Viriditas

The premiere of Stevie Wishart’s Viriditas, with Penelope Turner, soprano, specially commissioned for gRig Froesjels. Viriditas is a musical piece for voices, hurdy-gurdy and cello. The music is based on Hildegard von Bingen’s Lingua Ignota and her vision of Viriditas, the greening energy behind all life. The performance will be followed by a guided tour of Saint George’s guild-hall and initiation into the guild. With: Stevie Wishart & Penelope Turner, and members of the Saint George's Guild.

Dress code: Mediaeval or formal attire.

About Stevie Wishart

Educated at Cambridge, Oxford & The Guildhall School of Music, Stevie Wishart is active as a composer, performer and improviser explores medieval & contemporary extremes, using ancient technologies such as the hurdygurdy, as well as electronic and computer music technologies of our own time. She has composed for early music ensembles including her own group Sinfonye, and also for orchestral and vocal groups. Sometimes working purely acoustically with music notation, sometimes combined with improvisation, and sometimes using computer music systems.

She has recently composed a new work for the Britten Sinfonia with Random Dance, and a return to work with Compagnie Michèle Noiret for a new work premiered at the Theatre National in Brussels. She is completing The Sound of Gesture, a two-year project developing an interface with specially commissioned sensors and software for solo violin and computer with a recording at the Institute for Music and Acoustics in the ZKM, Germany. Stevie is currently developing The Myth of Europa – an oratorio - “The bisected rim of the horned moon” – this will be developed into a major concert and staged work and was first presented at the Styriarte Festival in Graz and again at La Bellone in Brussels. This year sees Stevie take a major role in Take the Risk a special weekend at London’s Southbank, where she will present cutting edge medieval and contemporary improvisations. Stevie, with Sinfonye, is also reaching the culmination of her long-term project to record the complete work of Hildegard von Bingen in a 5-6 cd cycle including a multi-media performance and contemporary realisation of selected songs. The medieval music group Sinfonye has released some 12 CDs with the record companies Glossa Music (Spain), Celestial Harmonies (USA), and Hyperion Records (UK) with instrumental and vocal music from medieval repertories as well original compositions and arrangements informed by historical research. Stevie Wishart’s performances include those in London’s Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the ICA and the Sydney Opera House. She has performed extensively throughout Europe, in New York, and in Australia and her concerts have been recorded live by BBC Radio 3, Radio France, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ORF, German Radio Networks, and by Klara Radio Belgium VRT. New music concerts combine electronic and acoustic instruments, using sensors and virtual instruments, as well as hurdy-gurdy, voice, and violin. She was artist in residence at Mills College, California where she recorded her most recent CD with her trio group with Fred Frith and Carla Kihlstedt. She has also a founder member, along with John Tilbury, of the Violet Quartet that specialises in free improvised music. Violet have appeared recently in Austria and recorded a new CD for release during 2009. Wishart created the film music for Margie Medlin’s DVD installation “Miss World” based upon a computer generated and real dancer for the 2003 Future Cinema exhibition at Zentrum für Media Künst in Karlsruhe (to March 2003) and has won a Sciart Production and Research Award by the Wellcome Trust in collaboration with Cambridge University’s department of Physiology and the ICA, London, to research and create a new live piece “Quartet”, for 2006/7. She presented aspects of her research and performance for Quartet at the 2006 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference on new musical interface design and technology, hosted by IRCAM - Centre Pompidou, in Paris in collaboration with the MINT/OMF of the Sorbonne University and for a solo concert for the Cambridge Festival, UK, and the Homo Futuris presented by the Vooruit Cultural Centre with UNESCO in Belgium.
Extra-musical actives include working as a composer for the British Council with the National Choir of Morocco in Rabat, music consultant to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and most recently as the featured composer for Music Review (BBC Radio World Service), has been on the panel of judges for the music competitions of both the Bruges Early Music Festival and the EMN young artist'son the panel for the 2007 EMN young artists competition at the National Centre for Early Music in York.

Radio & television work has including writing and presenting music programs for the ABC and BBC networks and has most recently been invited as music commentator for BBC television’s live PROM concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, London (2008 & 2009)

Reviews

"We could be looking at a prototype for the concert of the future (Red Iris)", CD review - Richard Morrison, arts editor, The Times, London

"The live soundscape from Stevie Wishart which guides you, seduces you, and deceives you. Slow Love is addictive" - De Standaard, Brussels

"The fiery improviser and medieval specialist Stevie Wishart and her hurdy-gurdy surfaces in diverse contexts, including medieval revivalists Sinfonye and jump-cut dad Improv of Machine for Making Sense, 'True Grit' " - The Wire, London

"…the energy of Stevie Wishart's music jumps right out of the stereo and snaps at your ankles. This collection of compositions and improvisations… is dynamic and compelling.… demanding to be heard” - Andrew Ford, 24 Hours Magazine

"Stevie Wishart melded the mediaeval and the postmodern in a seductive outing … playing as ever with a mix of finely honed lyricism, sublimely so on violin, and spiralling swathes of hurdygurdy chordings." 
 - Keith Gallasch, Realtime, Australia

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Viriditas sample.mp3	1.45 MB
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