Deep Time
●●● A festival of new music ●●●

For too long, the climate fight has been limited to scientists and policy experts. While we need their skills, we also need so much more. When I survey the field, it’s clear that what we desperately need is more artists.

Mary Heglar

 

Deep Time is Fruitmarket’s first festival of new music featuring commissions and performances from some of the leading radical and experimental composers, musicians and improvisors working today. They are brought together in the context of deep time to explore ideas of time and temporality, stasis and movement, provocation and play, ritual and activism in art and music, drawing their inspiration from geology, philosophy, popular culture, the natural world, and with the need for art to engage with the reality of the climate crisis.

The festival will premiere two inventive new commissions by Germany-based Croatian composer Sara Glojnarić – most recently the winner of the Ernst von Siemens Förderpreis 2023, Erste Bank Composition Award and Darmstadt’s Kranichstein Music Prize – and Dundee-based Japanese composer and improvisor Shiori Usui – a BBC Proms commissioned composer and recipient of a 2018 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists – as part of four days of performance, improvisation, talks, late night DJ sets and curated playlists that will open up Fruitmarket to some of the most innovative and boundary-challenging new music being made today.   

In partnership with the Sir Charles Lyell Collection, Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh and Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh  

●●● Performers ●●●

Angela Wai Nok Hui | Yshani Perinpanayagam | p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r (Jenni Hogan, Rosie Middleton, Katherine Tinker, Helen Whitaker) | Plus Minus Ensemble (Mark Knoop, Alice Purton, Vicky Wright) | Simone Seales | Pat Thomas | Katherine Tinker

 

●●● Composers ●●●

Uri Agnon | Laurence Crane | George Crumb | Davíð Brynjar Franzson | Sara Glojnarić**^ | Esin Gunduz* | Jenni Hogan** | Bernhard Lang | Liza Lim | Jessie Marino | Claudia Molitor | Njabulo Phungula | Max Syedtollan** | Berglind María Tómasdóttir | Shiori Usui**^ | Gillian Walker** | Jennifer Walshe

*UK premiere
**world premiere
^ commissioned by Fruitmarket for Deep Time

 

Tickets for individual nights are free or pay what you can with a suggested donation of £10, or you can book a four night festival pass by donating £25 here. All details below.

Download the full programme here

● 6–7pm: Sara Glojnarić in conversation with Kate Molleson 

 

Ahead of the premiere of her new work commissioned by Fruitmarket and p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r, composer Sara Glojnarić will be in conversation with journalist and author Kate Molleson, presenter of BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show and author of the award-winning book Sound Within Sound: A History of Radical Twentieth Century Composers (Faber, 2022).  

● 7.30–8.30pm: p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r // d.e.e.p.t.i.m.e @ f.r.u.i.t.m.a.r.k.e.t

 

p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r present a programme for Deep Time that explores the fragility of stasis, slowness, and the natural world amid the clamour of clickbait, short attention spans and the Information Age. From the disparate to the hyperconnected, the timeless to the ever-changing, the audience will be drawn from internal moments to an extroverted and hyperactive present.

Through the lens of selected composers whose themes include deep listening, movement, popular culture and ritual, p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r invite the audience to pay attention to the quiet as well as the noise, and experience minute and sometimes frantic changes in their bodies alongside more spacious meditations. The programme opens with a new work, seconds, minutes, hours, eons by composer Sara Glojnarić – commissioned for Deep Time by Fruitmarket and p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r – which contextualises the concept of deep time by making seamless jumps from the Big Bang to Brexit through a hybrid form that combines a concert scenario with scripted reality and musiktheater, to reflect on the history of time through the eyes of a millennial in a post-internet world.

  

Programme 

Sara Glojnarić seconds, minutes, hours, eons, 2023 (new commission for Fruitmarket, world premiere)  

Berglind María Tómasdóttir My Favourite Things, 2023 (UK premiere)  

Esin Gunduz A Sense of Energy, 2018 (UK premiere)  

Jenni Hogan Gregor, 2023 (world premiere) 

Jennifer Walshe EVERYTHING YOU OWN HAS BEEN TAKEN TO A DEPOT SOMEWHERE, 2013  

Jessie Marino Jesus fucking Christ Linda, 2020  

 

● 8.30–10pm:

Join us in the bar for drinks and late night DJ/curated playlists by musicians in the programme

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Book tickets
Download the pre show information here

● 7.30–9pm Pat Thomas / Angela Wai Nok Hui / Simone Seales

Fruitmarket presents an evening of improvisation brought together around the theme of deep time featuring pianist Pat Thomas, percussionist and multi-disciplinary artist Angela Wai Nok Hui, and cellist and improvisor Simone Seales.

● 9–10pm: 

Join us in the bar for drinks and late night DJ/curated playlists by musicians in the programme

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

Book tickets
Download the pre show information here

● 7.30–8.30pm: Yshani Perinpanayagam and Katherine Tinker: Provocation vs Play 

With society’s ever-increasing political polarisation, the temptation to shout louder in order to reach those who feel ideologically far from us is immense. However, as the battles over the climate crisis continue to rage on, it is clear that this combative communication structure often results in those in opposition feeling more defensive of their existing view.   

In this concert, Yshani Perinpanayagam and Katherine Tinker will explore an alternative way forward, turning to art for one of its strongest powers: bringing people together, through cooperation, collaboration and play. It is no mistake that we play games and play music; the idea of play can make concepts too messy for words far more accessible. Play is connection. Play demands concentration, imagination and innovation, the very qualities that can lead us towards solutions to the challenges that face us today. 

The programme will start with George Crumb’s epic Celestial Mechanics [Makrokosmos IV] Cosmic Dances for Amplified Piano in which a rich and expansive kaleidoscope of sound is created, exploring the timelessness of the universe.The programme then moves to the urgency of the present moment: Claudia Molitor’s Polymer Hauntings is a requiem to fossil fuel, using one of its most day-to-day, visible manifestations: plastic. Ideas of activism, cooperation and play are then investigated in pieces by Max Syedtollan, Gillian Walker, Njabulo Phungula, and finally in Uri Agnon’s Put Your Hands Together [for late capitalism]: light-hearted and mischievous in its use of a simple gesture – a clap – to affect change.

 

Programme 

George Crumb Celestial Mechanics [Makrokosmos IV] Cosmic Dances for Amplified Piano, 1979  

Claudia Molitor Polymer Hauntings, 2022 

Max Syedtollan Electric Organ Duo, 2023 (world premiere) 

Njabulo Phungula Playground Postcard, 2020

Gillian Walker Corridor, 2023 (world premiere) 

Uri Agnon Put Your Hands Together [for late capitalism], 2021

 

● 8.30–10pm:

Join us in the bar for drinks and late night DJ/curated playlists by musicians in the programme

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

Book tickets
Download the pre show information here

● 7.30–8.30pm Plus Minus Ensemble: Morphing Time 

Plus Minus Ensemble presents a programme that invites the listener into contact with the material nature of sound, rather than what it represents. The evening opens with the premiere of Dundee-based Japanese composer Shiori Usui’s commission written for Plus Minus Ensemble while Usui was composer-in-residence for Deep Time in the archive of nineteenth-century Scottish geologist Charles Lyell, in a partnership between Fruitmarket and the University of Edinburgh.  

Usui’s new work explores the layering of instrumental and electronic sound, drawing on the theory of uniformitarianism established by Lyell – the theory that changes in the Earth’s crust during geological history have resulted from the action of continuous and uniform processes – and inspired by a rock specimen collected by Lyell which holds the impressions of raindrops from millions of years ago. Developing this sound world, Franzson’s time-stretching work slows down the body and mind to draw one into the grain of sound. Lim’s duo is titled after the Viking rune symbolising fertility and imagines a ritualistic creation of sound itself, while Crane sustains the most elemental of musical objects to create a feeling of timelessness and space. Closing the evening, Lang’s Game series creates a dynamic and reactive environment for the performers who negotiate an overlapping stack of interacting loops. 

 

Programme 

Shiori Usui Morphing Time, 2023 (new commission for Fruitmarket, world premiere) 

Liza Lim Inguz, 1996  

Davíð Brynjar Franzson Ideation #2.1, 2018  

Laurence Crane Riis, 1996 

Bernhard Lang GAME 5-4-2, 2019  

 

● 8.30–10pm:

Join us in the bar for drinks and late night DJ/curated playlists by musicians in the programme

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

Book tickets
Download the pre show information here

 

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

Book four night festival pass

Other events looking at the Charles Lyell Collection are: 

The Recent
Eglė Budvytytė, Helen Cammock, Dorothy Cross, Regina de Miguel, Mikala Dwyer, Nicholas Mangan, Angelica Mesiti, Otobong Nkanga, Katie Paterson, Micol Roubini and Simon Starling
At Talbot Rice Gallery, opening preview: Friday 27.10.23, 6-8pm 
28.10.23–17.02.24
The Recent takes us into a conceptual world of geological, evolutionary, human and environmental time, exploring painting, sculpture, film, photography, tapestry, installation and archives that show what art can do to stretch the human imagination, and situate our actions and impact in a deep, future-oriented timeframe.

 

Time Traveller: Charles Lyell at Work 
Exhibition Gallery, University of Edinburgh Main Library
27.10.23–30.03.24
Today we understand the earth as an interconnected system involving life and its environment, including the atmosphere, oceans, ice, volcanoes, and the rocks of the crust. How do we comprehend forces that operate on global scales and deep in the past, beyond the capacities of human observation? How do we think about the relation between humans and animals? Can we establish a science that transcends deep divides of religion, race, culture, and politics? 

This exhibition explores these questions through the work of a key figure in establishing this planetary vision, the geologist and science writer Charles Lyell (1797–1875), revealing how he  travelled to gather evidence, and collaborated with others. For the first time, Lyell’s comprehensive archive is reunited with his collected fossils, specimens, and published books held at the University of Edinburgh.