Fight, Flight, Freeze webcast

 

A webcast about the power of contemporary classical music – this is how Lonelinoise was launched in 2021, right in the middle of the Covid pandemic. We could not go to the theatres, we could not face our audience, but we could make these videos. We could share our fascination with a wide diversity of music and sound from the last seventy years. And we could ask our friends and colleaugues to share their thoughts, music and skill with us. In this webcast we will especially look at how classical composers from the so-called ‘modern’ era have dealt with their personal crises, and how this affected their music. We also asked three composers who were facing the same crisis as us to write a composition especially for our webcast. 

 

Prologue 

A brief introduction to Giacinto Scelsi and his obsession with the depth of a single tone. 

 

Episode 1: Flight 

Both Claude Vivier and Giacinto Scelsi found themselves in difficult places in their lives. Both of them looked for inspiration in the Far East, and both of them found a way to use their music as a means of dealing with their crises. As a result, the music they wrote is highly personal and exceptionally powerful. During the the 2020 pandemic, Nicholas Moroz, a young composer from the UK, used the crisis to compose an new piece for Lonelinoise, a duet for the english horn and trombone. 

 

Episode 2: Fight 

Music to empower the people! While some composers went inside to search for answers to their crises, others could not remain silent. They spoke out and demanded answers and change from the world around them. Louis Andriessen had to take a stance against the ruling elite, Isang Yun was caught in a lifelong battle between North and South Korea and Trevor Grahl wrote a new piece for Lonelinoise, which explores the futility of social media rants.  

 

Episode 3: Freeze 

Music seemingly has the power to freeze time. In this episode we are looking at composers who stoot still to look at the world directly around them. John Cage had a very unique of looking at music and sound – to his ears any sound could be music, even silence. Or is there no such thing as silence? The pandemic was marked by silence and solitude. This inspired Jonathan Packham to write a new piece for Lonelinoise about slow motion sounds.