Partch UK Premiere creates a Surreal Sunday Experience

By Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, 25 February 2014

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“A stage full of weird and wonderful creations took over the Colston Hall...”

Reviewed at Bristol Beacon: Beacon Hall, Bristol on 23 February 2014

Partch, And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma

Ensemble Musikfabrik

Upload questions the meaning of life... and of opera

Kurt Gottschalk, 22nd March

Does opera have room for film? And live video? Multiple screens and advertorials? And allusions to onscreen identity and cyber-immortality?

*****

Ensemble Musikfabrik in Berlin

Stephen Crowe, 18th September

An evening of frivolousness and solemnity.

****1

Musikfabrik parades new Partch instruments in slapstick tragedy

Jacob Slattery, 23rd July

Under the direction of Heiner Goebbels, Ensemble Musikfabrik’s twenty-two multifaceted percussionist-vocalist-actor musicians executed an industrious performance of Partch’s magnum opus, The Delusion of the Fury.

****1

The terror of games: RIAS Chamber Choir and Ensemble musikFabrik at Musikfest Berlin

Dan Wang, 14th September

If there were a gold medal for programming at Musikfest Berlin, it would go to last night’s concert with the RIAS Chamber Choir, Ensemble musikFabrik, and a host of other musicians, gathered under the baton of James Wood.

****1

Edinburgh International Festival: Ensemble musikFabrik's tribute to Frank Zappa

Alan Coady, 28th August

What drew John Cage and Frank Zappa into the same programme was their mutual admiration of Edgard Varèse, at its most striking in their use of percussion. Somehow I feel Cage would have been delighted to be the one out of step with an otherwise perfectly symmetrical programme. Flanking the interval were performances of Varèse’s Ionisation (1929–31).

****1

A piece of infinity with Michaels Reise um die Erde at Lincoln Center Festival

Rebecca Lentjes, 18th July

My preparations for a Thursday evening trip to Lincoln Center: studying the super-formula of Stockhausen’s 29-hour opera project, entitled Licht; choosing an outfit in the perfect shade of cerulean; girding myself for a panic attack similar to the one I experienced the last time I witnessed a section from Licht (Oktophonie).

*****

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Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres

Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres is a Bristol-based film composer and classical electronic artist. Alexandra's passion in scoring and as a performer lie in the duality between the classical and electronica worlds, moving picture and her love for the piano. Her music has been described by The White Room Magazine as “majestic, at times monumental…the force and vastness of nature”.