearAfter

Ohrenhoch Gallery, Berlin

Originally produced by the Gallery of Modern Art, HearAfter was installed in the Round Room on the 2nd floor balcony from 25th October – 2nd December 2013.

HearAfter is a contemplative, immersive pre-composed sound installation inspired by the life cycle, memory, and the process of decay. HearAfter is a pun on ‘hereafter’, which means ‘in the time to follow’ and is often associated with questions about experiences after death. With this in mind, the piece HearAfter, through the present moment of a listening experience, at one level might be heard to tap into memory – a sense of something past, gone, altered or retold, but at the same time could suggest a kind of anticipation of a future that is both factually certain yet remains unknown.

While the human voice is often considered primarily as a communicator of words, I am artistically interested in its potential as sonorous, expressive and sculptural material. The sounds of breathing and an array of vocal gestures weave together with other abstract sounds into a collage of overlapping cycles and collisions.

Producer curator Katie Bruce talks, after the preview, about our first meeting and the HearAfter work at the GoMA blog

Performances

2014
Transnational Express, Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery, Christchurch, NZ
Ohrenhoch Sound Gallery, Weichselstr. 4912045 Berlin-Neukölln

2013
25 Oct – 2nd Dec, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland

Posted on

Day of the Dead Mini-Fest | Final Fling

Day of the DeadDay of the Dead Mini-Fest, co-produced by Gallery of Modern Art  and Final Fling.

Date: 2nd Nov 2013
Venue:  GoMA, Glasgow

Schedule

  • 10 am – 12 noon – a shrine workshop with Greer Pester;
  • 12 noon – 1 pm – Death Rattle performance in the portico;
  • 2 pm – 4 pm – a Death Cafe – top floor workshop;
  • 5 pm – 9 pm – Unburden – one to one with Adrian Howells, southside location;
  • All day in the portico – Charnal House by Doug Strang
  • HearAfter sound installation was previewed on 25th Oct and ran until 1st Dec 2013.

Many thanks to Katie Bruce and all at the Gallery of Modern Art.

Posted on

Musica Viva Fringe

My composition Word of Mouth will be part of a collective sound installation for the Música Viva Fringe Festival 2013. The installation runs 16th November 2013 – 5th January 2014 at the CAAA Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs, Guimarães, Portugal.

“The installation offers visitors an immersion into distinct soundscapes under the theme of “text-sound composition”, originally selected by Miso Music Portugal for the 2012 Sound Walk/Garden”. More info here

Posted on

24 Stops | Sarah Tripp

24 Stops Radio Artwork

Collaboration with  Sarah Tripp on 24 Stops radio artwork

“The work is a sequence of hourly chimes, one for each hour of the day. The chimes combine percussion and spoken word to reflect the character of a given hour and mark the passing of the day.

‘24 Stops’ was written and performed by Sarah Tripp
Composed for radio by Nichola Scrutton.
Percussion  was performed by Nichola Scrutton, Fritz Welch and Mark Vernon and recorded by Iain Donnelly.

‘24 Stops’ was developed on the inaugural Radio Writing residency at Camden Arts Centre with the support of University College London Hospital Arts.”24 stops

24 Stops was written and performed by Sarah Tripp and composed for radio by Nichola Scrutton. Photos © Sarah Tripp

24 Stops was later broadcast on Radiophrenia every hour on the hour for 24 hours  in 2016.

 

 

Posted on

One Autumn Night


One Autumn Night  is an encounter, a dialogue between two contrasting kinds of musical material: one is human and lyrical, using voice sounds and simple sung melodic fragments, the other is clearly digital and artificial but is subtly inflected with speech-like gestures.  The drama, which unfolds in two waves, is a negotiation that nods to the complexities of striving for a thoughtful interaction between humanity, technology and nature.

Events include: 2013 Acoustic Frontiers, Radio, Ottawa, Canada, 2012 RadiaLx, Radio Art Festival / 88.4 FM, Lisbon, Portugal, Basic.fm, broadcast by Pixel.Palace, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, WEALR, 2012 New Music Festival , Cal State Fulerton, US. 2011 Lights Out Listening Group, The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow

Posted on

Lifeguard | Adrian Howells

Lifeguard   was a site-specific performance created and performed by Adrian Howells, in collaboration with Mike Brookes, Minty Donald, Rob Drummond, Ira Mandela Siobhan, Jane Mason, Nick Millar and Nichola Scrutton. Produced by National Theatre of Scotland and The Arches in association with Govanhill Baths Community Trust

Performances: 5th – 27th October 2012, Govanhill Baths, Calder Street, Glasgow.

Exploring the emotional and psychological effects of water, from its therapeutic qualities to our overwhelming fear of it, lifeguard re-evaluates the place of swimming in our lives as a health-promoting and life-saving activity.

 

 

Posted on

Word of Mouth

Word of Mouth is fixed medium work (4′) that uses the human voice as the only sound source. Structurally the piece uses gestural phonemes to project a range of non-linguistic vocal sounds on the breath, which are extended and woven together to evoke metaphorical and spatial associations.

Selected Performances

CAAA Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs, Portugal (Fringe Música Viva 2013)
Radio 6: Cafe Sonore, Netherlands (Musica Viva Sound Garden)
France Musique Radio: ‘Electrain de Nuit’, Christian Zanesi (Musica Viva Sound Garden)
Música Viva Festival Sound Garden, Lisbon, Portugal (2012)
RadiaLx, Radio Art Festival / 88.4 FM, Lisbon, Portugal
Lights Out Listening Event, Glasgow

Posted on

Code Butterfly | Curious Seed

Curious Seed\'s Code ButterflyJoint composer with Erin Scrutton for Code Butterfly, a site-specific performance created by Curious Seed Dance Company for the Leith Festival, Edinburgh, (involving 5 professional performers, (dancers/ aerial artists, singer) and 15 young women from the Leith area. Performances: Out Of The Blue, old Drill Hall. Edinburgh.

Directed by Christine Devaney
Designed by Karen Tennant
Production Manager: John Riddell
with Jennifer Patterson, Skye Reynolds, Kaela Rowan

Posted on

Fretwork

Fretwork (2013) draws its compositional language from the intimate physical gestures associated with playing the guitar – the act of plucking becomes transformed metaphorically into a range of percussive attacks, pops and clicks. While the piece unfolds as an abstract sound collage, fragments of recognisable guitar sounds emerge and recede amidst more decorative falsely extended vibrations and resonances. Available at Bandcamp

Selected Performances

Acoustic Frontiers, CKCU 93.1, Canada
Last Friday Listening Room UCSD, Enter the Octagon, UC San Diego, US
Sweet Thunder Festival of EA Music Listening Room, San Francisco
Radio Circulo FM100.4  Madrid
NoiseFloor Festival, Stafford, UK
Featured on Thrmnphone Netlabel Album, Spain
New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2013, US
Undae Project, Madrid, Spain
Lights Out Listening, The Old Hairdresser’s, Glasgow

Posted on

Lateral

Nichola Scrutton Lateral

Originally commissioned and created for High-Slack-Low-Slack-High – a suite of audio works relating to the Clyde River curated by Minty Donald for GI Festival of Visual Art – Lateral was made as a live, site-specific installation set in Dixon Street, Glasgow. Subsequent to that event I created a studio version of the work.

Background info

Dixon Street is a main thoroughfare that runs from the river directly up through the city’s main shopping artery. The aims of the work were to highlight a sense of disconnection from the river and to create multiple cross currents by merging the river sounds of Lateral and the sounds of the city environment. The work was projected over large horn speakers mounted in the street between two buildings, creating a view down to the river. Six vocalists added a further layer of human presence with their resonant tones both emerging out of and being subsumed by the undulating sound density of the site.

The starting point for the work was the idea of a ‘Lateral System’ – a system of navigational aids comprising shapes, colours and numbers, used to guide boats up river channels into ports and docks. However, the multiple resonances of the word ‘lateral’ took on greater significance in the work through the associations and digressions that emerge with the notion of a flowing river. Place names, numerical information from tidal charts and signal/radio sounds serve as signposts along the way, rooting the work in a real world place. But the perpetual flow of water and the periodic rhythms of a vocal landscape contribute to a sense of multiple spatial and historical resonances, and to ideas of flowing with and against the current.

Many thanks indeed to Claire Docherty, Kirstie Edgar, Jessica King, Morag Stark and Hanna Tuulikki for their live vocal contributions both on site at Dixon Street and at the closing event in the Clydeport Authority Headquarters.

Performances/events include…

2016
‘Inter-#6’ (Glasgow)
Curated radio show ‘Glasgow Soundscapes’ WebSynRadio (France)
2015
Curated listening hour at Brooklyn Acoustic Ecology Festival (US)
LOLG project Shona Island (Scotland)
2014
(25 Feb – 2 March)
Here. now. where? Saout Radio, 5th Marrakech Biennale
(12 – 18 January)
Framework Radio broadcasts
12th london, uk ::: resonance 104.4fm
13th amsterdam, nl ::: concertzender
13th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
14th south devon, uk ::: soundartradio 102.5fm
14th maribor, si ::: radio marš 95.9fm
15th lisbon, pt ::: radio zero
15th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
16th coimbra, pt ::: rádio universidade de coimbra 107.9fm
16th lisbon, pt ::: radio zero
17th ljubljana, si ::: radio študent 89.3fm
17th brussels, be ::: radio campus 92.1fm
17th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
18th london, uk ::: resonance 104.4fm
18th new york state, us ::: wgxc 90.7fm
18th brasilía, br ::: rádio paisagem
2012
Foldover, WOBC 91.5 fm, Ohio
Time/Zones, Akademie der Kunst, Berlin
AIR/EAR Installation, Radio-System, Argentine

High-Slack-Low-Slack-High, GI Festival, Dixon Street, Glasgow
High-Slack-Low-Slack-High, GI Festival, Clydeport HQ, Glasgow

 

Posted on

Lateral at High-Slack-Low-Slack-High

My work Lateral was commissioned for High-Slack-Low-Slack-High curated by Minty Donald for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art in April 2012. For more information and performance times visit Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and also the Facebook page High-Slack-Low-Slack-High.

About High-Slack-Low-Slack-High

Minty Donald introducing high-slack-low-slack-high

Commissioned Artists: John Cavanagh, Minty Donald/Nick Miller, Douglas Morland, Nichola Scrutton, Hanna Tuulikki

A group of artists with shared, but diverse, interests in sound, space and place – have created audio works to be performed in public spaces close to or on the River Clyde over five days during the Festival (Monday 23rd – Friday 27th April 2012). Each performance is timed to coincide with high tide. In these citywide performances, the natural cadences and flux of the river, once significant in the tempo of Glasgow life, will again leak into the urban fabric.

On Saturday 28th April, all five works will be performed in the Trust Hall of Clydeport Authority Headquarters, an opulent, circular, Edwardian boardroom overlooking the Clyde.  Here, the sonic interpretations of the river’s tidal cycle will permeate a building that stands as symbol of Glasgow’s maritime heritage.

High-Slack-Low-Slack-High reflects on the functional and symbolic roles played by urban rivers in contemporary cities – and in particular, the role of the River Clyde in Glasgow today. It’s common belief that, following the decline of shipbuilding and other maritime industries, Glasgow turned its back on the River. Now, while the riverbanks are undergoing significant regeneration, the water itself remains a relatively dead space. Through interweaving the natural cadences of the tide with contemporary urban rhythms, High-Slack-Low-Slack-High is an invitation to re-imagine the relationship between river and city  – beyond the legacy of Glasgow’s industrial and manufacturing past.’

Perpetually rising and falling yet constrained within manmade embankments, detached from the city that once saw it as symbolic of its industrial prowess, the tidal river is taken as an invitation to reflect on ideas of change and continuity, nature and culture, in relation to the contemporary, post-industrial city.
(press written by Minty Donald)

 

 

Performances
23 April  – Hanna Tuulikki, Bell’s Bridge, G51 – 3.15pm
24 April – John Cavanagh – Riverside Museum, G3 8RS – 3.45pm
25 April – Nichola Scrutton – Dixon Street, G1 4AL – 4.05pm
26 April – Douglas Morland – Clyde north waterfront between Victoria and Glasgow Bridges, G5 – 4.45pm
27 April – Minty Donald/Nick Millar – citywide – 5.25pm (and throughout the week)
28 April – 5pm and 7.30pm – Clydeport Authority Headquarters