A new solo live work City Song has been selected for performance at the forthcoming Sound Kitchen as part of Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space in June 2015. See the Event page here for more info and links.
City Song explores a shifting dynamic of power, connectedness and fragmentation, and emerged during development time that was supported by a Creative Scotland Artists’ Bursary Award.
I am pleased to say that my fixed medium work Post Industrial Broadcast #1 will feature in the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance ‘Modern Soundscapes’ concert on March 7th 2015.
I composed a soundscape for Teine Èiginn / Need Fire – an installation created by Dougie Strang for the Hidden Door Festival 2015.
The teine èiginn, or need fire, was lit during a ritual enacted in times of illness, amongst people and/or livestock. Records show that the ritual was still in use in remote communities in the Scottish Highlands up until the end of the nineteenth century.
Watch a short film version …
In addition to my own voice on the soundtrack, many thanks to Dougie Strang and Rona MacDonald for singing a song each.
Post-Industrial Broadcast #1 has been selected for Framework Radio’s seasonal CD release (winter 2014) to be issued on 21st December 2014 (the solstice!). Meanwhile it is available for listening through Framework and on various other broadcasts. The CD was first aired on Resonance fm on Sunday 7th Dec 2014. More info, with an option to purchase through donation, at Framework Radio. Here’s the track listing and details Issue #7. Well worth a listen – it’s a lovely thing…Many thanks to Patrick Tubin McGinley
I am delighted that Word of Mouth has been selected for Issue 3 of Huellkurven Magazine. Huellkurven is an online sound poetry magazine and a series of events dedicated to sound poetry, noise poetry, sound-text…
Delighted to be awarded a Creative Scotland Artist Bursary to undertake some preliminary research and development for new work initially inspired by Elias Canetti’s book Crowds and Power.
Vocal performance with Away with the Birds, Hanna Tuulikki’s site-specific work for 9/10 voices that explores mimesis of birds in Gaelic song. More info at Hanna’s Away with the Birds on Facebook and Tumblr page.
2014
August: Isle of Canna
2013
March: Tramway, Glasgow
June: Tectonics Festival, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow
My vocal composition HearAfter has been selected to be part of an exhibition at The Auricle Sound Art Gallery in Christchurch, New Zealand. The exhibition, and installation Transnational Express will run from 3rd – 26th July 2014.
Post-Industrial Broadcast #1 is part of The Stranger that is next to me – which is presenting a collection of audio works from practitioners around the world concerned with and focused on The Stranger at Errant Bodies/Project Space in Berlin. Organized by Brandon LaBelle in collaboration with Osso, Lisbon.
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
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.
**** Joyce MacMillan The Scotsman
Mary Brennan The Herald
Gareth Vile The Vile Blog
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.
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)
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’.
Lateral has been selected for the first Framework radio show of 2014. which will have a series of broadcasts during the week 12th – 18th Jan 2014 starting with Resonance fm on Sunday 12th. Broadcast details are here.
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
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
I’m delighted that my HearAfter sound piece will be installed for a month at the ohrenhoch gallery in Berlin in early January as part of their Sunday Series.
Day of the Dead Mini-Fest, co-produced by Gallery of Modern Art and Final Fling.
Date: 2nd Nov 2013
Venue: GoMA, Glasgow
Many thanks to Katie Bruce and all at the Gallery of Modern Art.
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
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 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.
Post-Industrial Broadcast #1 has been selected for the Nuite Blanche event at Festival Futura this coming August.
The event is taking place at Espace Soubeyran, Crest, Drôme, France. The festival is chocka with concerts from 22nd – 24th August and Nuite Blanche runs over from 24th – 25th.
Some exciting news arrived – I won the IAWM Pauline Oliveros Prize for electroacoustic media for my studio composition Post-Industrial Broadcast #1.
The full winner’s list and other info will be available at the IAWM website.
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
Fretwork has been selected for the first album Undae! Electroacoustic I/II from the Undae! concert series in Autumn 2012 in Madrid. The album is produced by the netlabel Thrmnphone.
I’m looking forward to the Scottish Music Centre’s Composition Marathon 2013. The event takes place over the weekend of 23th March, with final performances at The Arches from 3 – 6 pm on Sunday 4th March. Tickets are available from The Arches and more info here.
Adrian Howell’s Lifeguard at Govanhill Baths.
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.
My piece Word of Mouth has been selected for a Musica Viva Festival Sound Walk/Sound Garden, an immersive soundscape installation with a theme of “sound-text composition” at the Goethe-Institut in Lisbon, Portugal, More info at MisoMusic Portugal
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.
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
