The Faculty of Music's Studio Manager Daniel Hulme, who is also co-director of the Electronic Music Practice RESearch (EMPRes) group, as well as a creative technologist and sound designer, is continuing his research collaboration with celebrated British-Iranian composer and sound designer Shiva Feshareki on Shiva’s latest piece, 'Bab Khaneh', to be performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Shiva at the Barbican later this month, along with a broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
The new work acts as a sonic survey of the Barbican Hall’s acoustics and design, utilising a custom immersive ‘Acousmonium’ sound system that highlights these qualities, created collaboratively between Daniel and Shiva. Shiva will ‘play’ the hall as an instrument, sculpting her spatial turntable performance from scratch live in the moment, deeply intertwining orchestral and electronic sound in a one-off web of memory.
“'Bab-Khaneh’ is an ancient Persian term that translates to “gatehouse", and the likely origin of the word ‘Barbican’, which was originally the gatehouse to Roman Londinium before it was destroyed, later becoming the architectural marvel and arts centre of today. The composition is a space where memories enter and exit inside of a metaphorical and physical ‘gatehouse’ or ‘bab-khaneh’: No one person has the same perspective, but we exist intangibly through memory."
The piece has been composed in a way so that every seated position in the hall presents a different spatial and sculptural perspective: No one position will sound or feel the same, and the performance will go on unexpected tangents, both musically and geometrically.
The acoustic elements of the composition have been created so that all of the BBC Symphony Orchestra are soloists on their own trajectory that spontaneously collide outside of their control with the immersive electronic elements and the Barbican Hall. Shiva has expanded the tuning system, and it is painstakingly precise - no longer 12 pitches - instead following the mathematically infinite and natural harmonic series of sound, which is linked to all of our environment, creation and beyond.
‘Bab-Khaneh: Gatehouse of Memory’ is a culmination of 5 years of concentrated work for Shiva Feshareki composing new electro-acoustic music that has transformed concert halls around the world into unique and creative spatial sound environments, utilizing their full potential removing them from linear and binary perspectives, bringing these spaces to life in new, unheard dimensions.
Shiva and Daniel will be in conversation with Tom Service about their collaboration at 5pm on Sunday 23 February 2025, later broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
The world premiere of ‘Bab-Khaneh: Gatehouse of Memory’, written for Turntables, Live Spatial Electronics, Custom 360-degree Soundsystem and Symphony Orchestra, will be at 7:30pm on Sunday 23 February 2025 at the Barbican Centre in London. You can book tickets on the Barbican website.
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