Focus on cutting-edge electronics in contemporary music.
Frontiers Festival returns from 16th-27th March for a two week celebration of bold new music.
Produced by Birmingham Conservatoire, Frontiers Festival 2015 focuses on the use of electronics in contemporary classical and jazz music.
Visitors can expect an eclectic programme of performances and exhibitions at venues across Birmingham, with internationally-respected artists performing alongside exciting new talent from the Conservatoire.
A Festival highlight will be a rare UK outing by the French ensemble Court-Circuit, who perform a programme of music by Phillippe Hurel. L’ensemble Court-Circuit was founded by Hurel and Pierre André Valade over 20 years ago as an art project which promotes risk-taking and the shaking up of classical music.
Frontiers also celebrates the work of the Conservatoire’s ground-breaking Integra Lab. Responsible for masterminding the ‘Integra Live’ software, Integra Lab is breaking new ground in helping musicians to integrate computer technology in their work and is also saving existing pieces of electronic music made with old, obsolete technology.
Other Frontiers highlights are a rare performance of Jonathan Harvey’s seminal From Silence performed alongside Gérard Grisey’s Le temps et l’écume; the world premiere of Ed Bennett’s new composition for piano and live electronics and performances from the experimental and energetic Decibel and the Conservatoire’s own Thallein ensembles.
Installations make up an important part of Frontiers 2015, including Emily Wright’s video Beethoven’s 5th, which shows Beethoven’s 5th Symphony performed by an orchestra of just one person using a series of peculiar instruments.
Birmingham’s libraries will host a number of performances of music inspired by – and written with – the communities of Small Heath, Balsall Heath and Newtown.
More details can be found at www.frontiersmusic.org