Entr’acte: Bloody Sirens
Musarc is going to Antwerp
Saturday 3 October 2015, 2–6pm
Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp
Event Archive
Musarc and Melanie Pappenheim are going to Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp, to record four of Neil Luck’s works written for the choir between 2010 and 2015 with avant-garde music label Entr’acte. The recording takes place in the exhibition spaces of the gallery in the form of a half-day-long performance open to the public.
Neil Luck is a composer and performer and director based in London. He has written for a range of soloists and ensembles in the UK and abroad, and presented work at music venues, festivals and galleries internationally including the ICA, Kings Place, Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, LSO St. Lukes, BBC Cut & Splice festival, in Vilnius as part of the 2009 Capital of Culture celebrations, the Tokyo Experimental Festival, and on BBC Radio 3. As a curator and producer Neil has organised a number of events and festivals which reflect his interests in live performance. This has included Notations and The Voice and Nothing More in collaboration with Sam Belinfante at the Slade Research Centre, a mini festival held in an Old Police Station with squib-box, Timeloop; a two-day festival of interactive and participatory live art at the Tate Britain, a six part radio series for Resonance FM, and many more smaller gigs and happenings.
Since 2010, Neil has written three pieces for Musarc – Misty (2010), Namesaying (2013), and Any’s Responses (2015). For our performance and recording at Extra City, Neil has composed a new work, Bloody Sirens (2015), a report from an imaginary baseball match which conceives of the singers as individuals, rather than a singing 'mayuss', who read from a score that includes a skull and plenty of errors and ellipses …
Entr’acte
Music label Entr’acte and its founder Allon Kaye played an important role in the early years of Musarc. The choir's first concerts featured contributions and commissions from some of the label’s eclectic pool of artists, including Helena Gough, Marc Behrens, Kallabris and Esther Venrooy. Both Marc and Esther taught masterclasses at Field Studies in 2010 and 2011. Many projects and ideas developed from these early collaborations and influenced the development of Musarc’s characteristic curatorial and artistic direction.
The label is now based in Antwerp, where Musarc is travelling early October to record four works commissioned from artist/composer Neil Luck between 2008 and 2015, and a new work composed for the occasion.