Environments: New Music for Strings and Guitar

St James Episcopal Church, Leith - 13/12/24

Graeme Stephen – guitar; Tom Hankey – violin; Naomi Pavri – cello; George Smith – violin; Fiona Winning – viola.

Conventional wisdom says that there is either sound or there is silence, and that music happens when the two are weaved together in a variety of ways through either composition or improvisation. This leaves us with an endless range of possibilities, framed and constrained by conventions, and for many listeners quite settled expectations.

The work of eclectic Scottish guitarist and composer Graeme Stephen (known locally and globally for his work across the spectrum of jazz, innovative film scoring and sonic experimentation) is dedicated to, among other things, repositioning those expectations and uncovering new musical possibilities.

This memorable evening of music-making in Leith consisted of one piece for solo guitar, two for guitar and viola, one for viola and electronics, a suite for string quartet, and a final work for a quintet comprising strings and guitar. All these works arose from Graeme Stephen’s PhD in composition at Edinburgh University, thought its realisation transcends the purely academic. It is about passionate engagement and performance.

As Stephen explains: “It’s about me translating my approach to guitar, music and improvisation into contemporary classical settings where I am blurring the lines between composed music and what I call ‘negotiated freedom’, using different notation methods and collaborative approaches to working.”  

That spirit imbued all the performances tonight, starting with ‘Umbilical’ for amplified acoustic guitar and subtly triggered effects. Here the composer/performer decorated melodic fragments with lyrical and chromatic inventions crossing a number of stylistic boundaries. He employed a range of guitar techniques to coax different atmospheres from his instrument. There were hints of Michael Tippett’s ‘The Blue Guitar’ (which pianist Steven Osborne had introduced him to, I discovered in conversation after the concert). The influence of Bill Frisell’s deconstructed approach to phrasing could also be sensed, along with central European and Mediterranean tones and textures.    

Fiona Winning, whose impressive, new music-focussed CV includes her time as principal viola for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, then came to the stage to perform two pieces with Stephen. These were ‘Ayler’ (echoes of saxophonist and free jazz pioneer Albert Ayler) and ‘Twine’. The former involved polymetric and polytonal elements, the swapping of background and foreground between instruments, and an unstable sonic core re-sculpted by a persistent riff. The latter had some Slavic, Bartokian, Spanish and late Romantic moments scattered across a shifting, interconnected landscape of sounds. Thoroughly engaging, but also unsettling – in a good way.  

Next up was ‘Dreamstate’ for viola and electronics, with Graeme Stephen working the console. For much of the duration of this deep, sonorous work the mind’s ear lost track of the particular sound sources, so well did the electro and the acoustic elements inform one another, occasionally emerging from the shadows to provide a new emphasis. Meanwhile, Kodaly-like motifs seemed to cut through moments of studied abstraction. The boundary between prepared and improvised elements seemed to dissolve, as was no doubt the intention.

Indeed, introducing the ‘Three Zones Suite’ for string quartet, Graeme Stephen emphasised that his compositional approach included instructions to the performers which veered between guidance and permission. This three-movement work was both evocative and varied, drawing on performers who clearly delight in blending, eliding and juxtaposing a wide musical inheritance from modern and contemporary classical music with other styles, all within a commitment to creating music in and for a specific ‘now’. Each performance will therefore be an act of conjoined continuity and discontinuity, unique to a particular audience and context. There was so much going on musically here, it is difficult to summarise and describe. It had to be taken moment by moment, with some recognition of themes and developments.   

Last but not least came ‘Environments 1’, where violins, viola, cello and electric guitar joined together, feeding off each other, fizzing and crackling towards an eventual near-stillness at the conclusion. At times it felt as if you were listening to a quintet, and at other moments the differentiation between the sound world of principally bowed strings and a guitar aided by pedals and electronics became more of an explicit dialogue.

 Since labels remain unavoidable (if frustrating) in music, this thoroughly engaging concert will need to be labelled ‘contemporary classical’ or ‘new music’. It was certainly demanding of both performers and listeners. But other genres – another horrid word – also made their presence felt, and the virtue of what Graeme Stephen and his collaborators are working on certainly lies in leaning towards the unclassifiable. Drummer and percussionist Bill Bruford, who has worked across rock, jazz and experimental music, prefers the term ‘interactive music’ to ‘jazz’ these days. That has clear affinities with Stephen’s notion of music as ‘negotiated freedom’. It will be fascinating to see how this journey continues.

* More on Graeme Stephen: https://www.facebook.com/graemestephenmusic