Salford Sound Symposium 2
Friday, 30th June 2023 09:30 – 17:00 BST
University of Salford – MediaCityUK, Orange Tower, MediaCity, Salford Quays, Salford, M50 2HE
Please join us for a second sound symposium based at MediaCityUK, Salford. This interdisciplinary event features a range of speakers and practitioners working across film, TV, radio, music, games and installations. The symposium will include live performance and demonstrations of practice-research.
Theory, practice, production, composition, collaboration, and innovation all combined in one unmissable event.
Speakers include: Paul Farrer, Sara Parker, Adam Hart, Alan Williams, Brona Martin, Billy Glew, Naomi Kashiwagi, Giorgio Carlino, Danny Saul, Adam Fowler and Katrina Porteous.
I’ll be speaking about some of my radio-poetry from the last 23 years, including Dunstanburgh, Beach Ride and The Refuge Box (all produced for the BBC by Julian May). The text for those works can be found in my collection Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books 2014). Audio versions of the poems are available as part of the eBook, available from Bloodaxe Books or on Amazon.
You can hear Beach Ride HERE.
I’ll also talk with independent producer Adam Fowler about work we have made together, including Borderers (also in Two Countries), Late Blackbird, Conversations on a Bench and the Inventive podcast.
An essay about Late Blackbird, together with a transcript, is published in Songs of Place and Time (Gaia Project 2021), available HERE.
An excerpt from the Conversations programme is available HERE.
You can listen to the Inventive podcast with Adam’s amazing sound design HERE.
Conversations on a Bench was recorded at Beadnell harbour, Northumberland, in 2016.
The Bench is on the bank above the boat. Photo K. Porteous.
I’ll also talk briefly about my work with inventor and electronic composer Peter Zinovieff (1933-2021).
Peter ran the legendary EMS studio, and used a computer to compose live on stage as early as 1968.
Between 2011 and 2021 we made five performance pieces together for computer and live voice, three of them in surround sound for a Planetarium.
- Horse (about a 3,000 year old chalk figure). Listen HERE.
Also available HERE as an artist’s book and CD, with prints by Olivia Lomenech Gill
- Edge (Moons of the solar system; music created from sounds from space missions)
- Field (Field Theory and the Higgs Mechanism)
- Sun (Solar physics, including sound used to ‘see’ inside Sun; music created from solar data). Watch HERE.
- Under the Ice (Remote sensing techniques in Antarctica; music created from sounds from Antarctic glaciers). More information HERE.
All five pieces are available for live performance. Please contact me via this site for more information.
Borderers (Adam Fowler and Katrina Porteous) was recorded
on the Scottish-English Border in 2002. Photo K. Porteous.
BBC Proms
Saturday 22nd July 2023, 22.15pm
Sage, Gateshead, NE8 2JR
BBC Proms at Sage Gateshead: Night Choir
Journey from dusk to dawn with Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia, Voices of the River’s Edge and massed voices of the North East. Classical and contemporary choral music explores our experiences of night-time – our thoughts, feelings, and dreams as the clock ticks from evening to midnight to morning.
The beginning, middle and end of this BBC Prom feature a brand-new choral commission in three movements, Whin Lands by Kristina Arakelyan. The first two movements take inspiration from night falling across the wild, windswept landscape of Hadrian’s Wall in my poem This Far and No Further. The third movement is inspired by lines from The Refuge Box, set on Holy Island causeway. The Holy Island landscape is linked to that of Hadrian’s Wall geologically: its outcrops of basalt are part of the Whin Sill, hence the title.
Both the texts which Kristina has set were originally radio-poems and can be found in my collection Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books 2014).
Tim Burke conductor
Grace Rossiter conductor
Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia
Voices of the River’s Edge
Massed voices of the North East
katrinaporteous.co.uk 