"New music for new audiences"
Victoria Soames Samek: clarinets & saxophones
Chris Brannick: percussion
Steve Bingham: violin & electric violin
Adrian Sutcliffe: piano and keyboards
FourSight is a group of world-class musicians who bring their dynamic and diverse experience together to perform, teach, mentor and enthuse all who hear them.
FourSight draws its repertoire from eclectic backgrounds that refuse to acknowledge barriers: from reinterpretations of baroque in an ElectroRenaissance programme to avant-garde music in Jazz / New Perspectives.
FourSight is the dedicatee of several new works and has given many performances and workshops. It is to become ensemble in residence at The Newham Academy as part of its ongoing association with Newham and the 2012 Olympics with its unique project Tomorrow’s Musicians Today.
Concerts
"The many faces of FourSight"
The FourSight concert programmes are designed to look at music with a fresh approach. Each programme allows the musicians of FourSight to demonstrate the wide range of influences and skills they bring to bear, while showing the instinctive communication that gives the group such a strong presence on stage.
The dynamic and diverse backgrounds of the musicians, together with their warm and witty on-stage introductions, leave audiences fascinated and spellbound, with the addition of electric violin and world percussion making this a unique experience.
A significant part of the repertoire is contemporary and 20th century, featuring many new works written especially for the group, as well as innovative new interpretations of early music.
Programme 1: ElectroRenaissance – early music given a new treatment and an electric slant
Programme to include:
Georg Philipp Telemann – Sonata (sax & marimba)
Explorations of Telemann – (improvisation featuring looping electric violin, electric keyboard, sax & percussion)
Max Beckshafer – The Image of Melancholy (solo violin)
Anthony Holborne – Paduana “The Image of Melancolly” (arranged for FourSight)
William Byrd – My Lady Nevell’s Ground (new realisation for FourSight for clarinet, perc, violin & keyboard)
Programme 2: EthnoClassical Fusion – world music and its influence on classical music
Programme to include:
Igor Stravinsky – The Soldier’s Tale (Stravinsky’s own trio arrangement) with narrator
Pierre Max Dubois – Circus Parade (sax & drumkit)
Tim Watts – Suriya (for FourSight)
Laurie Dunkin Wedd – Django (violin & piano)
Paul Burnell – Rhombidodecadodecahedron (piano & steel pan)
Darius Milhaud – Trio (clarinet, violin, piano)
Programme 3: Jazz / New Perspectives – late night cool meets cutting edge contemporary
Programme to include:
Stewart Copeland – Grace Eleanor (sax, electric violin, piano & drumkit)
Paul Burnell – The Dreaminess of the 1500 metres runner (bass clarinet, electric violin, piano & percussion)
Chick Corea – Spain (clarinets, violin, piano & drumkit)
Stephen Montague – Black ‘n’ Blues (piano, marimba & pillow)
Akira Yuyama – Divertimento (sax & marimba)
Adrian Sutcliffe – New Work (for FourSight)
Education
Concerts for children & workshops
"I enjoyed the music atmosphere around me.
I did not want to leave."
Jason, (12 years old, Newham’s learning in schools)
FourSight combines fun and education in equal measures in both workshops and children’s concerts. Those who take part in hands-on workshops are introduced to the huge range of percussion available, and are helped to create their own compositions.
FourSight offers a wide variety of workshop programmes, and two action-packed children’s concerts’.
Workshops include:
Getting the ideas out: a one day workshop developing creativity, writing pieces, and exploring some unusual ways of playing instruments
Open Score Fanfare: aimed at interpreting graphic scores, this enables musicians who have just started to learn to play an instrument to participate in ensembles – but the composer doesn’t have it all his own way!
Whose Opera? Our Opera!: create an opera in a day from scratch! Develop your own plot, create your own characters, choose your own ending – happy ever after, or tears before bedtime? You choose…
Tell it, Play it, Show it, Hear it!: an absurd theatrical event, an MC with a wicked sense of humour and the participants are… you! A Dadaist montage of performances developed during the day
Composition in 10 minutes: a recipe to develop a piece of music. You add the ingredients, mix up the spice and serve simmering to a hungry audience
In addition we offer more curriculum-centred projects:
Colours: exploring timbre & the words we use to describe sound
Chico’s day in the city: Brazilian and Cuban music in an easily performed version, turned into a story
Day Trip Abroad: world music put into context – choose from many different countries
Sounds and Stories: narrative music and soundscapes
Concerts for primary schools: both performed as short stories set to music.
Dragons in the land: there are dragons roaming the countryside and the villagers turn to FourSight to rescue them… is that wise? Each member of FourSight gets a chance to talk about his or her own instrument and to explain why it’s the best instrument in the world!
Aliens! The untold story: no-one knows that aliens invaded your town. Fortunately FourSight were on hand to befriend the miniature aliens and to scare away the baddies. This story is used as an opportunity to explain why we play music, and why it’s worth learning an instrument
In addition we also offer ‘Train The Trainer’, a workshop designed to support those who work with children whether as workshop leaders or as teachers.
