Meet Jason Singh from Open Souls

Jason Singh

This guy never slows down. Constantly jet-setting around the globe from Paris to India and Australia to Scotland, Jason performs with many musicians and artists from across the world.  He has been Sound Art Resident at the V&A, collaborated with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Aldeburgh Music, and he is the UK national advocate for Sing Up. Yet despite this hectic schedule, he still finds the time to perform to the children who we reach through our Learning & Participation programme.

This morning we had the final sharing of music and poems with the kids from St Anne’s Primary School in Tower Hamlets. Jason and fellow member of Open Souls Ranjana Ghatak performed a short set of beatboxing and Indian classical singing to which the students jumped around and waved their arms to!

Open Souls have also released a free download on Soundcloud which is a must-listen; Ranjana’s sultry vocals blend perfectly with Jason’s vocal percussion and Seb’s free-flowing rhythms.

Open Souls will be performing at Bishopsgate Institute on Friday 7 June from 8.00pm-10.00pm. Tickets are £5-16 and are available on our website.

If you can’t wait until then, check out this stunning video of him performing with Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré in the grand setting of Le Trianon, a spectacular concert hall in France.

Bobby Krlic aka The Haxan Cloak Releases New Album

Excavation, the new album by Bobby Krlic aka The Haxan Cloak, has been released on Tri Angle Records.

The Haxan Cloak: Excavation. Released April 2013 by Tri Angle Records.

The album has already received some great reviews, including Pitchfork‘s Best New Music recommendation, a 10/10 rating from Exclaim and Album of the Week in Dummy Magazine. Thisisfakediy summed up their listening experience by describing the LP as something to make you ‘question your sanity and the world around you’, Clash thinks it’s ‘spinetinglingly brilliant’, whilst Drowned in Sound calls it a ‘digital cauldron to concoct electronica which is the antithesis to the essence of rave’.

The Haxan Cloak will perform a unique interpretation of Dowland’s Lachrimae alongside some tracks from the new album on Saturday 8 June in an evening featuring Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud and Computer Junk Orchestra.

Check out Consumed, the first track on the album, and delve into the beginning of this all-encompassing yet strangely life-affirming exploration of the afterlife.

Not for the faint-hearted.

Composer and Clarinettist Mark Simpson signed to Boosey & Hawkes

You might recognise his name from BBC Young Musician or BBC Proms Young Composer competitions when he won both titles in 2006, aged 17… You might have heard that he was the recipient of the Sky Arts Futures Fund worth £30 000… You might have heard about the premiere of his piece A mirror-fragment…by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican which received a 5* review in The Guardian… Put simply, in the last few years Mark Simpson has managed to forge an impressive reputation for himself as one of the most talented upcoming musicians out there.

His most recent achievement is a major signing to Boosey & Hawkes for which we want to wish him a huge congratulations!

Mark celebrating with the B&H promotion team.

Mark said about the publishing agreement,

It is a huge honour and an absolute privilege to be signing with Boosey & Hawkes. I grew up studying the scores of the great composers in the B&H catalogue and to now be included alongside some of my compositional heroes is a dream come true.

Having appeared as a soloist for some of the UK’s most reputed orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic, Mark will be performing an intimate solo recital at Hoxton Hall on Tuesday 11 June. Tickets are £15 (£11.25 jobseekers/under 26s, £5 students) and can be booked on our website.

Check out this video of Mark performing his elegant piece Echoes and Embers for BBC Radio 3.

A contemporary take on a 600 year old musical masterpiece

Interested in a sneak peek of a premiere happening this summer?

Associate Artist Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud shares with us his never-been-heard-before interpretation of John Dowland’s Lachrimae. Listen to this exclusive clip which will be performed in full with a commissioned film by Chris Turner.

Check out one of Scanner’s previous collaborations with Chris, G(O)OD+(D)EVIL, a stunningly eerie visualisation of the tensions within human identity which reached over 80 000 people last year.

The premiere will take place on Saturday 8 June at Bishopsgate Institute. Alongside, The Haxan Cloak and Computer Junk Orchestra will also perform inventive interpretations of Lachrimae in their own styles.

Tickets are £16 (£12 jobseekers/ under 26s, £5 students) and can be booked via our website.

Meet the Johnsons

Two Robert Johnsons, two ensembles, two (usually separate!) genres, one concert. On Monday 10 June, Theatre of the Ayre and the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain will perform a virtuosic concert of music spanning five centuries from the 17th century to the modern day in this groundbreaking collaboration between early music and the delta blues.

But who are these Robert Johnsons and why feature works by both in one event?

One of these Robert Johnson’s (c.1583-c.1634) was an Elizabethan musician, a composer and lutenist. He wrote music for several plays including a few by Shakespeare, and was considered to be one of England’s leading lutenists of the time.  One of his best-known compositions is Full Fathom Five which was written for The Tempest (c. 1611). It’s a great example of his typically declamatory ayres designed to make use of the instrument’s full range.

Robert Johnson (1911–1938) was also an American blues guitarist and singer. Unfortunately he didn’t achieve much recognition during his life time but in 1961, he became a household name when his recordings were reissued. Nowadays Robert Johnson is considered to be one of the most influential musicians in blues music. Crossroad Blues is thought by many to hold high historical significance, and even entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

Both of these Robert Johnsons have a significant musical presence, but why present such an unlikely combination of their works in the same concert? Through a series of chance encounters, The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and Theatre of the Ayre have unearthed some unexpected similarities between the two which they will explore in The Devil at the Crossroads on Monday 10 June. Expect a unique and fun-filled event jam-packed with humour and curious surprises!