7:00pm, Friday 12 May 2017
St Luke’s Church, Chelsea, SW3 6NH

An immersive sound installation in St Luke’s Church, Chelsea, drawing material from the natural acoustics of the church and choir

A concert-length sound installation in St Luke’s Church, drawing material from the natural acoustics of the church and choir. Recorded and electronic sounds blend with live performance on hurdy-gurdy and flute, alternating between sections of very low vibrations and live performance sounds. A multitude of speakers will be positioned around the space, so the audience is free to explore or remain seated. This abstract exploration of acoustics and early music timbres, circular temporality, and church space should resonate with the listener’s sense of the sacred in a non-intrusive, meaningful way.

Thomas Fournil

Thomas Fournil, born in 1990, is a French composer currently based in London. He became a fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama after completing the Guildhall Artist Masters course under James Weeks. His current doctoral research is concerned with cross-fertilising medievalist aesthetics and spectral music. His interests often revolve around aspects of historical performance, memory, fragility, silence, transcendence and cultural heritage. He founded the Idrîsî Ensemble and worked as an artistic director and hurdy-gurdy player towards the performance of medieval Mediterranean repertoire and new commissions. Previous collaborations include The Plus Minus Ensemble, Exaudi, The Calder Quartet, members of The Aurora Orchestra, medieval fiddle virtuoso Elisabeth Flett, multi-instrumentalist Arngeir Hauksson (The Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments) and Emily Baines (founder of medieval groups The Fellowship of Musickers and Blondel). His studies are kindly supported by the City of London Corporation and The Guildhall School Trust.

Nicholas Hennell-Foley

London-based composer Nicholas Hennell-Foley, born in 1992, has recently been focused on architectural representations in music. His latest projects involved mapping the soundscape (as defined by Murray Schafer) of the Barbican Centre in London, and creating a sound installation at the Bath Fringe Festival. In 2016 his compositions were performed in Cadogan Hall, he worked with the Psappha Ensemble on devising a new piece, and completed an MMus (distinction) in Composition at King’s College London under Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin. He has been published by ink&coda. Previous collaborations include marimba virtuoso Aristel Skrbic, experimental bassist John Eckhardt, Manchester based Video Jam, Kate Halsall & Fumiko Miyachi of DuoDorT, Aracna Dance Company and members of Ensemble Lontano.

Jack Michael Welch

Jack Michael Welch, born 1993, was introduced to the flute at the age of nine and is currently taught by Gareth Davies, Philippa Davies and Christopher Green at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he is studying Classical Flute. Jack has played principal with several orchestras including Neath and Cardiff Sinfonietta, British Sinfonietta, Welsh session orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru, Cardiff Music Festival Orchestra and previously the National Youth Orchestra of Wales. He has toured to France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, and has performed in the Albert Hall, The Sage Gateshead, Millennium Centre Cardiff and Barbican Centre London. Next year Jack is continuing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a Masters student. Jack was recently added to the extras list of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Sarah McCabe

Sarah McCabe is a violist from Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada. After completing her undergraduate degree in violin performance at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, she taught strings and orchestra in the Halifax Public School System for two years. In 2016 Sarah began postgraduate studies in viola performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is a member of Ember Quartet, which has played for the Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain, recorded the film score to the short film Threnody, and recorded at Abbey Road Studios.

Jeremy Hubbard

Jeremy Hubbard, born 1992, is a composer, producer, vocalist and sound artist currently based in the New Forest, Hampshire, having graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2016. The majority of his sonic works delve deep into the underlying fabric of the modern technological age and attempts to forgo our increasing reliance on immediacy, extending the time-frame and spatial dynamics of the normal and every-day, uncovering the otherwise inaudible and exposing imperfections as to create a wide array of sonic and visual works from both natural and unnatural sources.

Recent projects include works such as Jökulvatn, a sonic exploration of the differing states of water within the context of a melting Icelandic glacier, using recordings captured in the Snæfellsjökull National Park; both the Bus:Music and Tube:Music series of works, where electro-magnetic signals captured from moving London buses and tube trains are transformed into flowing, chordal soundscapes; and his other major series of works, Experiments with Time, an ever evolving exploration into the eternally close relationship between time and pitch.

Alongside his creative work, Jeremy is also busy performing as a choral baritone with a number of top chamber choirs. These include the award winning Chantage Chamber Choir, the Icosa Chamber Choir and the Courtauld Gallery Chamber Choir. Jeremy is a former member of the National Youth Chamber of Great Britain and the Orlando Chamber Choir. He works as a concert recordist and videographer working with many groups of various persuasions and styles, including as a freelance audio/video editor/producer and Content Creator for music production company Samplephonics.