News

On Monday 20 November, Trinity Laban’s CoLab ensemble, composition alumni quartet Bastard Assignment, and Trinity Laban’s Head of Composition will premiere new works.

In November the international Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//) returns to celebrate new music and related contemporary art forms.

Swiss pianist-composer Nik Bärtsch, along with choreographer and TL contemporary dance teacher Geneviève Grady, leads the Trinity Laban CoLab Ensemble in Urban Groove. The collaborative project is a multi-layered exploration by musicians and dancers of detailed polyrhythm, improvisation and contemporary dance.

Nik Bärtsch, who has a residency at Trinity Laban, comments –

 “Urban Groove is a project developed together with the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. A team of musicians with various backgrounds lies in the integrative nature of this music. This nature and the string rhythmic energy of the music is the touching point for combining it with dance. The result is a modular ritual for a group organism.”

For two weeks each year, CoLab provides a place to take risks, be creative and experiment within a rich and supportive environment. Over 800 students from across the Faculties of Dance and Music come together to create, develop and rehearse projects without the distraction of any other learning activities or performances. 

Four TL alumni are also appearing at the festival, in the shape of experimental quartet Bastard Assignments. This collective of composer-performers Edward Henderson, Josh Spear, Caitlin Rowley and Timothy Cape came together in 2011 at Trinity Laban. At Huddersfield they are performing a programme of their own brand new works.

This year’s adventurous programme also sees the world premiere of Harmonic Canon, a two-part work by Trinity Laban’s Head of Composition Dominic Murcott in collaboration with American virtuosic percussionists arx duo. The immersive piece for harmonic canon and rare auxiliary metal percussion instruments is a culmination of four years development and celebrates an array of familiar and unfamiliar sounds. The “harmonic canon” itself is an extraordinary, computer-designed half-ton double bell, built specifically by sculptor and musician Marcus Vergette. The canon is not only an instrument but a piece of public art, currently housed in the courtyard of King’s Charles Court at Trinity Laban.

For more details about hmcf// and to book, visit http://hcmf.co.uk/

Find out more about studying composition at Trinity Laban here.