Schedule
Day one
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Baudouin Oosterlynck
Baudouin Oosterlynck transforms the Recital Room into a sanctuary for deep listening. Ticket reservation is required on the day for Listening Instruments.
Lauren Sarah Hayes
“Intrepid Scottish improvisor” (The Herald) Lauren Sarah Hayes explores instability, ephemerality and unpredictability through playful and tactile explorations of her hybrid analogue-digital live electronics instrument, which comprises self-built software, voice processing, analogue synths, drum machines and repurposed controllers. Influenced by experimental pop, techno, noise and free improvisation, her 2016 album MANIPULATION was praised by The Wire for its “skittering melodies and clip-clopping rhythms suggesting a mischievous intelligence emerging from this web of wires”. She has toured extensively across Europe and North America, including as part of the BBC’s New Radiophonic Workshop, where she explored innovative approaches to sound and music.
Richard Craig
Mesías MaiguashcaSacateca’s Dance for flute and tape (1993)
Andre Boucourechliev
Ulysse for flute and percussion (1980)
María Cecilia Villanueva
Cielo Gris for solo flute (2023)
Patricia Alessandrini
Il y a plus d'eau que prévu sur la lune for contrabass flute and electronics (2020)
Richard Craig
flute
Jennifer Torrence
percussion
Described as "a primal, at times ecstatic state of Fauvist force" (Gramophone), Glasgow-born Richard Craig has developed a distinctive approach to the flute, collaborating with composers to create new works. A founding member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, he has performed with Ensemble Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien and Riot Ensemble. “Music is the ideal medium to begin a reflection on our surroundings”, he poses. This concert explores themes of transformation, our consideration of the external world, and the alchemical dynamics of music. Let your imagination run riot with the mythological journey of Odysseus, the endless skyline of Cielo Gris, the fusion of materials in Sacateca's Dance, and a tribute to the miraculous eye in the night sky that holds sway over us all.
Beatrice Dillon, Mark Sanders & Rachel Musson with BBC SSO
Beatrice DillonSift: Piano, Vibraphone, Other…
Mark Sanders/Rachel Musson
New collaboration
Drummer/percussionist Mark Sanders has played concerts and festivals across the world and has featured on over 220 vinyl and CD releases. For many years, he’s performed with the UK-based saxophonist and improviser Rachel Musson, who has recently expanded her practice to include composed elements with text, field recordings and sound processing. This performance is a deeply intuitive yet intriguingly unpredictable collaboration with Ilan Volkov and BBC SSO players.
Beatrice Dillon’s first orchestral work translates her distinct vocabulary of synthetic sound and generative systems into the acoustic realm of the orchestra. ‘Sift: Piano, Vibraphone, Other......' was commissioned by Nonclassical in partnership with BBC SSO and Radio 3, premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra. “A gloriously dynamic development of her distinctive technique, dispersing fragments of acoustic orchestral sound around the stage and auditorium like colourful 3D audio fractals — (The Wire Magazine).
Meet the artists - day 1
Your chance to meet and hear about some of the artists and music performed in Day 1 of Tectonics, hosted by BBC Radio 3 presenter and writer Kate Molleson.
Øyvind Torvund’s symphony
Ilan Volkov conductorKjetil Møster saxophone
Jørgen Træen synth & electric guitar
Jennifer Torrence percussion
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Having played the guitar in rock and improvising groups, the eclectic influences of Norway’s fearless composer Øyvind Torvund range from Baroque and folk music to noise, electronics and popular culture. In this 40-minute work (originally written as a site specific work for the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo), Torvund invites the audience to move freely throughout various spaces across the venue: “You can think of the piece as a multilayered festival in itself where various forms of expressions and energies take place at the same time.” Players from the BBC SSO perform alongside percussionist Jennifer Torrence, saxophonist Kjetil Møster, and Jørgen Træen on synth and electric guitar.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 1
Clara Iannottastrange bird — no longer navigating by a star UK Premiere
Timothy McCormack
a vapor (no body, no image) World Premiere
Ty Bouque singer
Ilan Volkov conductor
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
a vapor (no body, no image) is a seance meant to conjure a terrain in which to house an awkward, absent, and collective mourning. Timothy McCormack’s work articulates and reckons with how queer individuals learn of, reconcile, grieve, and hold space for the lost generation of queer and gay individuals who died during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and '90s. What is the source of grief when lived experience was not shared with the dead? How do we grieve a ghost? Soloist Ty Bouque helps to articulate this peculiar and devastating mode of mourning, using the journals of writer and AIDS victim Hervé Guibert.
Inspired by Dorothy Molloy’s lyrical and evocative poem My heart lives in my chest, Clara Iannotta’s work is similarly an exploration of loss. “Some strange flapping bird” drifts from place to place in empty skies without ever landing or finding its destination.
Beatrice Dillon
Known for her innovative work in sound, performance, and installation, London-based musician, Beatrice Dillon, presents new, unreleased experimental electronic work developed since the release of her recent acclaimed albums ‘Seven Reorganisations’ (HI, 2024) and 'Workaround' (PAN, 2020).Day two
Baudouin Oosterlynck
Baudouin Oosterlynck transforms the Recital Room into a sanctuary for deep listening. Ticket reservation is required on the day for Listening Instruments.
Jennifer Torrence
Hanna HartmanMessage from the Lighthouse (2009/2016)
Walter Zimmermann
Riuti: Rodungen und Wüstungen (1981)
Gloria Coates
Ecology 2 (1978) UK Premiere
US-born Jennifer Torrence is a percussionist, composer and artistic researcher based in Oslo, Norway. Storytelling, erasure, and place unite the three works in her programme. Deserted places, sites facing erasure, and their abstracted and fragmented memories receive quiet recognition. Message from the Lighthouse by Hanna Hartman combines field recordings and electronic sound with percussion and found objects, calling for a precision in listening that is wholly unique to Hartman’s music. Riuti from Walter Zimmerman’s cycle, Lokale Muzik, sets a disappearing one-woman marching band into motion as she roll-calls deserted German villages. And Ecology 2 by Gloria Coates is a work for voice, objects, and electronics where children’s fairy tales warn us about the loss of ecosystems. At its premiere in Berlin in 1978, Coates removed the spoken text and retitled the work Between, arguably due to pressure from the coal industry and the government that protected it. Torrence presents the work in its original version: “May the resistance be heard”, she asserts.
New String Collective & Clíona Cassidy
Comprising some of Scotland’s most radical string players, improvisation is at the heart of the New String Collective’s process and practice. Founded in 2023, the group has established a reputation for its mesmerising performances of new graphic scores and instruction-based pieces. Unbound by the hegemony of notation, they’re free to interrogate sound and form, mining the rich sonic landscapes of violin, viola, cello and double bass. For this set, the New String Collective are joined by soprano, composer and experimental vocalist Clíona Cassidy (a regular performer with Scottish Opera and Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra) to perform her anti-song cycle Hiatus, alongside new works devised by members of the Collective.
Jørgen Træen & Kjetil Møster
Kjetil Møster - saxophone, clarinet, electronics, amplifierJørgen Træen - modular synthesizer, sampler, electronics
Producer, musician and mastering engineer Jørgen Træen has collaborated on music and art projects with jazz musician Kjetil Møster for over 20 years. With roots in Bergen’s vibrant music scene and Norway’s rich jazz tradition, they both operate in a cluster of musical directions from popular music genres via contemporary electronic and noise to freely improvised music and jazz. Performing as a duo, they create electroacoustic sets blending improvisation and composed elements, drawing on decades of shared artistic exploration.
This performance will be immediately followed by Bénédicte Davin and Baudouin Oosterlynck.
Bénédicte Davin & Baudouin Oosterlynck
Vocalist and visual artist Bénédicte Davin reimagines two meditative works by Belgian sound artist Baudouin Oosterlynck, blending soundtrack and live voice. In Ronron (1976), Davin’s voice intertwines delicately with eerie, resonant tones created with rattan sliding over piano strings. In Résonances (1978), Oosterlynck originally improvised vocal responses to the reverberations of a gymnasium with a resonance similar to a Romanesque church. Davin’s performance engages these echoes, alternating between counterpoint and harmony, creating an intimate and immersive listening experience.Meet the artists - day 2
Your chance to meet and hear about some of the artists and music performed in Day 2 of Tectonics, hosted by BBC Radio 3 presenter and writer Kate Molleson.BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 2
Hilda DiandaLudus 1 UK Premiere
Sylvia Lim
Moss that holds World Premiere
Micheline Coulombe
Saint Marcoux
Luminance UK Premiere
interval break
Eleanor Cully Boehringer
New work for orchestra World Premiere
Barbara Monk Feldman
The Northern Shore World Premiere
Ilan Volkov conductor
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov presents an ear-opening smorgasbord of orchestral music exploring themes including space, nature, resilience, innovation and humour. The world premiere of Sylvia Lim's composition draws inspiration from the quiet strength of moss and the Japanese art of Kintsugi (mending broken pottery with gold), offering a meditation on healing and renewal. Eleanor Cully Boehringer’s world premiere weaves poetic text, fragments of song and imagined sound, turning small details into expansive musical gestures. Argentine composer Hilda Dianda (born 100 years ago this April) explores playful avant-garde textures, while ‘Luminance’ by Canadian composer Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux contrasts live instruments with electronic timbres to create illuminating soundscapes. In her orchestral version of ‘The Northern Shore’, fellow countrywoman Barbara Monk Feldman evokes the landscape and atmosphere of the northern shores of Canada – a reflection on its vast and desolate beauty.