CMRC: ‘Listening with the Clarinet’ workshop with Heather Roche (clarinet) & Scott McLaughlin (composer)

Workshop
This event has now finished.
  • Date and time: Tuesday 25 April 2023, 2pm to 3.30pm
  • Location: In-person only
    D/003, Sally Baldwin Buildings, Campus West, University of York (Map)
  • Audience: Open to all
  • Admission: Free admission, booking required

Event details

Listening with the Clarinet explores modes and situations of listening that artificially free the instrument (for a time) from its traditional musical and historical context, and open it up to broader forms of experience. Working through Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening framework, the workshop engages clarinetist Heather Roche and a group of participants in a range of listening activities and scenarios. These will include more open or closed approaches, exploring the instrument, for example, in terms of its interaction with the acoustic environment, in terms of its spectrality (listening inside the clarinet sound), as part of a vibrant assemblage, or from a social or contextual standpoint. The workshop is intended to be a playful safe-space for listening and engagement, offering participants the opportunity to share or journal their experiences throughout. This workshop is open to anybody with an interest in sound and listening, regardless of disciplinary background. Please bring your ears and anything you might like to journal with.

Born in Canada, clarinetist Heather Roche lives in London. Recently referred to as ‘The Queen of Extended Techniques’ and ‘a figurehead for contemporary music performance practice’ on BBC Radio 3, she appears regularly as a soloist and chamber musician at European festivals, including the London Contemporary Music Festival, Acht Brücken (Cologne), Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik (Germany), Musica Nova (Helsinki), MusikFest (Berlin), BachFest (Leipzig), Manifeste (Paris), etc. She was a founding member the Cologne-based hand werk, and currently plays with Apartment House (London) and Mimitabu (Gothenburg). She has a longstanding duo collaboration with the German accordionist Eva Zöllner, with whom she has recently performed at the Venice Biennale and Mixtur Festival (Barcelona), as well as on tour in Mexico and Sweden. She has also worked with the Musikfabrik (Cologne), the WDR Symphony Orchestra (Cologne), the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, Alisios Camerata (Zagreb), and ensemble Proton (Bern), among others. She wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Huddersfield. Her blog on writing for the clarinet attracts 90,000 viewers each year. In 2014 she was the recipient of a Danish International Visiting Artist’s stipendium. She is also reviews editor of TEMPO, published by Cambridge University Press, and teaches clarinet at Goldsmiths University, London. Her debut solo CD, Ptelea, is out on HCR/NMC, and her CD featuring the clarinet works of Christopher Fox, Headlong, appears on Métier. She also records regularly for the Another Timbre label.

Scott McLaughlin (b.1975) is an Irish composer and improviser based in Huddersfield (UK). He started out as a shoegaze/experimental guitarist before studying music in his 20s at University of Ulster then MA/PhD University of Huddersfield (with PA Tremblay, Bryn Harrison). Currently, Scott lectures in composition and music technology at the University of Leeds, and co-directs CePRA (Centre for Practice Research in the Arts), as well as convening the RMA Practice Research Study Group. His research focuses on composing for contingency and indeterminacy in the physical materiality of sound. Scott is currently Co-I on the AHRC SPARKLE (Sustaining Practice Assets for Research, Knowledge, Learning and Engagement), and recently completed an AHRC Leadership Fellowship, the ‘Garden of Forking Paths’ project, on composing for contingency in clarinets.