MUSARC Christmas Concert News from the School of Art, Architecture and Design

Annual Christmas Concert by celebrated Cass Architectural Choir / Research Project sells out.

The 2015 Musarc Christmas Concert will take place at St George's Bloomsbury on 19 December. The group  is returning to one of London’s greatest acoustic spaces for this year's sold out Christmas Event, with a new programme featuring recent work, interventions and performances by Neil Luck, Claudia Molitor and Uriel Urlow; traditional and modern choral repertoire by Benjamin Britten, Howard Skempton, Olivier Messiaen and John Tavener; an audio screening of Pavel Büchler’s 12-inch record LIVE; and a live performance of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase on Nintendo Game Boys.

Food by Helly's Kitchen.

Programme

Musarc invited Neil Luck, Claudia Molitor and Uriel Urlow to make an intervention, or bring a contribution to the evening that continues the choir’s work concerned with the social nature of music, and the ‘musical’ deeds of creative acts in other disciplines such as drawing, performance, or installation art. To find out more, read Joseph Kohlmaier’s short summary of Musarc’s work for the Cass Session 2014–15.

Benjamin Britten

Rejoice in the lamb (1943)

Hymn to the virgin (1930–34)

Pavel Buchler, LIVE (1999) [audio screening]

LIVE features the audiences from various live performances before and after each track played by a live band, from 351 albums in the collection of Pavel Buchler recorded between 1957 and 1998. The 12-inch record was launched by the artist in an installation at the Alte Grammophon-Fabrik, Hannover in October 1999, the factory where the first gramophone record was made.

Neil Luck, Bloody Sirens (2015)

On 3 October 2015 Musarc recorded four pieces written for the choir by Neil Luck between 2010 and 2015 live at Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp. Bloody Sirens, the last in the series written for the Antwerp performance, casts each individual singer in the choir as a soloist. The recordings will be released on a 12-inch album with avant-garde music label Entr’acte in spring.

Steve Reich, Piano Phase (1967), Pselodux version

Alex de Little and Joseph Kohlmaier will perform a version of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase live on Nintendo Game Boys, using a sequencer patch developed for the games console by Australian electronic musician Pselodux.

Howard Skempton, The flight of song (1996)

The flight of song was commissioned for, and first performed during a COMA Summer School in 1996 and sets to music the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The score includes an opening section with a graphic score by Trevor Skempton, which embellishes Longfellow's poems with words by Blake, Browning, Coleridge, Milton, Shelley, Shakespeare and others.

John Tavener

The lamb (1976)

Advent Antiphon (2010)

A hymn to the mother of God (1985)

Kenneth Leighton, Lully, lulla, though little tiny child (1956)

Victoria, O magnum mysterium (1572)

Olivier Messiaen, ‘Les anges’, from: La nativité du Seigneur (1935)

Joseph Kohlmaier, New work for organ and voices (2015)

Carols

Event Information

Conductor
Cathy Heller Jones

Creative concept
Joseph Kohlmaier

Stage direction
Melanie Pappenheim

Phillip Bell
Vocal coach

Organ
Peter Twitchin