Iain Chambers

Iain Chambers

Iain Chambers with tape reel
Background information
Genres Musique concrète, experimental
Occupation(s) composer, producer and performer
Years active 1996 (1996)–present
Labels Touch Music
Associated acts Peter Blegvad, Langham Research Centre
Website www.iainchambers.com

Iain Chambers is an English composer, producer and performer.

Iain has composed and performed since the 1990s. He formed the duo Bow Mods[1] with Philip Clayton Smith, releasing an album[2] and 2 EPs[3] on Drunken Records. He produced programmes at BBC Radio 3 between 1999-2007, including Andy Kershaw and Late Junction. With Kershaw he made programmes in Algeria, Mali, Corsica and Sardinia, winning a Gold award for best Specialist Music Programme at the Radio Academy Awards in 2003.[4]

In 2003, with Radio 3 colleagues Felix Carey and Philip Tagney, he co-founded musique concrète collective Langham Research Centre. The trio sought to breathe new life into experiments with reel-to-reel tape, producing two editions of Between The Ears: Gateshead Multistorey Carpark,[5] acclaimed by Alan Titchmarsh in the Radio Times; and guest+host=ghost written by and starring Peter Blegvad, and featuring Nick Cave. In 2005 the trio were joined by Robert Worby, and began to perform 'authentic' realisations of work by John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff and others, using their instrumentarium of obsolete analogue equipment, alongside their own new music made from the same sources.[6]

Iain won a second Radio Academy award for his 2011 radiophonic drama written by Peter Blegvad, Use It Or Lose It.[7] Broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and starring Harriet Walter and David Horovitch, the drama also received a Prix Europa Special Commendation,[8] and was a finalist in the 2013 BBC Audio Drama Awards.

In 2010, Iain began making music using location recordings as compositional material. His piece The Regent's Canal – featuring pitched-down bicycle bells – was a finalist in the 2012 Europe – A Sound Panorama competition. In 2013 he was commissioned by Musicity to make a site specific composition – Operahuset – to be permanently housed on the sloping roof of Oslo Opera House.[9]

Iain founded the media cooperative Open Audio in 2012 with Nina Perry and Vivienne Perry. The company produce multimedia content alongside dramas, documentaries and features for BBC Radio and international broadcasters.[10]

In 2014 Iain was commissioned to make a work for Wycombe Listening, a sound art exhibition featuring Martin Creed and Jaap Blonk. His piece – 1200 Feet – recomposed the other exhibits into a tape piece, a fragment of which each audience member could take home.[11] He was commissioned by Oxford Contemporary Music to create a live recomposition of a concert by Ivo Neame, composing new music from Neame's concert and soundcheck, in time for the audience's exit from the first show.[12]

Peter Blegvad and Iain Chambers' radiophonic drama for Radio Australia, The Eternal Moment, was a finalist in the 2015 Prix Europa awards.[13]

In 2015 Iain staged the first concerts ever held in Tower Bridge's bascule chamber.[14] The huge subterranean space housed 12 sold-out concerts performed by Docklands Sinfonia and mezzo-soprano Catherine Carter, as the climax of 2015's Totally Thames Festival. The concerts featured Iain's new work Bascule Chambers, which used the sound of Tower Bridge lifting – as recorded by London Sound Survey in the bascule chamber – as compositional material, alongside trumpets and trombones playing the pitches sounded by the bridge. A recording of the concert was released by Touch Music.[15] In 2016 Iain staged an all-vocal series of concerts in the bascule chamber, again for Totally Thames Festival. The concerts featured 5 new works, performed by Juice Vocal Ensemble and the Ben See Group.[16]

In 2016 Iain created a major new radiophonic work, The Eccentric Press, commissioned for broadcast by Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. The 25 minute piece features obsolete industrial sounds, recorded by the pan-EU Work With Sounds project.[17] The work was a finalist in the EBU's Palma Ars Acustica awards.[18] A follow-up piece using sounds from the same sources, Maudslay Engine, was commissioned for broadcast by Radio National in Australia.

Selected compositions

  • "Lewis Valentine" (2016) Radiophonic work for organ and voice
  • "Singing Bowls" (2016) Setting of Emily Dickinson poetry for 7 voices
  • "I Started Early - Took My Dog" (2016) Setting of Emily Dickinson poetry for SATB
  • "Approach With Care" (2016) Setting of travel news report for mezzo-soprano and tape
  • "I Became Mermaid" (2016) Setting of Emily Berry poem for mezzo-soprano and harp
  • "The Eccentric Press" (2016) Concert-length radiophonic work for industrial sounds
  • "Bascule Chambers" (2015) Radiophonic work for brass quintet, featuring the sound of Tower Bridge lifting
  • "Three Poems" (2015) Radiophonic work for mezzo-soprano setting poetry by Emily Dickinson, Abraham Cowley, Harold Hart Crane
  • "Hoketus Prima" (2015) Fanfare for 2 x trumpets; 2 x trombones
  • "Hornbeam Maze" (2015) Setting of Helen Adam poetry for 2 x soprano, 1 x alto
  • "Relay quartet" (2014-) collaborative string quartet
  • "The Regent's Canal, London" (2014) – sound art commission for Radio Australia
  • "1200 feet" (2014) sound art commission for Wycombe Listening exhibition
  • "Muffled Cyphers" (2014) musique concrète work with Langham Research Centre, exploring J.G.Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition
  • "Eschatology" (2013) musique concrète work with Peter Blegvad and Langham Research Centre
  • "Operahuset" (2013) location- based audio composition commissioned by Musicity for Oslo Opera House
  • "Freedom or Death" (2013) musique concrete work with Langham Research Centre, for soprano and tape machines
  • "Obamix" (2013) musique concrète chorale with Langham Research Centre and Alwynne Pritchard, for open-reel tape machines and soprano
  • "Buses" (2013)
  • "Topaz" (2013)
  • "Dulce Melos" (2012)
  • "Fordwells" (2011)
  • "De Mussenden" (2010)
  • "The Regent's Canal" (2010)

References

  1. ↑ Incendiary share a pint with Bow Mods, http://www.incendiarymag.com/interviews/bowmods/incendiary_share_pint_bow_mods
  2. ↑ Eidetic, http://www.incendiarymag.com/albumreviews/bowmods/bow_mods_%E2%80%93_eidetic
  3. ↑ Country Girls EP, http://www.incendiarymag.com/brightsparks/bowmods/bow_mods_country_girls_ep
  4. ↑ Andy Kershaw, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005y2pb
  5. ↑ Gateshead Multistorey Carpark - full programme on Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/langham-research-centre/gateshead-multistorey
  6. ↑ John Cage Musicircus, http://www2.tate.org.uk/intermediaart/musicircus.shtm
  7. ↑ Sony Radio Academy award winners, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/may/15/sony-radio-academy-awards-winners
  8. ↑ Winners, Prix Europa, https://ifc2.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/winners-radio-prix-europa-2012-pe12/
  9. ↑ IAIN CHAMBERS TRACK TITLE: OPERAHUSET, http://osl.musicityglobal.com/new/artist.php?code=3140
  10. ↑ Gillian Reynolds: Shoah is so shocking it was watched in silence, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/radio/what-to-listen-to/gillian-reynolds-shoah-is-so-shocking-it-was-watched-in-silence/
  11. ↑ Wycombe Listening, http://www.arts4every1.com/events/wycombe-listening-a-one-night-experiential-sound-art-exhibition
  12. ↑ Ivo Neame's Escape Hatch, http://www.ocmevents.org/ocm/events/ivoneamesescapehatch
  13. ↑ Prix Europa programme, http://prixeuropa.eu/festival/programme
  14. ↑ Bascule Chambers by Iain Chambers, http://totallythames.org/events/info/bascule-chambers-concert
  15. ↑ Touchline, http://www.touch33.net/touchline/iain_chambers_bascules.html
  16. ↑ Bascule Chamber Concerts, http://kateromano.co.uk/bascule-chamber-concerts
  17. ↑ Work With Sounds, http://www.workwithsounds.eu/
  18. ↑ PALMA ARS ACUSTICA, https://www.ebu.ch/projects/radio/palma-ars-acustica.html

External links

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