Scratch Night 2.0
Levenshulme Old Library - M19 3QE
Friday 31st January - 7pm - BYOB
We are trying to keep this event as green as possible. Please take your bottles/cans home with you to recycle. We encourage travel by bike or public transport.
In 2025 we aim to put on an interdisciplinary festival for experimental artists and we are hoping to make our events more accessible by hiring an interpretor. You have paid £4 entry today which goes towards venue hire. If you feel able to make a donation to help us fund future ventures, please do so via our card reader or via this Paypal link.
Huge thanks to Richard and Jason at Levy Old Library for all their help.
Programme
The Joe Meek Commemorative Marching Band
Adam and Tim have collaborated intermittently since 2019 as a duo, a project that grew out of their work together in Salford University’s Adelphi Contemporary Music Group. Their ensemble consists of tenor saxophone and laptop computer, although they have occasionally performed with a flautist as an improvising trio. Sometimes they perform from scores that they have composed, but they also have worked with loosely structured moments which they developed extemporaneously, and sometimes they improvise using, for example, ambient and audience noise as the stimulus for their musical ideas. In the latter case, the way the music takes shape is determined as much by the acoustics of the room they are in, the equipment they are using (for example, 7.1 channel P.A.), unintentional sounds or glitches and audience reaction as by the musical ideas occurring to them in the moment. They aim in their musical performances for a unique and engulfing sonic experience born of the unrepeatable and perhaps unnoticed elements present in the moment of performance.
Xhi Ndubisi - Love letter to a monolyth
-Icarus did not fail because of his hubris, he failed because of fear, a fear so old and terrible it could only be quietened by blood-
“I am in the process of making work for performance. I am currently working on a retelling of the story of Icarus from the perspective of a sister, a woman who observes the patriarchy but cannot participate in it. She tells the story of fathers and sons, kings and princes, men and monsters. She is telling the story to help her brother see that he can choose not to participate in a system that consumes young lives for old systems.”
James M. Creed - Tendings: a version of "Tending"
A presentation performance—part clown piece, part lecture piece—letting all the tendencies of his long-gathering collection of notations and pieces, "Tending", collapse in on themselves a bit while he tries to talk about them openly and plainly.
“Tending is, in general, all the things I tend to do when writing and making music, each written down in as many ways as I can think of writing them and so they become their own aphoristic score objects. I make chamber music (or other fixed constructions) from these aphorisms and these are "versions" of "Tending". It has been a joy and a horror to assemble this collection (it is most of a PhD) and it works because I pretend it works and it will not work when I let it stop working and that's what I'm hoping I can allow myself to do here, in trying to talk about it plainly with the help of some electronics and a little space in which to present.”
Rosie Middleton - Palimpsest (0.0)
Palimpsest is an iterative year-long work for voice, movement, recordings, and other improvisers, exploring the transformation of memory over time. It examines how our memories are distorted by new experiences, others' narratives, and changing environments, layering performers, audiences and spaces. This work considers audience intimacy and interaction and how an audience can leave their imprint on a performance.
“The process begins with my solo performance (voice and gesture), recorded in ambisonic sound and film. These recordings are replayed in subsequent performances (all recorded) with additional improvisers, each iteration adding a layer that gradually distorts the original material, creating a shifting collage of ‘memories.’ This iteration will be an experiment with some of the elements I will use in the subsequent work.”
Tara Morony - WUNSCH
We are delighted to welcome esteemed academic Frau Maga to give her world-class lecture on desire - strap in.
Next Scratch Night: May 2025