here.here | Social Virtuosity with Maggie Nicols & Maureen Wolloshin at IKLECTIK

With Maggie Nicols (voice) – patternbook | Heledd Francis-Wright (flutes), Frances Knight (bandoneon, piano), Nadia Tewfik-Bailey (violin), Maureen Wolloshin (oboe, cor anglais) | – Emmanuelle Waeckerlé (voice).
Programme
A (Maureen Wolloshin, 2021)
Spider ballet (Frances Knight, 2021)
with Maggie Nicols and patternbook
What is left if we aren’t the world (Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, 2022)
Sketches (Maggie Nicols, 1970’s)

Improv
with Maggie Nicols, patternbook and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé
Followed by a discussion led by Maureen Wolloshin and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé
Social virtuosity, a term coined by our guest and legendary vocalist and founder of FIG (Feminist Improvising Group) Maggie Nicols – to denote the capacity for effective interpersonal interaction through music making – is what we are focusing on for the three concerts of this 5th season curated by Emmanuelle Waeckerlé.

For this second concert Maggie Nicols will be joined by composer and oboe player Maureen Wolloshin, a PhD researcher at UCA working on a feminist investigation into the agency of gender and instrument in British Free Improvisation, and whose findings have inspired the theme of the three concerts of 2023 with 3 pioneers of Social Virtuosity: last month Eva-Maria Houben and Eddie Prevost in April 2023.

The works chosen for this programme explore feminist approaches to individual vs collective agency between soloist and ensemble, and to sonic intimacy in notated/text compositions and free improvisation.

A (Maureen Wolloshin, 2021)
A text score for solo(ists) and others. You are invited to offer soft, or very soft, versions of the note, once given, by the soloist. Inspired by the orchestral oboist who must attain, then sustain, a pure A for her orchestra. They will join her. Eventually.

Spider Ballet (Frances Knight, 2021)
An improvisational tango. Inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem The Spider holds a Silver Ball.
The Spider holds a silver ball / In unperceived hands / And dancing softly to himself / His yarn of pearl unwinds.

Sketches (Maggie Nicols, 1970’s)
Silence as common ground, sometimes broken by a few spontaneous sonic outbursts, as a springboard to longer improvisation: the way the sketches of a painter or sculptor lead to more accomplished works.

What is left if we aren’t the world (Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, 2022)
A text score (commissioned by Amsterdam Wandelweiser festival 2022), inviting us to individually and collectively find out what pandemonium feels and sounds like, and what intimacy can mean in that context, what distance it may require. The work was inspired by some reading during lockdown. (Franco Berardi, Timothy Morton, Luce Irigaray)

here.here social virtuosity with Maggie Nicols & Maureen Wolloshin Press Release
This is the 13th iteration of the here.here concerts series after Social Virtuosity with Eva-Maria Houben (Feb 2023), Concept ventriloquy | Cage, Ellis, Oliveros, Reage (May 2022), Space ventriloquy | Mike McEvoy, Plangency, Sea of Cables (March 2022), Seamus Cater &Alexander J. Ellis (February 2022), Parkinson Saunders (May 2021), Voice & Electronics with Sadd, Moore, Waeckerlé and Ziv (April 2021), Greg Caffrey (IE, March 2021), Marie Cécile Reber (CH, Feb 2020), Gildas Quartet (UK, Oct 2019), Marcus Kaiser (DE, May 2019), Stefan Thut (CH, April 2019), Jessica Aslan and Emma Lloyd (UK, March 2019).

here.here concert series
A collaboration between bookRoom and the Audio Research Cluster at UCA Farnham, led by Emmanuelle Waeckerlé and Harry Whalley, around their common research in extended, textual, visual, gestural and object scores and ways to integrate or experience technology in text / music / film / performances. The project is supported by UCA research fund.

Film by Stewart Morgan Hajdukiewicz
Recorded live at IKLECTIK by Isa Barzizza