I have been invited to attend Festival Mixtur in Barcelona next year. As part of the festival, I will be writing a new solo work for a member of Vienna's Ensemble PHACE. I will also have the opportunity to learn from Tristan Murail and Alexander Schubert, among other resident tutors throughout the my time in Barcelona. Very much looking forward to visiting there in late April!
collaboration with Shawn 'Renzoh' Head
I'm excited to be undertaking a project in collaboration with Shakuhachi player and fellow composer Shawn Renzoh Head. I will be building an artificial neural network and training it on the traditional Shakuhachi solo repertoire, in order to then compose a suite of pieces for Shawn to play. Shawn will aid me in sourcing the training repertoire and creating a machine-readable dataset from it, which we will also make available for others to use in their own projects.
Shawn is the youngest non-Japanese Shakuhachi player to have received his Shihan, or 'Master of Shakuhachi', certification, and was a pupil of my own Shakuhachi teacher, Michael Chikuzen Gould. I'm glad to have him on board with my crazy compositional idea and I look forward to working with him!
'Reformed' in OUA-EMF2017
Reformed will be part of an installation of acousmatic works taking place at Osaka University of Arts Electroacoustic Music Festival. It's scheduled to be played at varying times on the days of November 14th-18th (once each day). The venue is listed as follows: Osaka University of Arts Center for Art Information Center Experiment Dome, Art Hall, Corridor Gallery, AV Hall front
Click here to learn more about the piece, or stream it in full below.
'Fractured' at Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair
Fractured at Brocket Gallery
Fractured, the multi-sensory interactive installation I created in collaboration with Ashleigh Thompson, will feature at this year's Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. WCPF is the only print fair in London to deal solely in contemporary printmaking, and the largest of its kind in the UK, set in the impressive former carriage factory at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. It will take place from October 20-23, and ticket info can be found here.
Fractured App released
The app derived from my collaborative interactive installation with Ashleigh Thompson is now available for download worldwide! Click here to download on iOS, and here to learn more about the app.
'Colour Etude II' to feature at SPLICE Festival
Colour Etude II, my work for toy pianos and live electronics via iOS, will receive a performance from the SPLICE ensemble next January. The performance will take place during SPLICE festival at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, and will be a US premiere of the piece.
Click here learn more about the piece, or stream it in full below:
Interviewed in After Nyne Magazine
This week I was interviewed in After Nyne Magazine about my collaborative interactive installation with Ashleigh Thompson, Fractured. They asked some great questions which got me reflecting on the work we've done during our residency, and allowed me to give readers real insight. See the full interview here.
'Fractured' at Brocket Gallery
Fractured, my end of residency exhibition, will be on at Brocket Gallery from August 30th - September 2nd. Fractured is an audiovisual installation in collaboration with printmaker Ashleigh Thompson, with an interactive element to the sound via iOS.
Entry is free. For more information, click here.
'Colour Etude I' to feature in 'New Music Day' at Sonicscape
Colour Etude I will be diffused on a system of 30 speakers today at Poeun Art Hall in Yongin, South Korea. The art centre features an outdoor exhibition space where the speakers are located, placed around various sculptures, called Sonicscape. The New Music Day event will take place from 12.00pm at Sonicscape as part of a larger Media Art exhibition currently being held at Poeun Art Hall.
Click here to learn more about the piece, or stream it in full below:
'Colour Etude I' to feature in Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music
Colour Etude I will be played in one of the concerts at SBCM (Simpósio Brasileiro de Computação e Música) in São Paulo this September. A short accompanying paper I wrote on the piece will also be published in the proceedings. SBCM 2017 will take place at the University of São Paulo.
Click here to learn more about Colour Etude I, or stream it in full below:
Mini Chamber App released!
A project I've been working on for a couple of months has just come into fruition - the release of my Mini Chamber application for iOS! Developed to coincide with and celebrate the gargantuan performance of my piece that will take at Voices Now festival 2017, Mini Chamber adopts the principles of 'Vox I: Echo Chamber', reimagining it in a digital and portable form that can be brought to life anywhere. The app is available for free so I really hope you give it a try and #MakeModernMusic that you can share with your friends and also with me; I'd love to hear what you come up with!
'Vox I' to be performed in York's Late Music series
Vox I: Echo Chamber will be performed by York's Late Music Ensemble at their concert on Saturday 1st July. The evening is inspired by composer Meredith Monk, celebrating the year of her 75th birthday, and it takes place at St. Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel in York at 7.30pm. Full programme and ticket info can be found here.
Click here to learn more about the piece in question, or stream a recording of the premiere below:
Brocket Summer Residency
I will be working with printmaker Ashleigh Thompson on a collaborative project through the month of August, using the Brocket Gallery's project space in Kennington as an open studio for audiences to visit, and engage with our works and processes.
Ashleigh's hand-manipulated mono-print series, Fractures, will be converted into sound with software assistance, by treating them as spectrograms and then reverse-engineering them back into audio files. These will form the basis of a palette from which I will construct a soundscape, which can then feed back to Ashleigh to respond further.
Ultimately the residency will culminate in an installation consisting of Ashleigh's prints and my soundscape, derived from the artworks. The soundscape will be procedurally generated in 5.1 surround, controlled via iOS.
The final product of our residency will be exhibited at Brocket Gallery on 30th August.
Vox London Collective launch Commission Opportunity
Vox, the vocal ensemble I co-direct, is setting up a commission for one emerging non cis-male and one emerging BAMER songwriter/composer interested in writing for the voice. The winners will have an existing piece of theirs performed at this year's Southbank Chorus festival (July 1st/2nd), and will receive a paid commission to write a new work for Vox, to be premiered at Chorus 2018. For more information on how to apply, click here.
'Vox I' to be performed by 200 singers at Voices Now Festival
Vox I: Echo Chamber will receive a performance like no other in the main space of the Roundhouse on the evening of July 9th this year: A super-conglomerate of five choirs (London Humanist Choir, Veda Slovena Bulgarian Choir, Soul of the City Choir, Côr Llunsain & The Roundhouse Choir) will give a 200-part rendition as part of the programme of Voices Now Festival 2017. The festival runs from July 8th-9th 2017 and features many fantastic UK-based ensembles covering a wide spectrum of sounds. Check out the Voices Now website for more details as they arise.
Click here to learn more about the piece in question, or stream a recording of the premiere below:
Club Inégales Spring Academy
I've been invited to take part in this year's Academy Inégales Spring Weekender - a weekend of improvisation leading to a concert at Club Inégales, London, on Sunday 26 March. The workshops will be led by Club Inégales residents Peter Wiegold & Martin Butler, and by special guests Dhruba Ghosh & Kiya Tabassian - several performers representing music from varied traditions, and I'm looking forward to performing/creating with them all!
Review of 'Colour Etude I' at Chapter
A review of the Sleeper Society's concert at Chapter Arts Centre by Cardiff-based online magazine, The Sprout, contained the following words about Colour Etude I:
"Omar Peracha’s Colour Étude 1, ended the second half of the night, in an evocative and wonderfully harmonised composition. Though not present, the sense of how his music work[s] was clear and precise."
Read the full review here.
'Colour Etude I' to feature in NYCEMF 2017
Colour Etude I will be included in this year's New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival. The festival runs between June and July and takes place between National Sawdust (Brooklyn) and the Abrons Arts Centre (Manhattan), as well as a few other venues across NYC.
Colour Etude I will feature in the final concert of the festival, which takes place at National Sawdust on 16th July, 7pm.
Click here to learn more about the piece, or stream in in full below.
'Vox I' to be performed at Roundhouse Rising festival
My improvisation-based work, Vox I: Echo Chamber, will be performed by the Roundhouse Choir at their concert in this year's Roundhouse Rising Festival. The concert will take place at 19.45 on Wednesday 15 February in the Roundhouse's Dorfman Hub. Tickets can be purchased via this link.
Click here to learn more about the piece, or stream it in full below:
Upcoming collaboration with Xenia Pestova
I have been selected as one of eight composers to take part in a project with acclaimed pianist and keyboardist, Xenia Pestova, who currently serves as Director of Performance at the University of Nottingham's department of Music. The project is based around the toy piano and includes the commissioning of a short piece from each participant composer, to be premiered at a concert in London on Saturday 18 March.