James Saunders (composer) explained

James Saunders
Birth Place:Kingston upon Thames, England
Genre:Experimental
Occupation:Composer

James Saunders (born 1972) is a British composer and performer of experimental music. He is Professor of Music and Head of the Centre for Musical Research at Bath Spa University.

Early life

Born in Kingston upon Thames, England, Saunders studied at the University of Huddersfield (1991–94) and then with Anthony Gilbert at the Royal Northern College of Music (1994–96). In 1998, he was a participant at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse where he was awarded a scholarship prize.[1] He participated again in 2000 and 2002.

Career

In 2001, he was a selected composer at the Ostrava New Music Days.[2] He held composition residencies at the Experimental Studio fur Akustische Künst in Freiburg in 2003 and 2007.[3]

His music has been played at international festivals, including Bludenz Tage fur zeitgemäßer Musik,[4] Brighton Festival, BMIC Cutting Edge,[5] Borealis,[6] Darmstadt,[7] Donaueschingen Festival,[8] Gothenburg Arts Sounds,[9] Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival,[10] Inventionen Berlin,[11] The Kitchen, Music We'd Like to Hear,[12] Ostrava New Music Days, Rainy Days,[13] Rational Rec,[14] Roaring Hooves, Spitalfields_Music,[15] SPOR,[16] Ultima,[17] and Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik[18]

Saunders' music has been performed internationally by ensembles and musicians including Apartment House, Arditti Quartet, asamisimasa, Sebastian Berweck, ensemble chronophonie, duo Contour, Rhodri Davies, Exaudi, Nicolas Hodges, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten, Plus-minus ensemble, Psappha New Music Ensemble, ensemble recherche, Suono Mobile, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, and 175 East.

He is active as a performer of experimental music, notably in the duo Parkinson Saunders with Tim Parkinson and as director of the ensemble Material at Bath Spa University.

Saunders currently serves as a Professor of Music and as the Head of the Centre for Musical Research at Bath Spa University.[19] He is the co-author, with John Lely, of Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation.[20] His research interests include open forms, notation, group behaviours, instrumentalisation, series and modularity. His interviews with composers and improvisers[21] [22] focus on their working methods.

Music

Saunders' work explores modular[23] and serial structures and uses open forms.[24] Series such as #[unassigned] (2000–9)[25] and divisions that could be autonomous but that comprise the whole (2009–11) adopt a variable structure, comprising a selection of modules that can be combined in multiple ways to make new configurations for each performance. His music uses extended instrumental techniques and found objects as a means of exploring the sonic properties of materials.[26] It is “predominantly quiet, with sustained tones, often on the edge of inaudibility, interspersed with shorter sounds, all produced by an instrumentarium that mixes conventional musical instruments with a range of low-tech sound sources”.[27] He used interpersonal cueing systems to control the way his music is structured (things whole and not whole, 2011), and made distributed pieces that allow collaborative input from others (distribution study, 2011).[28]

Selected works

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Saunders, James – JetztMusik – SWR2. swr.online.
  2. Web site: Rezidents. web-evolution.
  3. http://www.swr.de/-/id=8126662/property=download/nid=788792/ebp5f6/40-jahre-exp-brosch.pdf Experimental Studio des SWR
  4. Web site: Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik. 20 December 2014.
  5. Web site: BBC Hear and Now. BBC. 20 December 2014.
  6. Web site: Borealis 2009 Program. Borealis Festival. 20 December 2014.
  7. Web site: Heidenreich. Achim. Mit Stecknadel und Heckenschere: Der Alltag hält Einzug bei den 40. Darmstädter Ferienkursen für Neue Musik. Neue Musikzeitung. October 2000 . 20 December 2014.
  8. Web site: Komponist: James Saunders. Donaueschinger Musiktage. 20 December 2014.
  9. Web site: 2005 Göteborg Art Sounds. Göteborg Art Sounds. 20 December 2014.
  10. Web site: From Scratch. hcmf. 20 December 2014.
  11. Web site: Inventionen 2002 – Programmübersicht. Inventionen. 20 December 2014.
  12. Web site: 2006. Music We'd Like to Hear. 20 December 2014.
  13. Web site: Rainy Days 2013. Rainy Days. 20 December 2014.
  14. Web site: The Rational Rec Gala Musical Finale. Rational Rec. 20 December 2014.
  15. Web site: Familiar/Unfamiliar. Spitalfields Music. 20 December 2014.
  16. Web site: you say what to do. SPOR Festival. 20 December 2014.
  17. Web site: Ultima 2004. Ultima. 20 December 2014.
  18. Web site: Composer Archive. Kulturforum Witten. 20 December 2014.
  19. Web site: Bath Spa University – School of Music and Performing Arts. bathspa.ac.uk.
  20. Book: John. Lely. John Lely. James. Saunders. [{{google books |plainurl=y |id=YpevcQAACAAJ}} Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation]. 3 May 2012. Bloomsbury Academic. 978-1-4411-7310-2.
  21. Saunders, J (2009) Fourteen musicians. In: Saunders, J, ed. The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music. Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington Vermont, pp. 221–368.
  22. Web site: interviews. James Saunders.
  23. Saunders, J. (2008). "Modular Music", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 46/1 (Winter 2008): 152–193. Reprinted as: "Viefalt an Konfigurationen. Modulare Musik" (trans. M. Lichtenfeld), , 130 (August 2011): 58–77.
  24. Nyfeller, M. (2011). "Konzeptionelle Spiele. Der Engländer James Saunders", MusikTexte, 130 (August 2011): 53–57.
  25. Ryan, D. (2003). Zeitmaschinen: Die englischen Komponisten Bryn Harrison, Tim Parkinson und James Saunder. Dissonanz, #82 (August 2003): 20–5.
  26. Saunders, J. (2013). Specific Objects? Distributed approaches to sourcing sonic materials in open form compositions. Contemporary Music Review, 32/5: 473–484.
  27. Fox, C. (2008) James Saunders, Grove Music Online, [Accessed 19 October 2014]
  28. Nicolai, O. (2011). Escalier du Chant: James Saunders, distribution study #1 [accessed 3 April 2013]

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