Andy Holden / Latitude Festival 2012 / Friday 3rd August

Andy Holden ‘s monumental sculpture, Unquiet Grave, appeared in the woods at this year’s Latitude music festival in Suffolk as part of Latitude Contemporary Art .

Looming five metres from the ground this huge wooden structure forced the gaze of festival goers upward and into the depth of its cavernous mouth. Painted boards wrapped haphazardly around both the outside and the inside, pinned in a static whirlwind as if trying to summon the energy to cough out one final, resounding word. It was, of course, mute. Touching on ideas surrounding scale, amplification and the obsolete, Holden’s sculpture is a monument to a dying object, the megaphone. At one point a critical tool in the distribution of information and for amplifying the power of the voice, it has been condemned in the age of digitalisation and social networking to become a defunct, soundless form.

Andy Holden’s band The Grubby Mitts also performed twice on the In The Woods stage during the festival. Watch a video of them performing their new single Standard live at Latitude below. The single is available on the Lost Toys Records website.

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Andy Holden and David Raymond Conroy’s stage adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men will be at the ICA from 30-31st August 2012. Find out more and book tickets on the ICA website.

The Grubby Mitts will be performing at Wysing Arts Centre ‘s Space Time music festival on 1st September 2012.

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Image: Courtesy the artist

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The Grubby Mitts will be performing at Wysing Arts Centre’s Space Time music festival on 1st September 2012.
Andy Holden’s exhibition Chewy Cosmos Thingly Time was at Kettle’s Yard in 2011.

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Offsite events / Wysing’s festival of art and music / Tuesday 31st July

Don’t miss Space-Time: And If It Was It Can’t Be Is, Wysing’s festival of art and music on Saturday 1st September.   Titled by artist Mark Titchner, who will play a live set by musician Alexander Tucker, it includes three stages of live music, spoken word performances, film screenings, artists’ stalls and activities for families at Wysing’s beautiful rural site near Bourn.

The line-up includes pioneers from past, present and future including Bruce Lacey (currently exhibiting at Camden Arts Centre), Boyle Family, the influential family collective of artists who also made light projections for Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, and Damo Suzuki, who was part of one of the most influential krautrock bands of the 1970s, Can, and will extend his Damo Suzuki Network to Wysing to play with Andy Holden’s band Grubby Mitts.

Other performers include artists Sue Tompkins, Jamie Shovlin’s band Lustfaust and Anthea Hamilton, plus experimental art and music bands such as Ice Sea Dead People, Maria and The Mirrors, Peepholes, Yola Fatoush and Emptyset.

Date: Saturday, 1 September, 2012
Tickets: from £15

Camping and coaches from St Pancras and Cambridge are available. Find out more here .

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New Music / Lunchtime Concerts / Thursday 28th June

As the end of term approaches, I look back at what has been an extremely successful series of lunchtime concerts. During this exam-term, I rarely left the hermetically-sealed grounds of Girton College, oscillating between the library and my room. However, revision was articulated by my weekly cycle to St Giles’ Church for the Friday lunchtime concert. And each week, I was delighted by the beautiful music performed by students of the University.

A recital by Fra Rustumji (violin) to a packed-out St Giles’ was particularly exciting. The concert showcased two contemporary works by young composers Laurence Osborn and Kate Whitley, with Kate accompanying on the piano. The works gave a glimpse into New Music today, creating experimental textures and timbres from the age-old couple: the violin and piano. The program was well-structured; by bookmarking the recital with ‘sonatas’, Fra gave us a “backwards” journey from modernity into tradition.

I look forward to this Friday’s concert, which will the last recital of the series. See the Kettle’s Yard website for more details.

Mark Seow

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Mark Seow / Lunchtime concerts / Friday 25th May

During the build at Kettle’s Yard, the lunchtime concerts have been taking place across the road at St Giles’ Church. And despite the rain, audiences have flocked to hear performances of Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann. The relocation has allowed even larger audiences, in a celebration of what perhaps has been one of the most successful seasons of lunchtime concerts.

Photograph by Amy Jeffs

Particular highlights have included a horn extravaganza by Misha Mullov-Abbado (pictured) and Stephen Craigen. The pair provided a varied program on both modern and natural horn, showcasing the instrument’s range of timbres and techniques. Nick Mogg provided a beautifully balanced program, in which he interweaved a Mahler song cycle with lieder by Schubert. The acoustic of the church was particularly suited to his warm baritone range.

The relocation of the lunchtime series has reaffirmed the importance of setting in concerts, and the deliciously close relationship between music and the visual arts. When the concerts took place at Kettle’s Yard, sounds were delineated and crystallised against the white walls, and sometimes even seemed to be in dialogue with the sculptures and paintings. At St Giles’, the music takes on a very different meaning. For example, in Stephen Craigen’s performance of Kirchner’s Tre Poemi which makes use of the synthetic echoes of the piano strings, it became impossible to detangle what was sound, echo or reverberation. The music spoke not only of the horn and the piano, but of the Church’s lofty nave, chancel and stained glass.
Concerts take place on Fridays 1.10-1.50pm, free, donations welcome. See www.kettlesyard.co.uk/music/lunchtime for details.

Mark Seow, Cambridge University student programmer of the Friday lunchtime concert series, photos by Amy Jeffs

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St Giles / Lunchtime concerts / Monday 14th May

While the building work is underway we are unable to host our regular free Friday lunchtime concerts. We are delighted that St Giles church, over the road on the corner of Castle Street and Chesterton Street, is hosting these concerts for us. And, the good news is that they can fit more people in there.

The lunchtime concerts are usually performed by musicians from the University of Cambridge and are programmed by a student programmer. They offer a great opportunity to hear some of the musical talent in Cambridge and may of the performers go on to have professional careers in the future.

Concerts are every Friday in Cambridge University term time at 1.10pm, the full programme can be seen on our main website .

To hear one of the past performers, pianist Tom Poster, talking about his thoughts about Kettle’s Yard see our oral history archive .

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