LOVE BOMB

Love Bomb was conceived as an experiment in heightened listening. The performance invited our participants to be fully present in body, mind and soul in the act of listening; to be open to being sounded through from head to heart; to sense the shock of the live in a context of music’s increasing mediatisation; and to experience the deeply human (and potentially alarming) intimacy of close musical encounter.

The performance centred on Claudio Monteverdi’s celebrated Lamento della Ninfa (1638), paired with Heinrich Ignaz Biber’s Passacaglia for solo violin, which riffs on the same descending lament bass, as well as Henry Purcell’s song O Solitude, with its own mesmerically repeating bassline. Framed by a sound installation that drew us into a space of altered reality and sharpened anticipation, the performance bade its participants to empathise viscerally with the nymph’s lament, while savouring its musical pleasures in all its multisensory richness.

This event was curated by Cambridge-based American artist Anna Brownsted, Delia Casadei, Stephane Crayton, Rachel Stroud, and Bettina Varwig.

Read a blogpost about the event here.

Performers:

Laura Newey, Maryam Giraud, Myriam Lowe, Rachel Segman (voice)
Stephane Crayton, Rachel Stroud (violin)
Mika Hyman (cello)

Selected feedback:

Being taken to a place where we were on edge and outside our comfort zones meant we interacted with the music in a state of high alertness. It was not always comfortable but it was provoking, particularly to consider how we can disrupt the traditional concert model and open up ourselves to different ways of listening. I loved the element of surprise and the way the soundscape and the live music blended into each other.

It felt like we were experiencing the music visually and physically in the space, as well as aurally - feeling like the music was enveloping everyone in the space together.

I had never experienced this kind of performance before. It is very different from normal concerts, where the music is ‘frontal’. It was nice to be among the musicians - to hear baroque music in an almost domestic context. Many congratulations to all involved in putting together an original and beautiful concert.