The Berwick Music Series 2019 will culminate on Thursday 21 November with a programme of musical events exploring The Art of Sound, bringing together musicians and academics in unique collaborations. The day will consist of a sound installation composed by Martin Parker, a concert from internationally renowned string quartet Quatuor Bozzini, a workshop exploring sound and space, before finishing with a community performance of music by James Tenney in Berwick Parish Church.

At 10:30am composer Martin Parker will introduce his Sonikebana, a long-form composition of local soundscapes played through multiple speakers housed in decorated wooden boxes on wheels. The audience will be invited to move the speakers around images by artist Anna Chapman Parker in order to shape their own musical outcome. Sonikebana takes its name from the refined Japanese art form of flower arranging, Ikebana, which involves the careful arrangement of plant matter in order to reveal something already present (but hidden) in the materials being arranged.

The highlight of the day will be a lunchtime concert of music by Weeks, Worboys and Shostakovich provided by Canadian string quartet Quatuor Bozzini in the Berwick Watchtower at 12 noon. Formed in Montréal, Canada in 1999, Quatuor Bozzini has been an original voice in new, experimental and classical music. The quartet has received world-renown for their “extraordinary playing.” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) and diverse repertoire, unbiased by the currents of fashion. A Quatuor Bozzini concert is an intensely shared experience, with meticulous and sensuous attention to detail, not to be missed.

In the afternoon there will be a workshop at Berwick Parish Centre curated by BMS Artistic Director Mike Worboys (University of Greenwich) and John Stell (University of Leeds) at 3:00pm. Sound in Space - Space in Sound will be a multi-disciplinary workshop to explore cultural and formal relationships between space and sound. A series of talks will discuss relationships and connections between music and the spaces we live in and of our imaginations - touching upon spatial metaphors in music, sound and fine art, sonic imagery in poetry, sound installations, and sound-art in the environment. Speakers include artists and scientists from across the UK and USA.

Finally at 6:30pm there will be a community performance in Berwick Parish Church. Around 20 local musicians, including pupils from Berwick schools, will join Quatuor Bozzini in a performance of James Tenney’s In a Large, Open Space, a harmonic exploration and celebration of the natural phenomena of sound.

Tickets for The Art of Sound are available online; the installation and community performance are free, the workshop costs £6, the Quatuor Bozzini concert £10, and a joint ticket costs £12. To book tickets and for more information about the Berwick Music Series 2019 visit www.berwickmusic.org.