The Excitement of New Music

SPNM- New Works by Chris Litherland and Charlie Usher
BBC Philharmonic/James Macmillan

Contemporary music. Argh. It's something we are all exposed to now and then, whether by chance or intentionally. Maybe flicking through the radio waves you happen to chance upon Radio 3 to hear the esoteric musings of a Russian composer explaining his use of algorithms in his latest 'Structure' for Voice, Jawharp, Bagpipes and 111 bassoons. Why the obscurity? Why complexity over sensuality?

"You're listening to BBC Radio 3, and if you didn't know what that was, maybe you should consider changing stations".

However, this evening's concert, organised by the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM), was a reminder that new music is still something to get excited about, no confused and intimidated by. Perhaps because both the new works were by young, unestablished composers in their early twenties, they came across as honest and without the precious self-awareness of many contemporary composers.

The performance took place in the bowels of the BBC monolith on Manchester's Oxford Road. It was a recording/performance of new works by two promising young British composers Chris Litherland and Charlie Usher, performed by the Manchstser's world-renowened BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Scottish composer/conductor James Macmillan.

Litherland's piece, 'Funferall', could be described as a rollicking funeral romp. His dead-pan Scots sense of humour shone through in a score which combined the stream of consciousness rantings of James Joyce set to music by a drunken Gustav Holst, trying his inebriated best to recall the founding principles of orchestration yet somehow getting carried away by the occasion.

Manchester student Charlie Usher aimed to emulate the aesthetics of a looming Rothko mural in his 'Rothko Monody'. All sense of proportionality and rationality became consumed in a soundscape of intruding dissonances and melodic distortions; a potent expression of the psychological experience of a Rothko canvas.

With so much time spent celebrating the works of composers of times past, in periods of history which feel alien to the modern listener, it is so exciting to hear music in the here and now which you can engage with and be inspired by.

Hail to the Chief!

Charlie Dark's African Beats Project- Contact Theatre, Manchester

140 words by Shakespeare himself would not do justice to Blacktronica pioneer Charlie Dark’s latest cross-over project. A heady brew of talking drums, chants, dance and conga wizardry from Richard Olatunde and the Nigerian Chief Udoh Essiet, part of the original Fela Kuti band in the 80s; the heavy afro-blues lines and FX pedal colourations of the mercurial Brit-jazz guitarist David Okumu; the Rhodes flavourings of Nu-Jazz legend and London DJ Mark de Clive-Lowe, all grooving along to Charlie Dark’s chunky electro-beats and bass-lines.

A masterful metamorphosis through jazzy hip-hop, highlife and muscular afro-beat, and although there was an urban sheen of London electro-edginess, the unpretentious West- African roots of the genre remained intact: In the end it was simply a case of standing up, saluting the chief and dancing. Stop writing.