Cassette, download and art-book:
difficultartandmusic.bandcamp.com/album/canon-chops
Canon Chops presents two electronic tracks which distort recordings drawn from the classical canon alongside two lockdown collaborations with musicians regular to Manchester’s experimental scenes.
Schenker Shanks is the product of experimenting with overlaying Schenkerian analyses of canonical classical works with recordings of the original pieces compressed in time. A recording of Robert Schumann’s “Aus meinen Tränen sprießen” from the Dichterliebe song cycle and Chopin’s “Revolutionary” prelude for piano in C minor were chosen for this process and the choppy, polyrythmic qualities of the resulting samples are extrapolated out to a trippy, fifteen minute, postminimalist span.
Bach Strips is a homage to the de-hum filter, found in any professional noise- removal plugin bundle. Three Bach chorales have the harmony stripped from them by around 100 successive de-hum filters and the synth-like harmonic reduction is juxtaposed with the ghostly choral remains submerged under clicky metronomic artifacts.
Squalls and Not Sheffield Market are collaborations with Nina Whiteman and David Birchall. Squalls is a series of overlaid improvisations where Curington responds to Whiteman’s vocal versatility with reed squawks and gargles whereas in Not Sheffield Market, Curington responds to a recording of Birchall’s guitar in his back garden by playing it back and re-recording outside a bingo hall and a school on the edges of Stockport town centre and blending the results.
released January 7, 2023
Production and mixing by David Curington.
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k.
Composer and vocalist Nina Whiteman has had her music performed widely in the UK and abroad by ensembles such as Manchester Camerata, Quatuor Danel, Dutch accordion duo TOEAC, Ealing Youth Orchestra, Psappha, Colinton Amateur Orchestra (Adopt-a-composer scheme), and Distractfold Ensemble at venues and festivals including the Cheltenham Music Festival, Kettle’s Yard, the
Bridgewater Hall, Kings Place and the RNCM. International performances include The Galaxy Rotation Problem at the World Music Days festival (Slovenia, 2015; selected by British and international panels).
Many of her compositions take their inspiration from extra-musical sources including visual art and science (including a cycle of cloud-inspired pieces featuring the bass flute and drawing on scientific research into clouds – ranging from an 1804 essay that first defined the cloud types, to images and data from a NASA satellite).
Nina has a record of innovative collaborations with practitioners from other art forms, including performances in Amsterdam, and at the Manchester International Festival with performance artist Michael Mayhew, singing glossolalia in artist Ron Athey’s Gifts of the Spirit, creating sound for a motion- graphics installation by James Snazell (shown in Rome, Athens, Nottingham, and Camarthen), sound for performance artist Karen McLeod, and a recent solo performance art piece for a group show 1 1 1 1 1 1 – in remembrance – Manchester (funded by Arts Council England). More recently, she has developed a multimedia performance in collaboration with Gavin Osborn, titledChthonic Mazes, featuring performer movement, projection, and electroacoustic sound.
Nina sings with Trio Atem (flute, mezzo, cello), who specialise in performances of new and recent repertoire with an emphasis on commissioning new work and cross-genre projects. Engagements have included the Bridgewater Hall (BBC Philharmonic Ink Still Wet series), Kings Place, York Late Music Festival, Leeds University Contemporary Music Festival, RMA student conference, and The University of Manchester lunchtime concert series.
Work in education has included leading several projects for Manchester Camerata’s Learning and Participation programme, as well as teaching at The University of Manchester, RNCM, and Lancaster University. She was appointed as Lecturer in Composition at Royal Holloway University of London in 2018.
ninawhiteman.com @ninawhiteman
David Birchall is a performer living in Manchester. He loves to improvise live and compose recordings. He has performed in the UK, Europe, Russia, Palestine, USA & Japan. He has undertaken artist residencies at The Penthouse (Manchester, UK) and Beppu Project (Beppu, JP). His work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 6 Music & SWR in Germany.
He organises and co-curators the Curious Ear series for improvised music.
His podcast Walking & Talking is on www.listen.camp and is archived here. On the show David goes walking, talking and sometimes performing with guests. He works as part of sound art duo Noise Orchestra developing light to sound electronics for performance and installation. Noise Orchestra installations & workshops have been shown at Manchester Science Festival, The Museum of 20C. Art (MAXXI) Rome, The V&A, London and The National Media Museum, Bradford. They have undertaken artist residencies at Q02 (Brussels, BE) STEIM (Amsterdam, NE) Pervasive Media Studios (Bristol, UK) and Fondazione Media Digitale (Rome, IT). Noise Orchestra are based at Rogue Studios in Manchester.
davidmbirchall.com @davidmbirchall
