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The Riot Ensemble

Connecting people to great contemporary music in concerts and events that are just as innovative, vibrant and rewarding as the music itself.

We do this in venues ranging from the concert hall, to London’s parks, to YouTube. Our twenty Artistic Board members are some of the top European soloists in new music, and with Riot they work as performers, curators, commissioners, and collaborators, creating and producing a diverse array of projects around Europe.

Based in London, we are particularly active in bringing emerging international voices into the British new-music scene, and since 2012 have given more than 200 World and UK premieres by composers from more than thirty countries. Our annual call for scores has resulted in almost twenty commissions, many of which have gone on to feature in our growing discovery.

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A few moments with Peter S. Shin

Later this month we will be playing at Nottingham Trent University as part of the university’s ‘Groundbreaking’ series of contemporary music. On the programme will be works by Georg Friedrich Haas (Tria ex uno) and Chaya Czernowin Ayre, towed through plumes, thicket, asphalt, sawdust and hazardous air I shall not forget the sound of), as well as works commissioned in our 2017 Call for Scores, Baby Magnify/Lilith’s New Toy by Mirela Ivičević and Block Mouvement by Sylvain Marty. Details and tickets for the concert may be found via nonsuch studios.

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HCMF: Evan Johnson

Date: Sat 16th November, 2019
Time: 7.00pm
Venue: St Paul’s Hall, University of Huddersfield, HD1 3DH
Cost: Tickets £15 – £18 available online

Evan Johnson‘s Linke Hand eines Apostels (Left hand of an apostle) is a reflection on a sketch by Albrecht Dürer, a drawing which attends feverishly to details of vein, bone, skin, draped folds of cloth, and an almost painful-looking torsion of joints and knuckles–details largely lost in the oil painting that resulted.

This is paired with a composition by Swedish composer, Lisa Streich whose piece ZUCKER (SHOCKER) for motorised ensemble and Israeli-Swiss composer Omri Abram‘s search for an equilibrium in his wind quintet, Zohar (Iridescence).

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Oi Kuu: Southampton

Date: Mon 21st Oct, 2019
Time: 1.00pm
Venue: Turner Sims, Highfield Campus, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ
Find out more here

Revolving around the Bass Clarinet and its massive expressive and dynamic range, this chamber concert features four members of Riot Ensemble’s Artistic Board in music that is every bit as wild as it is intimate. 

The bombastic duo’s for Bass Clarinet and Saxophone from American composers Lee Hyla and Marc Mellits are paired with European musing Oi Kuu (for a moon) from Kaija Saariaho and Thierry Pécou’s amorphous Manoa. 

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Oi Kuu: Manchester

Date: Thur 24th Oct, 2019
Time: 1.10pm
Venue: Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall, University of Manchester, M13 9PL
Cost: Free | Find out more here

Revolving around the Bass Clarinet and its massive expressive and dynamic range, this chamber concert features four members of Riot Ensemble’s Artistic Board in music that is every bit as wild as it is intimate. 

The bombastic duo’s for Bass Clarinet and Saxophone from American composers Lee Hyla and Marc Mellits are paired with European musing Oi Kuu (for a moon) from Kaija Saariaho and Thierry Pécou’s amorphous Manoa. 

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HCMF: Ann Cleare Portrait

Date: Fri 15th November, 2019
Time: 9.30pm
Venue: Huddersfield Town Hall, Corporation St, Huddersfield, HD1 2TA
Cost: Tickets £15 – £18 available online

In the first of two concerts at hcmf// 2019, The Riot Ensemble paints a portrait of Ann Cleare, one of Ireland’s leading modern composers. The first Irish composer to win the Ernst von Siemens award, Cleare’s work is a dialogue: her music talks to its environment, as well as its listener, constantly being shaped by the course of nature itself. For this concert, the malleable setting of Huddersfield Town Hall will transform into an open-plan forum; audience members will be immersed in the space, discovering how it carries Cleare’s music. Consummate shape-shifters, The Riot Ensemble are the perfect group to play – and place – Ann Cleare’s music.

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Screaming Shapes

Date: Tues 22nd October, 2019
Time: 7pm
Venue: University Hall, Shakespeare Street, Nottingham, NG1 4FQ
Cost: Tickets £5-£15 available online from nonsuch studios

Groundbreaking brings the very best contemporary music from the world’s top composers to Nottingham. This programme features the ever-present “Pierrot plus percussion” lineup in music that has been commissioned and featured by Riot Ensemble on our Speak, Be Silent, release.

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