Apartment House are the ensemble behind numerous fine recordings for Another Timbre, such as the label’s luminous album of chamber works by Laurence Crane and Joseph Kurdika’s “Beauty and Industry”. Their July UK tour features Kurdika’s ’21st Century Music’, alongside pieces by Amnon Wolman, Gavin Bryars, and Perotin the Great (I had to look the last one up; turns out it’s not an ironic contemporary folk-industrial collective, but a composer from the Notre-Dame school of 12th-century music).
The centrepiece of the tour, however, is the première of Vitalija Glovackyte’s ‘We are for a while’, the culmination of her Sound and Music Embedded residency with the ensemble. I first heard Glovackyte’s music at an ACM Ensemble concert, and was intrigued; the promotional video for ‘We are for a while’, and that strangely moving and evocative title, has me sold. The piece has the ensemble abandon their usual instruments and perform by live hacking various discarded electronics scavenged by Glovackyte from recycling centres, derelict buildings, skips, beaches, and alleys.
Here are the dates:
5 July: Manchester, IABF Centre, 8pm (Tickets)
6 July: Birmingham, Vivid Projects, 8pm (Tickets)
7 July: London, Café OTO, 8.30pm (Tickets)
Listing image by Anton Lukoszevieze