ANDREW POPPY THREE ORCHESTRAL PROJECT PROPOSALS

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

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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.

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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 orchestras surface area. Instead of grouping musicians in the traditional mass, each musician will have two different playing positions

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N
Y

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The seating arrangements articulate each musicians individuality and emphasises the halls 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 the details into a single image or texture

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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.

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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 Halls 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.

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HORN

BLOODY HORN

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 Lynchian sound 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

THE BEATING OF

WINGS

"The finest products of the minimalist mentality - Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, Rileys 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; its superb enough to make me look forward with optimism 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 Morelys ZTT Record in 1984 Andrew Poppys 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 and distortion. 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 for Orchestra, and a studio rework called The Impossible Net. This process was extended to Listening in which played 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

andrewpoppy@orpheusmail.co.uk