The word immersive is over-used. But listening to new recordings of Milton Babbitt’s “Philomel” is a disorientating, vertiginous experience. The listener finds themselves plunged, instantly, into an all-encompassing sound world in which bloops and gurgles of electronic sound appear to come from all possible angles, anchored by the central node of Juliet Fraser’s soaring solo […]
Author Archives: Robert Barry
Posted inInterview
Uncanny Songs
Before she moved to London as a third-year undergraduate student less than a decade ago, Na’ama Zisser had never even been to the opera. This week sees the production of her very own, “Mamzer Bastard,” by London’s Royal Opera House at the Hackney Empire. Taking place within an orthodox Hasidic community and featuring Jewish cantorial […]
Posted inInterview
In Fuzzy Color
Jessica Cottis has always had a hypersensitivity to sound. As she walks into the cafe at the British Film Institute cinema to meet me, she is acutely aware of little noises—like the man at a table on the right tapping away at his laptop keyboard. She describes this sound to me with a harsh burst […]
Posted inInterview
Degrees of Invention
George Benjamin was once the boy wonder of British classical music. A composer at nine, he became star pupil to Olivier Messiaen in his teens, the youngest ever composer to see his music performed at the Proms while still a student. And then, for a long time, nothing. After a brief stint at Pierre Boulez’s […]
Posted inInterview
Degrees of Density
“99 percent of the day, we are in the thinking mode,” Peter Ablinger tells me across a table in the lobby of our hotel in Bergen. “And in opposition to that, if we decide now to be silent for a few seconds. Just…” His voice drifts off and he raises his eyebrows in anticipation. For […]