A season's magical 15th year
10:07am Thursday 28th August 2008
Oxford Contemporary Music marks its 15th year of breaking boundaries with a Magic Hour, writes PAUL MEDLEY
Oxford Contemporary Music marks its 15th anniversary this autumn with a series of concerts, in particular its Magic Hour event at the Oxford University Botanic Garden.
OCM started life in 1993 as the Oxford Contemporary Music Festival. The first concerts included performances by the Chagall Trio and the now world-famous Thomas Adès with the Composers' Ensemble. A couple of years later the musical palette was widened to include renowned improviser Keith Tippett, and by 1998 the programme had been widened further to include puppeteer Stephen Mottram, Ayub Ogada from Kenya, Trevor Watts alongside Evelyn Glennie and opera by Harrison Birtwistle. This was not only a remarkable breadth of musical experience but also a parade of some of the brightest lights among composers and performers.
To celebrate the 15th anniversary OCM are putting on a specially commissioned sound event in the Botanic Garden. Fittingly, the original inspiration for this came from the organisation's founding director, David Bass, still an active member of the OCM board. In 2005, the garden was used as the venue for a very successful event, Powerplant, in which a number of visual and sound artists created installations in different parts of the garden.
While the garden was used merely as an atmospheric venue, David Bass's idea was to commission sound artists and performers to create pieces that took their inspiration from the garden itself and involved the garden environment in the performance.
For some months artists have been exploring the site, its history and diversity while working with community and school groups and the visiting public to create a work that is a direct response to the garden. The artists include clarinettist David Rothenberg, who made extensive investigations into bird song during which he has been filmed duetting with a variety of birds, and Robert Jarvis who has been working on the intrinsic sounds of the garden both at day and at night. Theatre group IOU have created a sound sequence called Long Division that lasts a full hour and is repeated three times as day merges into night. This uses sounds of the garden and pre-recorded voices drawing up memories of the walled garden that rise, echo and fade around the space as the light changes.
The event is called The Magic Hour, a photographer's description of that time of the day when, as daylight fades, the light becomes most evocative and entrancing. It is also that time when some prepare to sleep while the nocturnal world begins to stir. The Magic Hour will be performed on three consecutive nights from Thursday until Saturday, September 6.
The rest of OCM's season begins in October with a double bill of folk from Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, who were recently nominated for the Mercury Music prize for their wild left-field take on Tyneside traditions, plus Nancy Elizabeth, "whose music goes straight for the emotional jugular". This is at the Holywell Music Room on October 4.
At the end of the month, Méta Méta, connected to the founder of the F-IRE collective and described as "an exciting blend of ancient and modern Afro-Cuban and European songs and rhythms", are at St Barnabas Church on October 23. This is in co-operation with Big Village. They also join up with Oxford's own Afropean Choir for the evening.
A double bill at the North Wall arts centre, Summertown, in November brings together the virtuoso cellist Matthew Sharp performing contemporary works, including Paul Patterson's Suite for Cello, and a UK premiere of work by Valentin Silvestrov, plus Sharpwire's Johnny's Midnight Goggles, "a mind and genre-melting explosion of story-telling" performed in co-operation with Matthew Sharp.
New music comes from the Mexican electronic composer Murcof whose distinctive sound is enriched by Grup Instrumental Bcn216. This performance also includes pioneering improviser and tuba player Oren Marshall, who has worked with the likes of Derek Bailey and Keith Tippett.
The cool edge of European jazz/folk comes from the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble. Described as "very quiet and very strong" the ensemble will perform an acoustic set at the Holywell Music Room on November 28. The English side of the folk/jazz/classical crossover comes from Junctions: John Spiers and Jon Boden performing with the Tacet Ensemble at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building on December 11.
Though there is a clear bias towards folk in a very broad sense, this is another very varied set of concerts from OCM in which the three evenings of sonic events in the Botanic Garden are a particular highlight.
Further information and tickets can be obtained on 01865 305305 or via the OCM website www.ocmevents.org