Catherine Kontz at the Natural History Museum

Spratt and Winkle Projects are currently working with London based composer and performer Catherine Kontz to realise two performances as part of the Contemporary Art Programme at the Natural History Museum, London. The first sees a performance of Salmon Stories as part of Biodiversity Day at the Museum on 22nd May 2010.

Salmon Stories explores the timbral possibilities of amplified strung instruments within the rhythmic soundscapes of the tabla, a versatile Indian percussion instrument in the bounds of Western contemporary classical music. Much of Kontz’ work is inspired by the natural world and the concept of this piece is based on data listing details of the largest salmons caught in Europe and Canada over the last 125 years.

Salmon Stories at the Natural History Museum will be its British premiere and will be performed by Ansuman Biswas (tabla and hang), Angharad Davies (violin), Rhodri Davies (harp) and Henri Växby (guitar).

Three performances of the 22 minute piece will take place throughout the afternoon and early evening and a specially designed set will be constructed which creates a scene of late night fishing; complete with lanterns, fishing stools and a series of projected images either taken from the book of the same name or chosen in collaboration with the museum.

The second performance will take place as part of Music Day on 19th June 2010. Music Day is a midsummer celebration of live international music in and around Exhibition Road and is London’s annual contribution to European Music Day.

During this event Kontz will perform Anthill and Flyways, two pieces for massed harps realised in collaboration with the Royal Northern College of Music.

Flyways takes its inspiration from flight paths used in bird migration
and the score takes the form of a series of maps. The composition explores three
different types of landscape – land, sea and air and the harpist is able to choose which journey to undertake.

Working in collaboration with the harp department of the Royal Northern College of Music Kontz plans to perform Flyways with 20 harpists during Music Day as well as having it set up as an installation-performance by four interchanging harpists throughout the day.

Anthill for ten harps was written in response to the social conduct of ant life and how this could be transposed into the world of sound. Taking inspiration from how a non-hierarchical ant colony is run the composition is written in the same way – with each harp having the same importance within the piece. Each performer is asked to customise their own A1 format score according to a colour scheme which sets individual tempi for the performance for each player.

This 10 minute piece is non-conducted as the harpists follow their own individual journeys through the score. The structure of the piece is however strongly contained and predetermined in that the more open-form meanderings of the harpists are interrupted three times by so-called ‘rains’ and a ‘hymn’ which is played by using the extended technique of pieces of cotton string on the harp strings which creates a beautiful hum.

http://www.catherinekontz.com

http://www.exhibitionroad.com

http://www.nhm.ac.uk

http://www.cbd.int/idb