Composition PhD students, July 2020
The original plan was a workshop and performances for trio of violin, clarinet and piano. We had met all three composers in November 2019 workshopping their ideas for these pieces, which helped greatly. After ’lock-down’, each composer had an individual online session with each musician to discuss aspects of their piece. A plan was then made as to the best way to record the pieces, be it with click track, overlaying tracks or improvising with given material.
Ioannis Panagiotou: PLAY ME
Ioannis’ piece had a very strong visual element to consider. We each made our own films following Ioannis’ instructions. The notated sections were individually recorded using a click track and mixed together by our own sound engineer Mark Knoop.
It was one of the most fun, creative and professional collaborations I’ve ever done.
— Ioannis Panagiotou
Aggelos Mastrantonis: Shoggoth
Aggelos provided us with a click track and we began by recording the piano part first. Clarinet and violin parts were then recorded individually listening to both the click track and the piano part in order to ensure parity of pitch and accommodating a musical flexibility.
Jack Walker: Assembly Lines
Jack’s work was a prompt-based improvisation game. Over the course of several online session we discussed material and techniques, and then recorded sections of improvisation whilst listening to a prompt track provided by Jack. These were then edited into the final piece.