THE VOCAL SECTION – 1990
Voice Over festival brochure page, Purcell Room listing.
PHILIP JECK – Vinyl Requiem
As the impact of the compact disc grows, turntable composer Philip Jeck celebrates and extends the sound qualities unique to vinyl.
Vinyl Requiem uses old style record players as musical instruments and records doctored to produce music unimaginably different from the original recordings.
Voice Over premieres the choral section of this extraordinary eulogy to the record to be shown in summer 1992 in its full orchestral version with brass, string and woodwind sections. Composed and performed as a vocal piece, Vinyl Requiem confirms the record as the perfect collectable of our time.
Purcell Room, South Bank – 8.00 Friday 16 and Saturday 17 November
A Voice Over commission produced by shinkansen – new main line
THE STRING SECTION – 1991
Yellow flyer, shinkansen. Vinyl Requiem, The String Section, The Tramway, Friday 22 November 1991.
PHILIP JECK VINYL REQUIEM – THE STRING SECTION THE TRAMWAY FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER 1991 8.00 £5.00/3.00
Vinyl Requiem is an event to define an era. This concert features The String Section, of composer Philip Jeck’s planned larger-scale work. Its starting point is the impact of the CD on vinyl and the fact that the sound of a needle in vinyl grooves will soon be one of nostalgia. But in the hands of Philip Jeck they become much more, the raw material for sound sculpture.
In Vinyl Requiem – The String Section, Jeck uses over fifty individual Dansette-type turntable record players in one space. Initially experienced as an installation, these classic objects are strikingly lit to cast light and shadow evocative of a period city of the fifties and sixties.
Together they make a ‘scratch orchestra’ a huge and evocative sound from scratching, playing at various speeds, skipping the grooves of hundreds of vinyl discs. Jeck’s work is a concentrated soundscape for the nineties, a way of seducing new music out of old artefacts.
BOOKINGS: THE TRAMWAY 25 ALBERT DRIVE GLASGOW 041 227 5511. Public viewing of the work-in-progress will take place from Wednesday 20th to Friday 22nd between 12 – 4.
A Tramway / Voice Over commission produced by shinkansen – new mainline
THE BRASS SECTION – 1992
Programme sheet headed ‘now’92’. Vinyl Requiem, The Brass Section, Congregational Hall, Castle Gate, Nottingham. Performances 16 and 17 October 1992.
PHILIP JECK
VINYL REQUIEM – THE BRASS SECTION
PERFORMANCES 16 – 17 OCTOBER 1992 – 20.00
Congregational Hall, Castle Gate, Nottingham
INSTALLATION OF WORK IN PROGRESS 14 – 17 OCTOBER 12.30 – 14.00
Composed/Performed by Philip Jeck
Produced by shinkansen
Production Manager Mick Shenton
Lighting Design John Cumming
These two performances feature one section of a larger scale work, VINYL REQUIEM – The Full Orchestra, to be premiered in 1993 as part of the long-playing countdown to the death of vinyl.
RUNNING TIME APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR. THERE WILL BE NO INTERVAL
Philip Jeck answers questions about Vinyl Requiem on Sunday 18th October at 12.30 at Broadway, Broad Street, Nottingham.
The Vocal Section, commissioned by Voice Over, London, 1990
The String Section, commissioned by Nikki Millican for Tramway, Glasgow, 1991
The Brass Section, commissioned by Contemporary Archives for Now ’92, Nottingham, 1992
The Massed Pianos/Percussion Section commissioned by Theaterverein Wien, Vienna, 1992
VINYL REQUIEM has received financial support from: Arts Council of Great Britain ‘New Collaborations Fund’, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London Arts Board ‘Arts Access – Developing New Audiences Fund’, Now 92, Theaterverein Wien, Tramway and Voice Over.
Vinyl
Vinyl’s importance is fading superseded by the rise of the compact disc. This change over in history opens up a past of personal memory, of vinyl jukeboxes and favourite singles. Yet as a basic tool for producing music, vinyl’s future is still to be explored.
“If you’re making sculpture you chip away, bend and remake the thing you are working with…I’m working in a similar way with sound. I keep pushing it, bending it, changing it and breaking it up and putting it back together again until it arrives at something that makes sense to me” Philip Jeck.
In the hands of Philip Jeck, records are not treated as precious collectables. Jeck emphasises their very mutability. He deliberately alters and tampers with the surfaces of them, scratching, playing at various speeds, skipping the grooves of hundreds of vinyl discs. They are in effect recycled and given positive new life.
VINYL REQUIEM – The Sections
VINYL REQUIEM has been made and presented in four sections as a lead up to the creation of the larger-scale work, VINYL REQUIEM – The Full Orchestra. The four sections are individual performances in their own right, each section made for the space in which it is performed.
The Sections have been commissioned by specific venues in Britain and in Europe. In taking a section each commissioner has given resources, support and time for the development of VINYL REQUIEM – The Full Orchestra, contributing to the vinyl debate and generating an international focus for the project.
VINYL REQUIEM – The Full Orchestra
VINYL REQUIEM is a large-scale ‘scratch’ orchestra composed by Philip Jeck. For VINYL REQUIEM – The Full Orchestra Jeck will use over 200 vintage dansette record players as his musicians and hundreds of second-hand records as their instruments to create new music out of old artefacts.
VINYL REQUIEM – The Full Orchestra will be staged with computer-controlled projections by audio-visual artist Lol Sargent. Lol Sargent will be working with his media of slide and film, projecting thematic images onto the record players. The raised player lids will act as a giant screen and as many small screens creating an environment where low and high technology link up.
The making of VINYL REQUIEM – The Full Orchestra takes place from November 1992 – May 1993. It will be rehearsed and previewed at Vooruit, Gent, Belgium and move to London for its premier in the summer of 1993 in co-production with the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.