Bringing the foremost mechanical musical instrument makers and performers to Worcester.
Soundings is a yearlong programme of events funded through Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants and will run as part of the 2022-23 Worcester Music Festival season.
Hosted in the beautiful Georgian St Swithun’s Church, Soundings will welcome artists to deliver a series of Show & Tell sessions and performances.
Soundings #5 | Saturday 23rd September 2023
The fifth Soundings will celebrate experimental mechanical music and all that has been witnessed over the past year.
Expect wonderment and maybe even a little dancing as we welcome Dead Plants & Living Objects (Rie Nakajima & Pierre Berthet), followed by Graham Dunning’s Mechanical Techno!
Tickets for this event cover the full evening. If you are low/unwaged, you are invited to pay what you can by donating upon arrival, subject to availability. No questions asked.
Doors will open at 5.30pm to allow you time to purchase refreshments and take your seat.
Line-up:
Mechanical Techno
Graham Dunning’s work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. In this Mechanical Techno live set, he uses a standard DJ turntable as a sequencer, sound source and ramshackle engine, building a spinning contraption in real-time to make wonky and weird dance music.
Graham Dunning by Julien Kerduff
Dead Plants & Living Objects
Tin cans, whistles, locomotive suspension springs, porcelain bowls, compressor top bells, ping pong balls, agave dry leaves, sponges, steel wires, branches, paper foils, plastic bags, silver papers, pink gloves, piano, balloons, buckets, feathers, water, scraps, pebbles, flower pots, guitar, metal tubes, paulownia tree seeds, pearls, bamboo sticks, logs, bones, stones, filter queens…
Rie Nakajima and Pierre Berthet have been creating various ways to vibrate things so that their acoustic shadows dance around invisible air volumes that reshape constantly, move in space, and enter the most secret places inside ourselves. A way to get closer to things inherent spirits is to listen to them. Eventually, encouraging them to produce sounds and resonate by various means: to hit, caress, shake, beat, scrape, scratch, claw, boil, clap, rattle, rock, throw, move, magnetize, clamp, cook, pinch, galvanize, motorize, bow, blow, pluck, heath up, let flow, freeze, drop, drip, connect, roll, mix, extend, sing…
Dead Plants & Living Objects
We are also interested in hearing from any local musical instrument makers who would like to show their work as part of a short ‘open session’ at each event. Please complete the contact form to register your interest.
“Real cool & imaginative – more of this in Worcester please!” – Rosanna
!PLUS! Sunday 24th September!
Mechanical Techno Workshop
Join Graham Dunning for a free workshop where you can explore the design and creation of the modified records he uses with his Mechanical Techno performances.
Participants will make records and experiment with them to hear the results and build a loop/track.
We have limited space on this workshop and are still working out the finer details of it, but please complete the contact form below to register your interest / ask any questions.
Please complete the enquiry form below to register your interest
Support for this project has come from Severn Arts with investment from the Arches Worcester project, which is funded by the Cultural Development Fund – a DCMS / Arts Council England fund.
