launched in 2013 with a worldwide call out to Iranian sound artists and musicians living in the MENASA region, for an arts residency at the MA Sound Arts & Design Department, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. The two week exchange included preparation for a public performance at Europe’s largest performing arts venue Southbank Centre. The two weeks comprised of digital production workshops, improv sessions, one to one musical exchange, press and PR sessions, career advancement and a varied social programme.
Participants improvised as an ensemble with MA Sonic Arts graduates at LCC, under the tutelage of seminal improviser Keith Rowe, founding member of the ground-breaking group AMM since 1960s.
Rowe’s exploratory work with the guitar; taking it out of the normal performative canon rooted in modal music, instead turned the guitar into an abstract yet sonically expressive tool. This earned him recognition as having been “to the guitar what Pollock was to the canvas“. For the public performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall the conductor was free-jazz pianist Veryan Weston.
See images of the rehearsals HERE. Posts continue to appear on the internet especially Twitter (see #IranUKSonics) as participants who were asked to conduct workshops on returning to Iran on any of the topics studied in UK on the workshops.
Article is taken from: https://sixpillars.org/iranuk/