orchestra projects in development july 2011

8/3/2019 ORCHESTRA PROJECTS in Development JULY 2011

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A N D R E W P O P P Y

T H R E E O R C H E S T R A L

P R O J E C T P R O P O S A L S

T U R B I N E S Y M P H ON Y

A site specific/durational dance for large orchestra & the general public. Turbine Symphony is a musical, visual and performance workconceived for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Its material is the traditional 19th century symphony orchestra, members of the public and thephysical and acoustic nature of the hall itself.




In normal performance the orchestra is a mass of instruments mirroring the mass of the audience. Instruments are grouped into families

by the way they produce sound: blowing, scrapping, hitting. The orchestra was built for large cultural and social spaces. The hierarchy

within the orchestra echoes the social hierarchy of many auditoriums: boxes, dress circle, stalls, and gods.

T U R B I N E S Y M P H O N Y

In Turbine Symphony the orchestra is arranged to allow people to come face to face with an instrument and to move through the sound

as it is being made. This is done by maximising the orchestra’s surface area. Instead of grouping musicians in the traditional mass, each

musician will have two different playing positions

T U R B I

NE S Y M P H O

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The seating arrangements articulate each musician’s individuality and emphasises the hall’s acoustic agency in producing a homogeneous sound.

As the audience moves though the orchestra they are able to get up close and personal. As they move away, the halls acoustic homogenises thedetails into a single image or texture


The music itself will be a continuously immersive sound unfolding over 40 minutes, allowing many different perspectives of

similar patterns and musical shapes. The process of listening is built into the visual and performance aspect of the work.


Members of the audience are embraced by members of the orchestra by being drawn through each others space. They enter into a dance

together. The Turbine Hall’s size, (or any large space without fixed seating) allows the audience and orchestra to move though each

other with ease. The acoustic phenomenon of the hall is a sonic work in itself waiting to be revealed.



H O R N B L O O D Y H O R N

Is the soloist a heroic individual or a kind of terrorist? Or are they the same thing? This work mounts an hour-long work for orchestra and

electronics as a kind of happening; where the orchestra is corroded by the sounds of nature, the animal gnawing at the body of culture.

The presence of technology and the action of the heroic individual attempts to force the stamp of individual identity and order on wilful

events.

Horn Bloody Horn is for orchestra, two solo saxophones and electronics. It is a staged concert which smashes the classical concert ritual

to pieces. The audience enter an environment, the sounds of nature, a landscape which throbs with an electronic ambient, a Lynchiansound world. The orchestral movements gradually come into focus without seeming to begin and then dissolves without the formal rituals

of the conductors entrance and exits.

A continuous hour long performance in 6 parts

1 That the this bout 2. A solution of preservative (a cadenza)

3 Fast Car Island 4 Steeplejack waltz (a cadenza)

5 Attempt at an ecstatic moment 6 Chewing the corner



T H E B E A T I N G O F W I N G S

"The finest products of the minimalist mentality - Reich's ‘Music

for 18 Musicians’, Riley’s exquisitely impure undertakings, Glenn

Branca's tumultuous The Ascension - rise above the cold

consideration of mechanics and draws the listener into the realms

of ecstasy. Cadenza is the track in question, a mesmerizing

feature for two pianos that rise and dip like a tea clipper in a high

wind. The effect is breath-taking; it’s superb enough to make me

look forward with op timism to future releases.

LYNDEN BARBER : MELODY MAKER

The Beating or Wings is a concert version of the classic 1984 album on ZTT/Island Records by Andrew Poppy.Signed as a contemporary composer and record producer to Trevor Horn and Paul Morely’s ZTT Record in 1984Andrew Poppy’s first album helped to bring a mainstream audience to minimal music in the 1980s. But rather than

pure structure this is a dirty and impure hot minimalism with one foot in Romanticism and the other in dance anddistortion. Work such as 32 Frames for Orchestra were recorded in the traditional way, Poppy conducting in a

large studio ensemble. But the finished work ended up as both a concert representation, 32 Frames forOrchestra, and a studio rework called The Impossible Net. This process was extended to Listening in whichplayed out in various forms as Kink Kink Adagio and East Fragment

The proposed contemporary presentation weaves a continues musical experience from the 4 works and their

various mutations to make an hour long continuous programme. Cadenza for pno/e.pno (15mins)

The Object is a Hungry Wolf (14mins)

3 treble voices, fl, a.sax, bari sax, clt, b.clt, 2 pno, e.organ, vibs/mrba 3vl, 2vla, 3vc Listening In (Kink Konk Adagio, East Fragment) (15mins)

for male voice, 3 trp, 3 sampling keyboards, gtr, 4 perc

32 Frames for Orchestra (The Impossible Net ) (16mins) 2 fl, 2 cl (b.cl) s.sax, a.sax, b.sax, vibs, xylo, pno, 2 trp, 2 hrn, 2 trmb, tuba, b.gtr., strings

©andrew poppy 2011 [email protected]

orchestra projects in development july 2011

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