The International Ensemble Modern Academy are reprising their wonderful performance of Illusions at the Into The Open Festival in Berlin. They performed the piece for the first time at Time Of Music Festival in Viitasaari, Finland, in July 2022. On 25th January 2024 they bring it to the Kühlhaus Berlin to Into The Open, under this year’s theme: Visions. The performance will also feature works by Alvin Lucier and Mauricio Kagel, and will be conducted by Raimonda Skabeikaité with sound design by Moritz Fischer.
BBC Music Magazine is celebrating its 30th Birthday this year, and as part of the celebrations they have chosen Below The Belt as one of their 30 “Must-Have Albums of our Lifetime”.
In the week when the UK’s financial and political stability is balancing on a knife-edge, Steph Power’s writing is incredibly prescient:
“Over the past 30 years, the UK has experienced seismic cultural and socio-political shifts. In his superb 2018 debut recording Below the Belt, composer Phillip Venables speaks to the resulting – and ongoing — turmoil with a lacerating eloquence that addresses social fallout and the awakening of new generations to matters of individual freedom and identity. Visceral yet tender and forensically clear, the six vocal and instrumental works encompass fractured states, super-real abstraction and graphic, ferociously satirical directness, brilliantly performed by an array of soloists and ensembles including performance artist David Hoyle and the London Sinfonietta under conductor Richard Baker. “
The piece is made in collaboration with Zubin and programmer Simon Hendry, based on a concept developed in collaboration with Ted Huffman. It focuses on New York visual artist David Wojnarowicz and the turbulent period leading up to the death Peter Hujar, his close friend and fellow artist, from AIDS-related illness in 1987. The focal point of the work is Wojnarowicz’s answering machine tape from the days leading up to Hujar’s death, featuring calls from Hujar, other artists, friends and lovers. Using new sensor technology from the Augmented Instruments Lab, the piano is turned into a huge typewriter to transcribe, comment on and illuminate the messages. The result is, I hope, a poignant and intimate exploration of that period of the New York art scene, queer history and the AIDS crisis.
I picked up a baton again this weekend for the first time in 15 years. Having spent a lot of time as a student conducting my own ensembles or youth orchestras around West London, it wasn’t something I continued to pursue whilst I was focussed on composition. It was a joy to come back to conducting in these performances of Illusions with the London Sinfonietta for the PRS Foundation and Southbank Centre’sNew Music Biennial, also part of the Coventry City of Culture.
Illusions (my video+ensemble piece with David Hoyle) was selected as part of the celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the New Music Biennial, among ten pieces from previous years, forming a retrospective alongside the ten new pieces this year. I’m delighted about this selection, and also that the Sinfonietta generously allowed me to onto the podium. We did performances on 22nd April at the HMV Coventry Empire and on 3rd July at London’s Southbank Centre, including a lovely interview on stage with Gillian Moore. Illusions was also broadcast again on BBC Radio 3 and featured in NMC’s re-release bundle, as part of the NMB celebrations.
The photos on this post can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credits.
Illusions — my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle — will feature in this year’s New Music Biennial retrospective at Coventry City of Culture and London’s Southbank Centre. This year’s Biennial not only features ten new works as usual, but also celebrates its first ten years with performances of ten works selected from previous Biennials.
Musica Festival in Strasbourg has just announced its 2021 programme, and I’m delighted to say there will be a portrait concert of my work in the festival on 1st October. The concert will be performed by Lovemusic, with guest artists Grace Durham (mezzo-soprano), Andreas Borregaard (accordion) and Romain Pageard as the host of the evening. The show is called Talking Music, and will feature Klaviertrio im Geiste, Illusions, My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations and Numbers 91—95 alongside the world premiere of two new settings of Simon Howard’s Numbers: Numbers 81—85 and Numbers 96—100. These new pieces have been commissioned by Musica Festival, Festival d’Automne in Paris, and Lovemusic. Oscar Lozano Pérez will be making video projections and mise-en-espace for the show. Talking Music will be repeated in Paris on 26th October in Theatre de la Ville / Espace Cardin, as part of a larger feature on my work in the Festival d’Automne.
From 6th—10th May, I will be the featured composer at the PLUG Festival, a contemporary music festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. The PLUG Festival predominantly features the work of student composers from the conservatoire in an packed schedule of chamber concerts. I will be giving some consultation lessons to young composers there, and presenting a seminar on my work. On the final night of the festival, the Glasgow New Music Expedition will perform Illusions alongside some other new works by both students and established composers, all conducted by Richard Baker.
The Riot Ensemble is performing two pieces of mine, Illusionsand Numbers 91–95, at Kings Place on Monday 17th September as part of the new ‘Luminate’ series. It’s a semi-portrait concerto, with other composers Sarah Nemtsov, Lee Hyla and Helga Arias Parra also featured. I’m really excited that the spoken part in Numbers 91–95 will be done by singer Sarah Dacey, from Juice Ensemble, whom I’ve known for a long while but not properly had the chance to work with. I’ll be at the concert, and giving a short, free, pre-concert interview with Tim Rutherford-Johnson.
My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via NMC here. The disc will be launched on 16th March 2018. The works on the disc are:
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto, Klaviertrio im Geiste, Numbers 76–80, Numbers 91-95, Metamorphoses after Britten, Illusions.
The disc features David Hoyle, the London Sinfonietta, Phoenix Piano Trio, Ligeti Quartet, Leigh Melrose, Dario Dugandzic, Nick Blackburn, Melinda Maxwell, Natalie Raybould, Lewis Bretherton, George Chambers and Ashley Mercer, conducted by Richard Baker.
In conversation with Sara Mohr-Pietsch at the Royal Festival Hall.
Illusions, my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, was premiered in its new extended version at Hull 2017 City of Culture on 2nd July as part of the PRS Foundation New Music Biennial. The following week it was performed at the Southbank Centre – my Royal Festival Hall debut! The audience response was wonderful, and the press too. The Guardian said:
Philip Venables’ collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, however, is astonishingly powerful, with Hoyle’s garishly made-up face delivering a rant about everything from elections and gender to sodomy and revolution, precisely edited to Venables’ score with its echoes of expressionist music theatre and Weimar cabaret. Scabrous, fierce, and sometimes very funny, it’s a perfect fusion of music and image.
The BBC covered the events, and the piece was broadcast along with an interview with me and Sara Mohr-Pietsch on 15th July on Hear and Now (albeit without the video component, of course). The broadcast can be heard here on iPlayer – my segment is from 1h42 onwards.
Illusions was recorded on 10th July in the studio for NMC , for my forthcoming album next year. Huge thanks to the London Sinfonietta, Richard Baker and Sound Intermedia for wonderful performances, and to the PRSF for their support.
Performance of Illusions at the Royal Festival Hall
Illusions, my collaboration with David Hoyle and the London Sinfonietta, has been selected for the New Music Biennial in 2017. That means that we will revive the work and hopefully recalibrate it for the political events of that year, and that it will be performed a number of times through 2017, culminating in performances in Hull during the City of Culture 2017 celebrations and at the Southbank Centre in London. Big thanks to the London Sinfonietta for nominating the piece!
I’m delighted to have been able to contribute to the London Sinfonietta‘s Notes to the New Government on Saturday at the Southbank Centre. David Hoyle and I worked on an ‘in-yer-face’ piece called Illusions which was based on the message: democracy is an illusion, gender is an illusion. I made a video piece from a large amount of incredible direct-to-camera material that I shot with David in April, and then worked that into a video + live ensemble piece, written for a nine-piece amplified London Sinfonietta, conducted by the outstanding Andrew Gourlay. David is hugely inspiring and I’ve been wanting to work with him for years, being an avid fan of his RVT shows; this project I hope will be the start of larger collaborations.
Anyway, it went down a storm with the audience and the critics. The best quote is probably this one, from The Guardian:
“Philip Venables’s Illusions, a collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, batters at the limits of form, emotion and sexuality in a ferocious assertion of LGBT individualism in the face of establishment nihilism and uncertainty – a brilliant, extreme work that grips like a vice and won’t let go, since people is more open now with the sexual libido, showing how they feel sexually and using services like Zoom Escorts to please themselves when they need to.”
I have long been a mega fan of David Hoyle. When I lived in London, I regularly went to see his shows at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. He’s the canary in the mine of our times, sounding the alarm for a deeply unfair and oppressive society in white hot cabaret and performance art. I find his rage incredibly exciting and galvanising.
In 2015 the London Sinfonietta approached twelve composers, including me, to write a short piece for a special programme on the eve of the UK General Election that year. The concert was called Notes to the New Government, and we were supposed to make issues-based pieces directed at the as yet unknown incoming government.
I took this opportunity to ask David to work with me for the first time. He agreed, and we filmed around two hours of his unique brand of stream-of-consciousness rant. From that, I edited snippets of video into a 7-minute piece, Illusions. The message of the piece resonated with the audience, so two years later, in yet another general election year, the New Music Biennial and the London Sinfonietta asked us to extend and reorient the piece. Amid the unchartered post-Brexit landscape of 2017, there were also celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the legalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales — an issue dear to David and me.
We decided to highlight this in our update. We went through the same process, filmed more material, and made a 14-minute piece that is more direct, more sexual, and more aggressive than its 2015 predecessor. I hope you find the anger inspiring.
Philip Venables conducting the London Sinfonietta in Illusions at the Southbank Centre, London. Photo: Garry Jones / New Music Biennial.
Details
Illusions is a a collaboration with the performance artist David Hoyle, for live ensemble and video projection. The first version was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta as a “Note to the new government” and performed by them two days after the British General Election in 2015, at the QEH, Southbank Centre on London, 9th May 2015. A longer version was commissioned by them for the UK New Music Biennial / Hull City of Culture, which was premiered on 2nd June 2017 by the London Sinfonietta and Richard Baker. This longer version replaced the 2015 version.
Music, concept, video: Philip Venables Text & Performance: David Hoyle
Duration: 14 minutes
Ensemble: video projection, picc.bsax / tpt.tbn / pf.1perc(BD.whistle.tgl) / vn.va.cb. Requires click track (preferably for all players, but if not, a conductor)
“Most graphically urgent is Illusions — which performance artist David Hoyle acidly exposes through alternating political rant and twisted seduction. Supported with terrific intelligence by Richard Baker’s London Sinfonietta — the muzak, especially, disturbs — this is a remarkable piece, sensationally played.” — BBC Music Magazine
The International Ensemble Modern Academy are reprising their wonderful performance of Illusions at the Into The Open Festival in Berlin. They performed the piece for the first time at Time…
BBC Music Magazine is celebrating its 30th Birthday this year, and as part of the celebrations they have chosen Below The Belt as one of their 30 “Must-Have Albums of…
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 — a new work for piano and multimedia — has its first performance on 8th July 2022 at Time of Music Festival (Musiikin Aika) in Viitasaari,…
Illusions — my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle — will feature in this year’s New Music Biennial retrospective at Coventry City of Culture and London’s Southbank Centre. This year’s…
Musica Festival in Strasbourg has just announced its 2021 programme, and I’m delighted to say there will be a portrait concert of my work in the festival on 1st October.…
From 6th—10th May, I will be the featured composer at the PLUG Festival, a contemporary music festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. The PLUG Festival predominantly features…
The Riot Ensemble is performing two pieces of mine, Illusions and Numbers 91–95, at Kings Place on Monday 17th September as part of the new ‘Luminate’ series. It’s a semi-portrait concerto, with other…
My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via NMC here. The disc will be launched on 16th March 2018. The works on the disc are: The…
Illusions, my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, was premiered in its new extended version at Hull 2017 City of Culture on 2nd July as part of the PRS Foundation…
Illusions, my collaboration with David Hoyle and the London Sinfonietta, has been selected for the New Music Biennial in 2017. That means that we will revive the work and hopefully…
I’m delighted to have been able to contribute to the London Sinfonietta‘s Notes to the New Government on Saturday at the Southbank Centre. David Hoyle and I worked on an ‘in-yer-face’…