STEVIE WISHART appears at London's Southbank in Take the Risk 2-4 October 2009 More...
STEVIE WISHART
Composer
performer - improvisor - vocals - violin - hurdy-gurdy
She has recently composed a new work for the Britten Sinfonia with Random Dance, and a return to work with Compagnie Michèle Noiret for a new work premiered at the Theatre National in Brussels. She is completing The Sound of Gesture, a two-year project developing an interface with specially commissioned sensors and software for solo violin and computer with a recording at the Institute for Music and Acoustics in the ZKM, Germany. Stevie is currently developing The Myth of Europa – an oratorio - “The bisected rim of the horned moon” – this will be developed into a major concert and staged work and was first presented at the Styriarte Festival in Graz and again at La Bellone in Brussels.
This year sees Stevie take a major role in Take the Risk a special weekend at London’s Southbank, where she will present cutting edge medieval and contemporary improvisations.
Stylistic fidelity - with which many early music groups preen themselves - is susceptible to many meanings. Treating written notes as raw material or a starting point is also a defensible philosophy. Stevie Wishart who is known for her medieval ensemble, Sinfonye, as for her improvisatory group Machine for Making Sense - oscillates between the two positions, though her Sydney Festival performance ('concert' seems to formal a term) for the Twilight series veered mostly in the dogma free tradition. Its title was as provocative as it was intriguing, though it can not be denied that improvisation was loved as much by antique musicians as by modern ones. Wishart - using medieval violin,=- and hurdygurdy, plus her voice with a mix of electronics (sampling, delay, synthesised bass tracks) blended old and new seamlessly.
Sydney Festival
John Carmody, The Sunday Telegraph
Stevie, with Sinfonye, is also reaching the culmination of her long-term project to record the complete work of Hildegard von Bingen in a 5-6 cd cycle including a multi-media performance and contemporary realisation of selected songs. The medieval music group Sinfonye has released some 12 CDs with the record companies Glossa Music (Spain), Celestial Harmonies (USA), and Hyperion Records (UK) with instrumental and vocal music from medieval repertories as well original compositions and arrangements informed by historical research.
Stevie Wishart’s performances include those in London’s Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the ICA and the Sydney Opera House. She has performed extensively throughout Europe, in New York, and in Australia and her concerts have been recorded live by BBC Radio 3, Radio France, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ORF, German Radio Networks, and by Klara Radio Belgium VRT. New music concerts combine electronic and acoustic instruments, using sensors and virtual instruments, as well as hurdy-gurdy, voice, and violin. She was artist in residence at Mills College, California where she recorded her most recent CD with her trio group with Fred Frith and Carla Kihlstedt. She has also a founder member, along with John Tilbury, of the Violet Quartet that specialises in free improvised music. Violet have appeared recently in Austria and recorded a new CD for release during 2009. Wishart created the film music for Margie Medlin’s DVD installation “Miss World” based upon a computer generated and real dancer for the 2003 Future Cinema exhibition at Zentrum für Media Künst in Karlsruhe (to March 2003) and has won a Sciart Production and Research Award by the Wellcome Trust in collaboration with Cambridge University’s department of Physiology and the ICA, London, to research and create a new live piece “Quartet”, for 2006/7. She presented aspects of her research and performance for Quartet at the 2006 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference on new musical interface design and technology, hosted by IRCAM - Centre Pompidou, in Paris in collaboration with the MINT/OMF of the Sorbonne University and for a solo concert for the Cambridge Festival, UK, and the Homo Futuris presented by the Vooruit Cultural Centre with UNESCO in Belgium.
Extra-musical actives include working as a composer for the British Council with the National Choir of Morocco in Rabat, music consultant to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and most recently as the featured composer for Music Review (BBC Radio World Service), has been on the panel of judges for the music competitions of both the Bruges Early Music Festival and the EMN young artist'son the panel for the 2007 EMN young artists competition at the National Centre for Early Music in York.
Radio & television work has including writing and presenting music programs for the ABC and BBC networks and has most recently been invited as music commentator for BBC television’s live PROM concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, London (2008 & 2009)
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Date : September 2009
