Philip Venables

A composer of ferocious dramatic instincts
— Alex Ross

Tag: Illusions

  • Illusions at Into The Open Festival, Berlin.

    Illusions at Into The Open Festival, Berlin.

    The International Ensemble Modern Academy are reprising their wonderful performance of Illusions at the Into The Open Festival in Berlin. They performed the piece for the first time at Time Of Music Festival in Viitasaari, Finland, in July 2022. On 25th January 2024 they bring it to the Kühlhaus Berlin to Into The Open, under this year’s theme: Visions. The performance will also feature works by Alvin Lucier and Mauricio Kagel, and will be conducted by Raimonda Skabeikaité with sound design by Moritz Fischer.

    More information and tickets here.

  • ‘Answer Machine Tape, 1987’ premiere, Time of Music

    ‘Answer Machine Tape, 1987’ premiere, Time of Music

    Answer Machine Tape, 1987 — a new work for piano and multimedia — has its first performance on 8th July 2022 at Time of Music Festival (Musiikin Aika) in Viitasaari, Finland, given by Zubin Kanga. The festival is programming a small feature on my work, including performances of Illusions and My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations.

    The piece is made in collaboration with Zubin and programmer Simon Hendry, based on a concept developed in collaboration with Ted Huffman. It focuses on New York visual artist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death Peter Hujar, his close friend and fellow artist, from AIDS-related illness in 1987. The focal point of the work is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers. Using new sensor technology from the Augmented Instruments Lab, the piano is turned into a huge typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. The result is, I hope, a poignant and intimate exploration of that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.

    Answer Machine Tape, 1987 was commissioned by Zubin Kanga with the support of a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London, in conjunction with Time of Music, November Music, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Festival d’Automne à Paris. I also received support for research, workshops and software development from the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media within the framework of Neustart Kultur.

    Further performances of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 will be happening at the co-commissioning festivals later in 2022.

  • Conducting debut with London Sinfonietta in the New Music Biennial

    Conducting debut with London Sinfonietta in the New Music Biennial

    Photo above: Jamie Gray / New Music Biennial.

    I picked up a baton again this weekend for the first time in 15 years. Having spent a lot of time as a student conducting my own ensembles or youth orchestras around West London, it wasn’t something I continued to pursue whilst I was focussed on composition. It was a joy to come back to conducting in these performances of Illusions with the London Sinfonietta for the PRS Foundation and Southbank Centre’s New Music Biennial, also part of the Coventry City of Culture.

    Illusions (my video+ensemble piece with David Hoyle) was selected as part of the celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the New Music Biennial, among ten pieces from previous years, forming a retrospective alongside the ten new pieces this year. I’m delighted about this selection, and also that the Sinfonietta generously allowed me to onto the podium. We did performances on 22nd April at the HMV Coventry Empire and on 3rd July at London’s Southbank Centre, including a lovely interview on stage with Gillian Moore. Illusions was also broadcast again on BBC Radio 3 and featured in NMC’s re-release bundle, as part of the NMB celebrations.

    The photos on this post can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credits.

    Photos below: Garry Jones / New Music Biennial.

  • Illusions at New Music Biennial 2022

    Illusions at New Music Biennial 2022

    Illusions — my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle — will feature in this year’s New Music Biennial retrospective at Coventry City of Culture and London’s Southbank Centre. This year’s Biennial not only features ten new works as usual, but also celebrates its first ten years with performances of ten works selected from previous Biennials.

    The performances will be given by the London Sinfonietta, for whom Illusions was written, conducted by me. They will take place on Friday 22nd April at 8pm in Coventry as part of the City of Culture celebrations and during the Biennial Weekend 1st to 3rd July at the Southbank Centre in London. The Biennial is an initiative from and supported by the PRS Foundation in partnership with Coventry City of Culture, Southbank Centre, BBC Radio 3 and NMC Recordings.

    More information about the Biennial is here.

  • Portrait concerts at Musica Festival and Festival d’Automne announced

    Portrait concerts at Musica Festival and Festival d’Automne announced

    Musica Festival in Strasbourg has just announced its 2021 programme, and I’m delighted to say there will be a portrait concert of my work in the festival on 1st October. The concert will be performed by Lovemusic, with guest artists Grace Durham (mezzo-soprano), Andreas Borregaard (accordion) and Romain Pageard as the host of the evening. The show is called Talking Music, and will feature Klaviertrio im Geiste, Illusions, My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations and Numbers 91—95 alongside the world premiere of two new settings of Simon Howard’s Numbers: Numbers 81—85 and Numbers 96—100. These new pieces have been commissioned by Musica Festival, Festival d’Automne in Paris, and Lovemusic. Oscar Lozano Pérez will be making video projections and mise-en-espace for the show. Talking Music will be repeated in Paris on 26th October in Theatre de la Ville / Espace Cardin, as part of a larger feature on my work in the Festival d’Automne.

    More information about the concert in Strasbourg is here.

    More information about the concert in Paris is here.

  • Featured composer at PLUG Festival

    Featured composer at PLUG Festival

    From 6th—10th May, I will be the featured composer at the PLUG Festival, a contemporary music festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. The PLUG Festival predominantly features the work of student composers from the conservatoire in an packed schedule of chamber concerts. I will be giving some consultation lessons to young composers there, and presenting a seminar on my work. On the final night of the festival, the Glasgow New Music Expedition will perform Illusions alongside some other new works by both students and established composers, all conducted by Richard Baker.

  • Riot Ensemble plays Illusions and Numbers 91–95

    Riot Ensemble plays Illusions and Numbers 91–95

    The Riot Ensemble is performing two pieces of mine, Illusions and Numbers 91–95, at Kings Place on Monday 17th September as part of the new ‘Luminate’ series.  It’s a semi-portrait concerto, with other composers Sarah Nemtsov, Lee Hyla and Helga Arias Parra also featured.  I’m really excited that the spoken part in Numbers 91–95 will be done by singer Sarah Dacey, from Juice Ensemble, whom I’ve known for a long while but not properly had the chance to work with.  I’ll be at the concert, and giving a short, free, pre-concert interview with Tim Rutherford-Johnson.

    Tickets are available here.

  • Below The Belt

    Below The Belt

    My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via NMC here. The disc will be launched on 16th March 2018.  The works on the disc are:

    The Revenge of Miguel Cotto,
    Klaviertrio im Geiste,
    Numbers 76–80,
    Numbers 91-95,
    Metamorphoses after Britten,
    Illusions.

    The disc features David Hoyle, the London Sinfonietta, Phoenix Piano Trio, Ligeti Quartet, Leigh Melrose, Dario Dugandzic, Nick Blackburn, Melinda Maxwell, Natalie Raybould, Lewis Bretherton, George Chambers and Ashley Mercer, conducted by Richard Baker.

  • Illusions at Hull City of Culture and Royal Festival Hall

    Illusions at Hull City of Culture and Royal Festival Hall

    In conversation with Sara Mohr-Pietsch at the Royal Festival Hall.

    Illusions, my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, was premiered in its new extended version at Hull 2017 City of Culture on 2nd July as part of the PRS Foundation New Music Biennial.  The following week it was performed at the Southbank Centre – my Royal Festival Hall debut!  The audience response was wonderful, and the press too.  The Guardian said:

    Philip Venables’ collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, however, is astonishingly powerful, with Hoyle’s garishly made-up face delivering a rant about everything from elections and gender to sodomy and revolution, precisely edited to Venables’ score with its echoes of expressionist music theatre and Weimar cabaret. Scabrous, fierce, and sometimes very funny, it’s a perfect fusion of music and image.

    The BBC covered the events, and the piece was broadcast along with an interview with me and Sara Mohr-Pietsch on 15th July on Hear and Now (albeit without the video component, of course).  The broadcast can be heard here on iPlayer – my segment is from 1h42 onwards.

    Illusions was recorded on 10th July in the studio for NMC , for my forthcoming album next year.  Huge thanks to the London Sinfonietta, Richard Baker and Sound Intermedia for wonderful performances, and to the PRSF for their support.

    Performance of Illusions at the Royal Festival Hall

     

  • New Music Biennial 2017

    New Music Biennial 2017

    New Music Biennial 2017Illusions, my collaboration with David Hoyle and the London Sinfonietta, has been selected for the New Music Biennial in 2017.   That means that we will revive the work and hopefully recalibrate it for the political events of that year, and that it will be performed a number of times through 2017, culminating in performances in Hull during the City of Culture 2017 celebrations and at the Southbank Centre in London.   Big thanks to the London Sinfonietta for nominating the piece!

  • Illusions – collaboration with David Hoyle

    Illusions – collaboration with David Hoyle

    Illusions in performance
    Illusions in performance at QEH

    I’m delighted to have been able to contribute to the London Sinfonietta‘s Notes to the New Government on Saturday at the Southbank Centre.  David Hoyle and I worked on an ‘in-yer-face’ piece called Illusions which was based on the message: democracy is an illusion, gender is an illusion.  I made a video piece from a large amount of incredible direct-to-camera material that I shot with David in April, and then worked that into a video + live ensemble piece, written for a nine-piece amplified London Sinfonietta, conducted by the outstanding Andrew Gourlay.   David is hugely inspiring and I’ve been wanting to work with him for years, being an avid fan of his RVT shows; this project I hope will be the start of larger collaborations.

    Anyway, it went down a storm with the audience and the critics.  The best quote is probably this one, from The Guardian:

    “Philip Venables’s Illusions, a collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, batters at the limits of form, emotion and sexuality in a ferocious assertion of LGBT individualism in the face of establishment nihilism and uncertainty – a brilliant, extreme work that grips like a vice and won’t let go, since people is more open now with the sexual libido, showing how they feel sexually and using services like Zoom Escorts to please themselves when they need to.”

    You can read the full reviews here: Guardian and Telegraph.