Latest news with #BCMG
The Guardian
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
BCMG/Yamada review – flutter tonguing, fragrant dissonances and frogs
In the foyer, a family workshop was in full swing. A huddle of under-12s listened intently to Japan-born, Britain-based composer Dai Fujikura. Several delighted non-children sidled up to tuned percussion instruments laid out on a table. There were instructions and paper for making an origami frog. These were cheery attempts to contextualise BCMG's programme: an all-Japanese first half by Misato Mochizuki and Fujikura – including the world premiere of the latter's new Shō Concerto – followed by Korean composer Unsuk Chin's Xi for Ensemble and Tape. But hold fire on the east-meets-west cliches. Fujikura moved to the UK aged 15 and first encountered the shō at Darmstadt in his 20s. As he explained in a pre-concert talk, Japanese instruments are all 'new' to him. The shō sounds like a tiny organ with 17 bamboo 'pipes'. In Fujikura's concerto, the bright, laser-intense timbre of soloist Yuki Deai was the trigger for orchestral pitch- and tone-matching, sounds passed from shō to violins and upper woodwind. Just occasionally, the orchestra responded with a rich, bass-weighted roar or a full-voiced chord. The shō mostly layered notes in delicate clusters (the dissonances never more than fragrant) while passages of flutter tonguing and a driving rhythmic tattoo provided contrast. Under conductor Kazuki Yamada, the effect was beautiful, if rather amorphous. Even Fujikura seemed surprised that BCMG had programmed An Anthem (2020), his arrangement of the Japanese national anthem for a long-ago cancelled event, though the musicians took care with its airy orchestration. The UK premiere of Mochizuki's Etheric Blueprint (2006) was more persuasive. From a sample of water dripping, it developed into a beguiling compendium of analogue and electronic sounds, many quietly intricate (think ASMR avant la lettre). Chin's Xi was radical when new in 1998, combining tape and live musicians to explore the territory between 'noise' and pitch. Today, the work's use of spatial audio (clicks and clanks, breaths and patters sliding between six speakers) remains immersive. But in this performance, driven by conductor Nicolò Foron in a distracting slow-motion robotic dance, its relentless bittiness felt like the 'new music' of another age: distant beyond geography.
BBC News
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Birmingham reggae concert to mark Bob Marley's 80th birthday
A special concert celebrating Birmingham's reggae history is to take place on what would have been Bob Marley's 80th Reggae Origins concert will see Basil Gabbidon and musicians from Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) join forces on Thursday evening at the city's Town reggae singer Marley died of cancer at the age of 36 on 11 May founding member of the Handsworth-born reggae band Steel Pulse, said the musician would "probably be as surprised as we are" that the genre was growing and still going strong. "It's amazing how it's just spread across the world," he said of the reggae scene."When you hear Bob Marley's music, it's always been there."The classical and reggae fusion concert will see strings and a full band performing brand new arrangements of songs from the Birmingham Reggae scene, alongside some of Bob Marley's biggest said he had initially approached BCMG a few years ago to try and put the project together but there was no funding for it at the time."It's something I'm looking forward to doing," he said of the concert."I love fusion and I think it's something that needs to be put across, that all music basically is one music."Roots reggae band Steel Pulse was formed in 1975 by school friends who attended Handsworth Wood Boys group became first non-Jamaican act to win the Grammy Award for Best Reggae spoke about the Catch A Fire album by Marley's band The Wailers and a track called Concrete Jungle, which he said inspired him to "take guitar seriously" and to start playing the instrument."If it wasn't for that album, I don't think Steel Pulse would have been born," he said."If you listen to Steel Pulse there's a lot of fusion going on in there," he added. "There's funk, a bit of rock... pop."Gabbidon added the Windrush Generation also played an important part in bringing Reggae from Jamaica."They brought the culture, you could say the music culture," he explained."We're in an age now, in Britain, in Birmingham, where's there's a cross-culture thing going on. We're fusing all those various cultures together." Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
