The wonderful New Zealand classical guitarist and professor Matthew Marshall is touring Insighted in his 12-date tour around NZ and Australia (July-August 2021) in a super eclectic programme. Sounds great in rehearsals, what fun. Score now available.
Category: Concerts & Gigs
Bridget and Milton Mermikides will be performing their classical guitar and live electronic project, Tension Blue at Canterbury Christ Church University, preceded by a talk on Milton’s Hidden Music series. Wednesday 24th January 2018, St Gregory’s Centre for Music (Talk 11.45am, Concert 1.10-2pm), Free Entry.
On Saturday 6th June 2015, I’ll be performing with John Williams, Gary Ryan and friends at the beautiful Shakespeare Globe in London. Among other works, we’ll be performing Phillip Houghton’s sumptuous Light on the Edge by candlelight. I’ll be providing electronics (courtesy of Ableton and one of my many MIDI controllers) and it should be rather magical, unless of course I accidentally play Chloe’s playlist of Wheels on the Bus and other hi-energy toddler classics.
Click the pretty picture for info and tickets.
On the 10th anniversary of my bone marrow transplant, you are warmly invited to a concert of the Eclectic Guitar Orchestra, in support of leukaemia charities. April 8th 2015, 7.30pm Bush Hall (Shepherd’s Bush) Tickets a mere £25
Performers include the legendary John Williams, George Uki Hrab, Declan Zapala, Craig Ogden, Bridget Mermikides, John Wheatcroft, Peter Gregson Amanda Cook, Steve Goss Jake Willson and an ever growing list of amazing musicians.
Please join the Facebook event for ticketing information, how you can support the event, to express interest (so I can get an idea of numbers), and a bunch of other exciting stuff to be announced… visit again for unfolding information…
Bridget and I will be performing at 1.30pm Sunday March 30th (University of Surrey) at the launch of the International Guitar Research Centre (IGRC) run by Steve Goss and me. We’ll be performing 7 new works for classical guitar and electronics. Not the usual guitar rep. Tickets are £2 for students and £10 for the rest of us. Would be lovely to have some friends (of ours and new music) there.
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/arts/music/events/bridget_mermikides.htm
The Times Higher Education have run a well-written feature on the Bloodlines project.
Transplant inspires siblings’ Bloodlines project | News | Times Higher Education.
Bloodlines is a performance that traces the microscopic drama that plays out between a serious disease and medical treatment in the human body. It draws on its makers’ personal experience of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (which I developed in 2004) and its treatment through intensive chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a bone marrow transplant (donated by his sister Alex Mermikides, who is directing the performance). Also collaborating in the performance is Ann Van de Velde, a clinical haematologist involved in the care and treatment of blood disorders such as Leukaemia, and Anna Tanczos, a digital artist specialising in science communication.
‘…is the human body a soul-less, self-less object at the mercy of automatic internal processes…or is it a precious vessel containing a unique individual…?’
Sian Ede Art & Science. London and New York: Taurus Books, 2010. p.145
Bloodlines premiered at the Dana Centre on 18 July 2013. Future performances will be announced on the Events page.
Here’s a bootleg from the first performance.
Bloodlines is a Chimera Network project
For more background on the project see Bloodlinesproject.com
On the 14th October 2013, I’ll be joining the eminent musician and fellow Wodehouse character Peter Gregson at the Luton Music Club to max out on Minimalism. Details to follow, but on the programme is Terry Riley’s seminal work In C in all its heterophonic and generative gorgeousness.
Rather than play it (on my guitar) traditionally with the ensemble, I thought it fun (and more interesting) to use Ableton Live (and Push) to rebuild it so it ran generatively. I’ve done a very simple version which adopt most of the instructions, any errors kindly forgive me and my future generations.
Here’s a screenshot of the resultant tapestry:
And here’s the WIP for your to download in the spirit of musical democracy.
Hit scene 1 and they’ll tumble through, I’ve weighted the follow actions to have on average more repeats on shorter phrases which makes sense musically. You can intervene, urging on any stragglers and holding back any clips forging too far ahead. Actually I may need to consult a statistician as the deviation in fall rates seems (in my fallible intuition) to suggest something’s a bit skewy with the randomising process. But oh well, the variation in performances is intriguing (I’m on listen number 6 and still very happy). You can of course ride volumes, edit instruments and send out effects to your ears’ content. You can always set clip 53 to – rather than stop – return to clip 1 so the piece lasts forever, with clips lapping each other – adding another dimension to the work. If Follow Actions in Live were more sophisticated or I had time to render in Max the clips could behave more intelligently by grouping together, dropping out and changing velocity more responsively as per score instructions, but it actually works quite beautifully as is, which is a testament to the power of Riley’s concept.
Incidentally if you’d like to tweak the ‘fall rate’ – and hence the resulting approximate duration – change this number on the clips (you can select multiple), but remember that you may want longer clips with lower numbers. Again I wish there was more sophistication with follow actions, which would also allow the pulse to stop after all other clips are finished, but I await Ableton Live 10 11 17
Thanks to user Jeepee on the Ableton forum, whose patch I discovered when googling this idea, I’ve kept many of Jeepee’s clips as I like how he/she played them, but am also thinking of doing it PROPERLY in Max and crowdsourcing midi and audio clips from the interwebs when the Earth slows and there’s enough hours in the day for such mischief.
For those sensible people not in to Ableton or this sort of thing, you can hear a rendered version from this patch here:
(If that doesn’t buffer or you are a suffering iPad browser) -> In C Live
Categories
Spiked
Out of nowhere (well somewhere obviously) I’ve been asked to step in the guitar shoes with The Spike Orchestra. I’ve not heard of these people before, but I’m glad I have a quick listen reveals a sophisticated, witty, complex and satisfying original blend of Naked City, cartoon composer Carl Stalling, Kenny Wheelery contemporary jazz, rock and something unnameable. My first concert with them will be Sept 13th 2013 at the Forge, Kingston and I can’t wait to get stuck into/get roasted by the spaghetti charts.
Categories
Alexia Coley in Paradise
It’s a real pleasure to be Alexia Coley‘s guitarist. She has the most wonderful and authentic blues soul voice. After her fresh signing, there’s a slew of gigs coming up including a monthly residency at the luxurious Paradise Club Next Gig: 3rd May.
“If Otis Redding had a child with Sade, Amy Winehouse and Etta James, She might sound something like this.” says Mike Benhaim of Metro Canada with no respect for current fertility technologies.
Categories
Performer vs. Audience
This should be a great gig*. The awesome Swingle Singers with Urban Big Band. (I’ll be on guitar duties)
Come if you can. Come as you are. Come on Eileen. Come on, come on. Etc.
http://www.unionchapel.org.uk/events.php?gig=b6c16f5e-2434-479e-a7ab-50df22f5…
Thankyoutimes.
Here’s a short video of my (gorgeous) cousin Maria-Christina (Winner of the Wales International Harp Competition) on harp and electronics.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4bopHmiTVE&w=640&h=390]
Under-rehearsed but overly fun performance with George Hrab at Surrey SkepSoc.
The show was awesome.
How good was it? If you had the misfortune of not being there, I’m sorry to say you really missed out – come to the next one! All the players had a marvellous time, If the audience enjoyed it half as much as we did, then it was a truly great show.
Everything that could have gone wrong before the concert, did: I had to reprint 145 programmes because of a serious error, despite specific instructions the hall was literally FREEZING on the day- MASSIVELY compromising the rehearsals and physical preparation for the show (the classical guitarists suffered terribly from frozen fingers and performed formidably in the face of adversity)- noisy industrial heaters were brought in hours later-but the damage was done. Thanks Venezuela! May I remind you that this country is bloody freezing in January!
Oh yes and the car got towed while we were unloading gear. BAR STAR DOZE. But despite everything the gig was really great, I will be updating the pictures very soon.
While the show was just storming on, my great friend Steve Goss said to me “You realize that this is tomorrow’s nostalgia?” Nicely put.
My profoundest thanks to all the wonderful guitarists: Bridget, Steve Goss, Gary Ryan, Graham Roberts, Tristan Seume, Pete Callard, Chris Montague and… John Williams
Huge gratitude to all the audience and everyone else who supported the event.
If I had to choose between never having leukaemia or having battled leukaemia and getting the opportunity to have life experiences like this one – it would be a no-brainer 🙂
PICTURE APPEAL
Were you at the concert? Did you take any pics or movies? If so please contact me. I’d love to see them.
Thanks! Milton
If you are interested in attending future events, stay tuned…
