We’re thrilled to be joining Intermusica for worldwide general management, where we will be managed by Maebh Lehane. More information on the Intermusica’s website here

Our debut album HERE WE ARE is OUT NOW on Delphian Records – buy / stream / watch HERE.

Gramophone Editor’s Choice

Presto Classical Editor’s Choice 

Apple Music 10 Classical Albums of the Month

‘This British group have released a most enticing calling card, advertising the skills of individual musicians and the liveliness and variety of Britain’s composing scene’ – ★★★★ The Times

‘distinctive, witty, arresting songs (…) An imaginative first disc that mirrors our current musical landscape’ –  The Observer (full review here)

‘Hermes are quite an act, boldly entertaining’ – ★★★★★ The Scotsman

‘witty and imaginative (…) joyous and heartbreaking’ – The Guardian (full review here)

‘as delightful an encounter as the ensemble is in real life (…) so many delights on their album, you never know what’s going to happen – it’s great hearing such a variety of composers finding interesting ways of using this ensemble’s unique resources (…) a uniquely engaging ensemble’ – Andrew McGregor, Record Review, BBC Radio 3

‘The Hermes Experiment’s main strength lies in its ability to adapt to the particular needs, demands and peculiarities of each piece contained on this deeply engaging collection: harp, clarinet, soprano and double bass locked in dynamic and synergistic fusion.’ – Gramophone Magazine

‘[HERE WE ARE] will surely be representing Delphian, alongside guitarist Sean Shibe’s Bach set, on many “best of” lists (…) There are many startling things about The Hermes Experiment, beginning with the group’s line-up of soprano voice, clarinet, harp and double bass, which blends so well its singularity ceases to be relevant’ – The Herald (full review here)

‘brilliant album’ – Hannah Peel, Night Tracks, BBC Radio 3

‘buzzing with invention and shimmering with colour’– Apple Music

Our Swayne video was also selected by Gramophone Magazine as video of the day:

We’re thrilled to have won the ROSL Competition for Mixed Ensembles earlier this month. We were awarded £10,000 and will go on to perform at the Gold Medal Final on 30 May 2019 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Their full press release is available here.

The Hermes Experiment is featured in this month’s Classical Music Magazine ahead of our birthday concert next week – you can read the feature online here.

The two songs I’ve written set fragments from two different poems by Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), my favourite Russian poet, who lived a mix of conformism and non-conformism and a life of immense hardship writing prolifically as she went.

The first “I am living simply” (1919)

I am happy living simply
like a clock, or a calendar 

This resonated with me and felt like a universally aspirational sentiment. But there is humour in there too because sometimes it feels like we are regimenting ourselves into simplification almost against our will, sacrificing the beauty of chaos which ultimately is impossible to keep out…

The other fragment is from a poem called “The poem of the end” (1923). I just found it quite simply, sad.

we’ve reached the end of the ending
and there is nothing left to lose
we’ve reached the end of the ending
so I stroke and stroke your face

www.emilyhall.co.uk

Aleksei Gastev was one of the leading poets of the early Soviet Union; in 1922, Nikolay Aseev called him ‘the Ovid of miners and metalworkers’. He also became one of its key labour theorists, founding the Central Institute of Labour which trained over half a million workers in new methods of production, before being purged in 1939. In both aspects of his work, Gastev was obsessed with blurring the lines between human and machine, convinced that this was key to both creativity and productivity. The ten poems in Pack of Orders – the first five of which I have set – describe the creation and operation of what we now might call robots or cyborgs. The piece casts the four musicians as slightly malfunctioning androids, detailing Gastev’s vision with a mixture of cultish monomania and distracted confusion.

I began working on this piece in September of 2016. I had come across the text through my interest in filmmaker Dziga Vertov and composer Arseny Avraamov, who were both influenced by Gastev’s ideas; all three of these figures are pertinent to my research into music, mechanization and urbanization in the 1920s. But, with November’s election in the US, Gastev’s ideas took on a new relevance. The increasing capabilities of machines to do work more efficiently than humans, along with the deliberate weakening of unions, caused job losses and anger – anger redirected towards immigrants or ‘globalism’, with palpable consequences.

Gastev’s vision has not been fully realized – cyborgs have not replaced us – but a century of moving towards it has impacted every part of society. The blind, ruthless drive for increased productivity found in the early Soviet Union has some parallels in contemporary corporations and politicians. The human cost of the former was unspeakable; the cost of the latter, as it causes accelerating inequality and environmental destruction, is as yet undetermined.

‘Pack of Orders’ will be premiered at Kings Place on 16th February

www.joelrust.com

THE HERMES EXPERIMENT: AUDITION NOTICE FOR “A WINTER’S TALE”

Contemporary ensemble The Hermes Experiment (Park Lane Group Young Artists and Winners of Nonclassical’s Battle of the Bands) are seeking 5 actors (3 men & 2 women) to take part in their upcoming project “A Winter’s Tale”.

PROJECT DETAILS

In light of Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary, The Hermes Experiment (harp, clarinet, soprano and double bass) will develop their new interpretation of Shakepeare’s The Winter’s Tale during their residency at Aldeburgh Music in September 2016, to be premiered at the Cockpit Theatre in December 2016.

They will work in close collaboration with director Nina Brazier and composer Kim Ashton, with the aim of highlighting key themes of the play through a condensed version of Shakespeare’s work. Each of the themes will become a ‘movement’ and will involve a different approach to the relationship between text and music.

They will be exploring a new mode of theatre that uses music and musicians as a vital part of the drama. Kim Ashton will lead the development of the music, which will include both improvised and semi-improvised elements and will be a central part of the work, not merely an accompaniment to the play. A group of actors will also be involved in the project, bringing life to Shakespeare’s colourful cast of characters.

www.thehermesexperiment.com

“The performance was meticulously nuanced, witty and chic.” **** The Times

“This clever mix of instruments is more versatile than you might first think.” **** The Observer

“The combination of harp, clarinet, voice and double bass is not one you hear every day, but in the right hands it works brilliantly. The Hermes Experiment who sport this line-up have in a short few years commissioned prodigiously for it, opening a whole new expressive world” The Evening Standard

WORKSHOP AND PERFORMANCE DATES

– Aldeburgh Music Residency: 5-10 September 2016, with a work-in-progress performance on 10 September at an Aldeburgh Music Open Session

– 13 December 2016, The Cockpit, London (premiere)

– Additional performances in 2017 – dates tbc

You would need to be available for the entire duration of the Residency, the premiere, as well as additional rehearsals during the autumn (exact dates tbc).

FEE

– Aldeburgh Residency: travel expenses and accommodation provided

– Rehearsal period and premiere: fees will be confirmed in due course (funding dependent)

– Further performances: fees will be discussed on an individual performance basis

AUDITION DETAILS

16^th June 2016, between 6.45pm-10.15pm – Lower Hall, St Gabriel’s Hall, St Gabriel’s Halls
Churchill Gardens, Pimlico, London, SW1V 3AA

To apply, please email [email protected] by 28 May 2016 with your CV and a short statement explaining why you would like to take part in the production.

We are looking to cast the following:

3 men:

Polixenes

Camillo/Antigonus

Leontes/Shepherd

2 women:

Paulina/Time

Hermione

For the audition, you will need to prepare one monologue/speech taken directly from The Winter’s Tale, and one short modern monologue, and be ready to work on both with the director in the audition.

“The performance was meticulously nuanced, witty and chic.” **** The Times

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/park-lane-group-at-st-johns-smith-square-sw1-rtx3w6czl

“This clever mix of instruments is more versatile than you might first think” **** The Observer

www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/24/park-lane-group-2016-st-johns-smith-square-review

“The combination of harp, clarinet, voice and double bass is not one you hear every day, but in the right hands it works brilliantly. The Hermes Experiment who sport this line-up have in a short few years commissioned prodigiously for it, opening a whole new expressive world” The Evening Standard

“fine performances (…) splendid sense of performance art” Seen and Heard International (Mark Berry)

seenandheard-international.com/2016/04/rewarding-music-and-performances-in-the-park-lane-young-artists-spring-series

‘Kandinsky Studies’

 
In his book ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’ Kandinsky said ‘colour is a power that directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.’

My new graphic score, written bespoke for the Hermes Experiment, responds to Kandinsky’s aesthetic with four short studies: ‘Yellow’, ‘Red’, ‘Blue’ and ‘White’ where I have painted a watercolour image for each colour responding to the emotional qualities Kandinsky assigns to them in his book. He describes yellow as a colour that ‘bursts forth aimlessly in every direction, red as having a ‘determined powerful intensity’, blue as being ‘the typically heavenly colour’ and white as being of a world that is ‘too far above us for the harmony to touch our souls.’ In addition to painting these images I have also annotated the score with further ways in which the musicians can emulate the colours through varying musical considerations such as timbre, rhythm, harmony, shape and dynamic. Whilst I am a synaesthetic composer, naturally linking intervals with colour, I am fascinated by the idea that there may some universal ways in which we can all respond to colour through music.

‘Kandinsky Studies’ will be premièred at The Forge on 16th February. 

Mâh Didam 

This piece endeavours to explore the links between Iranian music and Renaissance Counterpoint. While such musical systems seem wildly divergent, they do in fact share a great deal of common ground. Both are musics concerned with the horizontal rather than the vertical, with melodic lines rather than harmonic progressions, and with the aesthetic and moral primacy of the voice. One key difference between these musics, however, is their tuning systems. While Renaissance counterpoint – at least in its contemporary performances – uses Equal Temperament, Iranian music makes use of a tuning system built on natural perfect fifths and which contains 17 notes in an octave. This piece makes use of both tuning systems side by side, encouraging the listener to directly confront the differences between these musical worlds.

The words in this piece are from a poem by Rahi Mo’ayeri (1909-1968) and are translated as follows:
I saw the moon, it reminded me of your beautiful face.

Mah Didam will be premièred at The Forge on 16th February. 

We were featured in the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary last night: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/londoners-diary-tony-talks-the-tory-language-over-migrants-a3101146.html

We will be giving the première of Stevie Wishart’s piece on 19th April at St John’s Smith Square.

This photograph is all about absence – the gradual disappearance of the lovers from the image, physical contact attempted but not achieved.

Concepts of absence and distance are rich for musical expression, as demonstrated by composers of Romantic song, and the experience of loss is played out in this short piece. The clarinet and soprano begin in wordless intimate polyphony, weaving around each other before coming to rest around a few cycled pitches. Stabbed chords on harp and double bass then imply the breaking of the bond between the two lovers; the clarinet begins to spin upwards and out of sight, the soprano sinking further down while chasing the clarinet’s shadow.

The stabs lengthen and soften, becoming strummed chords over which the soprano mourns her loss in words by Theophile Gautier, a stanza omitted by Berlioz from his setting in the beautiful ‘Absence’ from his Les Nuits d’Êté. The image of the text is of wishing for wings to fly to a distant lover; while the two lovers end on the same note (E flat) they are still separated by an octave; while the clarinet remains on high, the soprano stays stubbornly earthbound while repeating her sobbing ‘Hélas’.

Absence will be premièred at Crypt on the Green on Saturday 20th June.

I was excited and challenged by the brief set me by the Hermes Experiment: to write a piece of music inspired by a photo. I felt there were various ways in which visual aspects of the photo might inspire the music. Moreover, since the photo will be projected on a screen during the performance of the piece, there are rich possibilities for audio-visual interaction – something I’ve always found mysterious and fascinating.

The piece I ended up writing, Predator Fish, is quite sectional in its structure; this, and the poetry which I’ve set, suggests a narrative.  While some of the shade, shape and line of the picture (e.g. the overcast sky) influenced the spacious, harmonically ambiguous opening section, most of the influence of the photo came from the narrative I imagined. I imagined the photo as a scenario of societal oppression – a view influenced by the watchtower-like structure, the resistance graffiti, a same-sex relationship, the clandestine setting of a rooftop. I was moved by the affectionate embrace of the couple. To me it suggested a deep and devoted friendship; mutual support in the face of oppression.

The text I set covers various themes: dance and clubbing in the city, the love of Virginia Woolf for Vita Sackville-West, sex, letting the self ‘drain away’, the effects of beauty on the mind. This compiled text, while wide-ranging in theme, resonated for me with the ‘mood’ of the photo – a mood influenced by my imagined narrative. I compiled the text from poems by the Buddhist poet Yogaratna. As Yogaratna and I are a couple, writing this piece felt like both an exploration and expression of love.

Predator Fish will be premièred at Crypt on the Green on Saturday 20th June.

I really liked the stark web of angles in the photo – where the strands of the lattice connect from our perspective and actually, where the heavier verticals fall, the patterns that can be found, the journeys you can make from bottom to top by following one connection or another.

I analysed a section of the crane to measure lengths and connections, using this data as a source to develop music material – for example, in the opening section the pauses between chords relate to the distances between selected points along the crane.

I imagined the piece as a slowly moving gaze, starting at the bottom of the photo then gradually working up and taking in the whole picture, with the hand layered in and softly disrupting the bold, hectic order of the crane.

Inhabiting Sky will be premièred at Crypt on the Green on Saturday 20th June.