Category Archives: Videos

New interview with Nick Blackburn about Music, Text and Violence

Posted on February 10, 2012 by phil| Leave a comment

I met Theatre Director Nick Blackburn over a coffee in a very cute little knitting shop / café in Nantwich on Christmas Eve. We had long conversations about music, text, violence and theatre, and he filmed a little bit of the conversation, a bit of which is shown here.

This video seems quite relevant to most of my projects this year, as so many of them are connected with violence:

the revenge of the honourable Miguel Cotto against the despicable cur Antonio Margarito (working title) with poet Steven J Fowler and the London Sinfonietta – preview on May 16th 2012
Unleashed with writer & director Jorge Balça, and baritone Omar Ebrahim. Preview at Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival in August – a separate blogsite for this here: www.unleashedopera.wordpress.com
A project with Nick Blackburn and someone very, very special, TBA…!

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Posted in blog, Projects, Videos

Tagged Blue Touch Paper, Interview, London Sinfonietta, Nick Blackburn, Omar Ebrahim, Steven Fowler, Tete a Tete, Unleashed

Contrasts in Space

Posted on December 20, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

Contrasts in Space was screened at the British Film Institute on 1st December, alongside the premiere of my new soundtrack for it, featuring tape and live viola. Ensemble Amorpha were performing.

Contrasts in Space is a black and white film by Sebastian Schmidt. Here’s a video of the synced live sound recording from the performance with the film.

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Posted in Performances, Videos

Tagged ensemble amorpha, film, sebasitan schmidt, shorts amorpha, tape, Viola

K, prelude to Mozart Clarinet Quintet (performance from Kings Place)

Posted on November 29, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

I’ve just received a video from 2009 of a performance of K, a prelude to the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, given by Endymion at Kings Place in September 2009.

Wonderful playing, and I’m very grateful to Kings Place for making the video of the performance. The piece, as you can hear, knits neatly into Mozart’s own Clarinet Quintet, making it a thoughtful, contemplative concert opener for that work. Endymion are performing this again, with the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets, at Surrey University Concert Series on Sunday 29th January at 3pm. Click here for more info.

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Posted in Performances, Videos

Tagged chamber music, Endymion, K, Kings Place, mozart clarinet quintet, surrey university

Video of ‘Numbers 91-95′, Wien Modern / Ensemble Adapter

Posted on November 26, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

Ensemble Adapter gave the world premiere of Numbers 91-95 by me (text by Simon Howard) at the Wien Modern Festival on 10th November 2011, in the Casino Baumgarten in Vienna.

I’m really happy with the piece and the performance, and so were the Ensemble. They performed it again the following week at the wonderful Borusan Müsik Evi venue as part of the new music series.

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Posted in Videos

Tagged Berlin, borusan, Ensemble Adapter, Flute, harp, istanbul, numbers 91-95, Simon Howard, speaker, tape recorder, vienna, Wien Modern

Shorts Amorpha at the BFI. 1st December

Posted on November 25, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

I’m delighted to say I’ve written a short piece for viola and tape (or optional speaking chorus), as a new soundtrack to Sebastian Schmidt’s short film Contrasts in Space.

This will be performed by Ensemble Amorpha at the British Film Institute on 1st December in London, at an event called Shorts Amorpha.

Here’s more info about it. Do go along if you can! There’s lots of new scores to silent short films, by some very good composers including Luke Styles, Chris Mayo and Naomi Pinnock.

Here’s the trailer, too….

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Posted in Performances, Videos

Tagged BFI, ensemble amorpha, sebastian schmidt, short films, shorts amorpha, tape, Viola

Video of numbers 76-80 : tristan und isolde

Posted on October 7, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

Here’s a video of the recent premiere of “numbers 76-80 : tristan und isolde”, which I wrote for Endymion and EXAUDI, with text from Simon Howard.

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Posted in Performances, Videos

Tagged Endymion, EXAUDI, James Weeks, numbers 76-80, Simon Howard, Southbank Centre

Contrasts in Space

Posted on October 7, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

So – very busy at the moment with a number of big projects that I’ll be telling you about in the next few weeks, hopefully. But this week I’ve been working on a short instrumental + tape piece to accompany this short film by Sebastian Schmidt. Obviously it won’t have that sound on it, but rather my live-performed piece to go with it.

The piece has been commissioned by Ensemble Amorpha for their Amorpha_Shorts programme, and they’re premiering the pieces at the British Film Institute on 1st December 2011. Do go along if you’re around on that night! Lots of other good composers are involved too, like my very good friend and Berlin buddy, Naomi Pinnock.

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Posted in news, Videos

Tagged BFI, british film institute, contrasts in space, ensemble amorpha, naomi pinnock, sebastian schmidt, shorts amorpha

CONTACT dance-floor up and running!

Posted on September 8, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

What an exhausting but wonderful week of hard work. We started on Monday morning, when I got off the plane from Berlin and went straight to Kings Place to start constructing the touch-sensitive dancefloor that I designed specially for the Kings Place Festival 2011.

A lot of hammering, measuring, taping, wiring and tweaking. Here’s a video of the construction process… (in this video you watch it 120 times faster than it happened…)

Then we programmed it using the bespoke CONTACT software written by Marc Sutton at www.codev.co.uk, and Ableton Live – making the samples in Logic Studio too. After 3 hours of mapping the location of each of the 120 sensors under the floor, we eventually got the floor to behave just like a 9-octave virtual MIDI keyboard, that spoke to Ableton and triggered all our samples.

The floor has been programmed with lots of samples about the seasons, from Vivaldi to Oliver Knussen to Girls Aloud to Tori Amos to some death metal. We’ve also got the sounds of swarms of bees, thunderstorms, children’s songs, crickets, music boxes, clocks and the weather.

The floor opened today at Kings Place. You can see people here tentatively trying it out when the festival first opened…

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Posted in blog, Projects, Videos

Tagged Ableton Live, CONTACT, dance floor, Installation, Kings Place, Lucia Tong, touch-sensitive

Fuck Forever video

Posted on August 26, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

Fuck forever from Philip Venables on Vimeo.

I’m delighted that my 3-minute Six Word Opera was premiered last week (11th and 12th August) at Riverside Studios in London, as part of the Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival. It was performed by the wonderful John Savournin (speaker/singer), James Young (piano and MD), Rosalind Acton (cello) and Matthew West (woodblock). Check out this video of one of the performances.

James Young asked me to write one (and he probably regrets it…) for the second year of the successful Six Word Opera project. I was very glad to! As almost all of my recent pieces have involved spoken word in concert music (I —- the body electric, numbers 91-95, numbers 76-80 : tristan und isolde, The Schmürz all in the last 12 months), this seemed a great way to try out some ideas. Also a good testing ground for the project that I am working on with Jorge Balça and Omar Ebrahim which is also a mini-opera, semi-staged, with themes of sex, sexuality and violence.

Hope you enjoy it!

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Posted in news, Opera & Music Theatre, Videos, Vocal

Tagged Fuck Forever, James Young, John Savournin, Riverside Studios, Six Word Opera, Tete a Tete, Warehouse Ensemble

Building the Junk Band

Posted on August 4, 2011 by phil| Leave a comment

Here’s a video from a while ago that I hadn’t posted on this site. Its Serge Vuille and I building the Junk Band in Kings Place for the Kings Place Festival 2010. It took us good 5 hours to install in the atrium of the building, but here you can see the process in just a few minutes!

I was reminded to post this video up because I’m currently in the process of creating this year’s Kings Place Festival installation with dancer-choreographer Lucia Tong. We’re building a large touch-sensitive dance floor in collaboration with Codev bespoke software design. Come along to Kings Place, 10th and 11th September to see our performance on this unique new musical instrument!