University of York Music Press

Radical Road will see singers from Glasgow Chamber Choir and Glasgow University Chapel Choir join forces in the stairways and foyers of City Halls Glasgow as part of the BBCSSO's Tectonics Festival. It is the latest in a series of pieces (The Freedom of the Earth, Digger, Orlando Tenebrae) investigating themes of social justice and equality, and uses texts by Thomas Paine (Agrarian Justice). The title Radical Road comes from a path in Edinburgh's Holyrood Park that was paved by unemployed weavers at the behest of Sir Walter Scott in the early 1820s. The singers will be spread out as if in groups of workers along a road, the audience walking amongst them as they sing, shout, talk, hit stones together, improvise songs and pour gravel. Radical Road will be performed at 6pm on Sunday 11th May in the City Halls Foyer. MURAL, for one or more SATB quartets, will receive two performances at this year's Spitalfields Music Summer Festival, at 3pm and 5pm on 8th June. James Weeks writes,

MURAL began life as a series of very short pieces, each on a single chord, for four voices, investigating themes of the everyday, the ordinary, the local and the intimate domestic spaces in which we spend most of our lives. This grew into a substantial set of nearly 60 pieces, setting fragments of texts by Cage and Pessoa, critiques of Vermeer's painting The Little Street and descriptions of the birdlife of Gateshead. For the premiere in the evocative surroundings of London's Lime Wharf, artist Sam Belinfante will project a newly-commissioned video while two quartets from EXAUDI sing antiphonally, surrounding the audience.

The MURAL installation, which has been generously supported by The Hinrichsen Foundation, will also be open to experience with recorded voices over the course of the festival, Thursday 5th to Saturday 21st June, LimeWharf.

Image: Exaudi © Matthew Andrews