STAR QUALITY
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Keir
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A new album with a specially-created version for cinema.
Star Quality is an attempt to harness the power of soprano voice with all the grandeur of opera and set it in conversation with electric guitar. The compositions use various applications of technology to push this duet to extreme sonic places, finding aesthetic and emotional resonance in a language of its own. After the opening piece, a revision of an English traditional song, the album contains no words. For the cinema, three elements are in conversation: voice, music and (written) words for screen, revisiting a 400-year-old tension as old as opera: what is dominant between the words and music and where can there be shared power. Composition by Keir Cooper (from improvisations by) Ellie Westbrook
Recorded at: Mildenhall Road, Hackney; Rose Cottages, Hastings & Trinity Laban, London Post-production, technical and mix supervision by Grant Leslie Mastered by Giacomo Fargion Released by Discus Music 2024 Libretto written by Rose Biggin & Keir Cooper Photography by Ksenia Burnasheva Will Edgecombe & The Other Richard Supported by Arts Council England & Help Musicians
Radio Play Tom Ravenscroft: BBC 6 New Music Fix [ Superstar ] Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone: BBC 6 [ Willow Tree : A Dialogue ] Max Reinhardt’s Late Lunch Show: Soho Radio London. [ Love and Comfort (Baby) ] Space Is The Place [ Art Of Oblivion ] KOWS Radio: Feast On This Jazz (San Francisco) [ Modern Translation ] Radio Popolare, Prospettive Musicali (Italy) [ Of Now and Then ] Radio Panik (France) [ The Time I Gave Up The Stage ] Borguez (Italy) [ Willow Tree : A Dialogue ] Resonance FM - Ambrosia Rasputin Show [ Superstar ] Reviews “it locates a peculiar expressive niche with no other occupants I know of” The Quietus: Best of New Weird Britain “pits voice and instrument into an energetic ballet, and quite breathtaking for it.” FREQ “Leave expectations at the door… resolutely in the here-and-now… moments of ingenuity.” The Cusp Magazine “Really impressive” Luminous Dash (Belgium) “surprising, captivating and highly resonant aesthetics…” Salt Peanuts “...presents us with music for which the precedents are unusually few, where the line between the spontaneous and the predetermined is blurred” Jazz Journal “a grand yet ethereal theatricality - Two artists who are more interested in exploring their outer limits than taking the limelight” Aural Aggravation Sep 27th 2024 Album released on Discus Music Performances Sep 19th 2024 Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival Cockpit Theatre, London Showings Sep 26th 2024 Motion in Frame with Petra Haller, Chisenhale Dance Space (excerpt) July 23rd 2024 Castle Cinema, Hackney, London HYBRID THEATRE VERSION HERE |
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