The world premiere of Laura Bowler’s new opera Rumpelstiltskin will be preformed alongside brand new works commissioned from the Call for Scores from Igor Santos and Peggy Polias. 

The Riot Ensemble will be working side-by-side with Southbank Sinfonia in a workshop exploring new music and extended techniques as part of Southbank Sinfonia’s orchestral academy experience.

From their new album Speak, Be Silent, Riot Ensemble perform Rebecca Saunders’ Stirring Still II which continues her longstanding fascination with the writings of Samuel Beckett, sharing its title with Beckett’s final work of prose. Through its fragile and haunting soundworld, the piece’s brittle textures and distant keening explore minute musical activities on the edge of extinction.

Alongside this Laurence Osborn’s Ctrl which was premiered by Riot Ensemble at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2017. Ctrl is a three movement song-cycle about masculinity written from the fragmented perspective of a male character and sung by a female singer.  

Solstices is a 70-minute piece from Georg Friedrich Haas, which takes place entirely in darkness. For 10 musicians, including a completely re-tuned grand piano, Solstices opens with a passage of taut, energetic and precise music.  From here the piece turns to a process of deep-listening by the musicians who, led by a totally re-tuned grand piano, play and tune a series of overtone chords.  Soon Haas introduces a variety of musical ‘games’ and elements that play upon the surface of this slowly moving texture.  Building to an intense climax, the final chord is held by the musicians for more than four minutes.  Haas writes:

very gradually the light comes back
the brighter the light, the softer the music
decrescendo al niente

Riot Ensemble travels to Southampton University to work with composer Ben Oliver on a new piece in development with poet Luke Wright.  These workshops will lead to a major new work in 2020.

A new work for violin, cello, piano and percussion by renowned Petworth composer Terence Allbright provides the centrepiece for a concert of audacious contemporary works given by the Riot Ensemble at the Petworth Festival.

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Riot Ensemble make their first ever trip to Croatia to take part in the Music Biennale Zagreb – an international festival of contemporary music. We will be working with composers from all across Europe in a series of workshops of new pieces written specially for the festival.

Join us the evening of April 8th to celebrate the release of Speak, be Silent, our latest CD, out on HCR/NMC Recordings. Riot Ensemble artists will play solo works by each of the composers represented on the CD: Rebecca Saunders, Liza Lim, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Mirela Ivičevič, and Chaya Czernowin. In lieu of tickets we will collect funds to support Play for Progress, a charity that delivers therapeutic and educational music programmes for traumatised and socially isolated unaccompanied minor refugees.

Riot Ensemble workshop new pieces from City University MMus students written for Clarinet, Piano, Cello, and Harp.

The Riot Ensemble record pieces by Georgia Rodgers, Aaron Einbond and Donghoon Shin, commissioned following the ensemble’s 2017 Call for Scores, developed at the Southbank Centre as part of the Nordic Music Days festival and premiered in Helsingborg, Sweden in 2018. 

The Riot Ensemble presents the UK premieres of pieces by Georgia Rodgers, Aaron Einbond and Donghoon Shin, commissioned following the ensemble’s 2017 Call for Scores, developed at the Southbank Centre as part of the Nordic Music Days festival and premiered in Helsingborg, Sweden in 2018. These pieces also form part of the ensemble’s extended recording project, highlighting unique and exciting musical voices in the UK.

Riot Ensemble makes our first trip up to Manchester to do a workshop with DMus students from the Royal Northern College of Music with pieces for Piano, Harpsichord, and Percussion; and an initial workshop with composer Larry Goves.