Sounds: Winter Festival 2012 Playlist

Illustration by Adam Dant

With coats coming back out of the wardrobes and the evenings becoming darker, it’s clear that winter’s slowly on the way and so is our Winter Festival!
To get you in the mood for what’s in store, we’ve put together a Winter Festival 2012 Spotify playlist. We’ve included bits and pieces from all the programmes coming up in December, including Festival artists such as I Fagiolini, EXAUDI, The English Concert and Gallicantus. Just click play below to enjoy. Happy listening!

CLoSer House Party Playlist

It’s Friday. It’s our last day on the Spitalfield’s Music Blog. It’s time to have a bit of a house party before the owners get back! So we’re turning off our computers and turning our speakers up loud. Get in the mood for our next CLoSer series by listening to our Spotify playlist. If you like the music on here, we’re pretty sure you’re going to enjoy any one of our CLoSer concerts this series.

If you’ve enjoyed our CLoSer posts this week then why not check out our blog for future City of London Sinfonia updates? Have a great weekend, enjoy the playlist and see you at the next CLoSer!

Don’t forget you can drop us a tweet @CityLdnSinfonia and share your thoughts on #CLoSer too.

Spitalfields Speaks with Inspiration

Hopefully many of you will be familiar with our ongoing audio exploration project inspired and generated from the local area, Spitalfields Speaks. (If you aren’t, you can find more information here on the blog, and also on our website.)

Toynbee Hall’s Inspire group (image by Joanna Moore)

This year’s incarnation saw three dynamic individuals take us on journeys around their own lives, working with Duncan Chapman. The fourth journey asked for members of the public to contribute their own sound suggestions alongside sounds gathered by young people from Toynbee Hall’s Inspire group at our Midsummer Street Party on Saturday 23 June. At the end of the day, these sounds were gathered together and transformed into a final collective journey in a live mixing session at the Water Poet’s Underground Cinema.

You can hear the outcome below and find further details about the project (including the other three journeys) on the Spitalfields Speaks page on our website.

Phoenix Memories

You may remember reading Rus Pearson’s blog (and if not you can here!) about working with pupils at Phoenix School earlier this year. With the project over and the performance done, Programme Manager Cathy Birch went back to school to talk over their memories and experiences – a visit from which has emerged this audio blog.

In it you’ll hear comments from students, workshop leaders & audience members; all accompanied by a piece Rus put together from recordings of our sessions.

In the House… with a flute

In our final stop on the tour of last Winter’s In the House project, which saw student composers and performers from the Royal Academy of Music collaborate on brand-new site specific works, we reach 10 Folgate Street. The building has had a colourful history of inhabitants and the compact upstairs sitting room, along with the unusual nature of the In the House performance, was inspiration for Adam Dickson’s Focusing on Intimacy performed by flautist Jonathan Slade.

In the House take intimate solo performances in the ancient drawing rooms of Spitalfields residents.

Enjoy listening to the track below along with Adam’s programme notes about the work.

‘This piece for solo flute is influenced by the idea of voyeurism. As you tour around this house, you are entering and enjoying a stranger’s home. Looking around, curiosity builds and you wonder why a single object features in one room and, perhaps, not another. This unfamiliar object becomes the main focus of your attention. You become drawn to its existence. Its inanimate quality allows you to take hold of this object, to possess it. Those other surrounding objects, which were more familiar, fade into the background. What was once irrational and, perhaps, distasteful, is now beautiful and natural.’