A listening session and interview with composer / improviser Stephen Chase. Stephen and Josh met at Glasgow’s Tectonics Festival to chat about various works. Listen to Stephen’s works for natural harmonics on the guitar. That’s an unusual thing, to make a work for just natural harmonics on the guitar, particularly one that’s twenty minutes long. In this work you’ll hear beating and just the pure sound of harmonics, but eventually melodies emerge, and melodies that are surprisingly coherent to my ear. We also listen to Taku Sugimoto and Minami Saeki, and the famous Alvin Lucier.
Listen to more of Stephen’s music on Bandcamp.
Stephen Chase composes, improvises, and walks quite a lot. His work veers erratically between generative ideas and following his nose, exploring, amongst other things, aspects of group interaction, acoustical phenomena, and the passing of time. Co-conspirators and performing comrades have included Exaudi, Quatuor Bozzini, Philip Thomas, Choir Brevis, Red Note Ensemble, Music We’d Like to Hear, CoMA, Ryoko Akama, Patrick Farmer, Ross Parfitt, Joseph Kudirka, Coastguard All Stars, Mick Beck, Taku Sugimoto, piggle, Luke Poot, and Freaking Glamorous Teapot. He is co-editor of Changing the System: The Music of Christian Wolff (Ashgate/Routledge), and convened the occasional performance series, mon se taire truc. After studying Music, English and Philosophy in Northampton he eventually arrived in Sheffield where he studied for an MMus in Composition with George Nicholson and a PhD on improvised music with Eric Clarke. He has lived in Scotland for the past 5 years.
If you enjoyed this interview with composer / improviser Stephen Chase, you might enjoy the episodes with Natalia Beylis and John Dieterich and Raven Chacon.
