[short_description]
Hoarse Songs is a new album and performance created by post minimalist composer Andrew Poppy. The piano, electronic sounds, orchestral textures and the voice are the four corners of a circle that Mr Poppy dances in. The new project is an album and a show. It is a recording, a concert and a cinematic happening, all at the same time.
The show was previewed at The Barge House performance space in London in September 2018. It has been described as ‘a Cosmic Opera, a metaphysical waking up echoing the spiritual quest of Solaris’. Its an opera without opera singers or a traditional narrative. But the thematics develop around contemporary ideas and issues: the veiled intimacy of couples, the introspection of place and the fluidity of gender.
Sonic Scene Five is called What Alice Said. What Alice B Toklas said to Gertrude Stein, what John said to Yoko, what George Dyer said to Francis Bacon what Claud Cahun said to Suzanne Malherbe.
“I'm not a child of the revolution” is the first line of Sonic Scene Seven which is called What is This Place? The spirit of place seems to ask “well who are you then?”
What is nature doing when it throws the chromosome dice? Sonic Scene Nine is called XY Song. A scene, a song and a voice disturbed by the fluidity of sex and gender.
Andrew says “Creative work is always an invitation, a conversation, a translation, and a collaboration. The ten pieces are like questions, or a ‘calling out’. A call that the imagination of the audience answers. It’s also how the show has developed. Each Sonic Scene has given rise to a visual answer from ten different visual artists. Some abstract, others humorous. I’m in 5 of them, inhabiting costumes of different kinds and one of them has been specially designed and is more like a sculpture. But there’s no space suit!”
Andrew Poppy is a composer, arranger, musician, performer, record producer, and writer. An artist with a unique body of work, his collaborations mix acoustic and electronic sounds with language, visual images and performance disciplines.
In the 1970s he studied music at Goldsmiths College, London University where he began performing Glass, Riley, Cage and Feldman and composing. He later attended a summer school with John Cage and started collaborating with other musical artists, choreographers, theatre makers and performance artists. He signed to Trevor Horn and Paul Morley’s maverick pop label ZTT releasing his first album The Beating of Wings in 1985. He continues to make projects which evade classification. His new project Hoarse Songs is his 12th album.
Andrew’s recent performances have included festivals in London, Turin, Oporto. He has made guest appearances with the BBC concert orchestra both as pianist and live dub mixer. His 3 albums for ZTT Records in the 1980s have recently been bought by Universal Music.
