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Helen Ottaway

Helen Ottaway is a composer, pianist, installation artist and curator. While a student at Goldsmiths’, University of London in the 1980s, she studied briefly with John Cage and up to 1998 worked as a performer, musician and composer with experimental music and theatre groups, touring nationally and internationally. In 1999, with arts administrator Steve Ehrlicher, she formed Artmusic to promote and produce collaborative,site-specific and participatory work. As lead artist she has had extensive experience of working with artists from different disciplines and curating and producing her own and other artists work. As a composer she has received commissions from BBC2, Salisbury Festival, Bath Film Festival, the Bernardi Music Group and others. Landscape, water and nature provide inspiration and and are recurring themes in a style that is predominantly minimalist with influences from folksong and English pastoral and church music traditions.

Most recent articles

Helen Ottaway 75

The last year and more

Saeflod, a walking requiem at Inside Out Dorset 2023… Continue reading →

Helen Ottaway
Helen Ottaway 75

Sitting in the Staircase

We are nearly half way through the presentation of Secret Staircase in vertical spaces in Frome as part of Frome Festival 2021. It has been wonderful sitting at the bottom of these staircases and talking to people about sound and… Continue readi...

Helen Ottaway
Helen Ottaway 85

The Path is Made by Walking

In my Redstone diary for 2020 opposite the first complete week of September is a poem by Antonio Machado, Canto XXIV from Proverbs and Songs 29. The last line of the extract reads 'The path is made by walking'. I decided to take this poem about walkin...

Helen Ottaway
Helen Ottaway 30

Off to Knepp

Tomorrow, Steve and I will be driving off cross country for the first time since the beginning of lockdown. We will be travelling on the iconic A272, subject of ‘A272: An Ode to a Road’ by Pieter and Rita Boogaart,… Continue reading ...

Helen Ottaway
Helen Ottaway 40

LISTEN

I’ve been invited to be the curator for a new season of sound art and site specific music, hosted by Black Swan Arts in Frome.  We will celebrate listening and hearing in all kinds of ways and situations and have… Continue reading →

Helen Ottaway

Artmusic

Collection · 4 items

composer

Collection · 15 items

Curator

Collection · 6 items

water

4 sub-collections · 82 items

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Anja Podreka

Website about my work

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Emma Welton

Emma Welton is a composer and performs on violin and viola. With Icebreaker she has performed contemporary music internationally, including at New York City’s Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Centre, with Brian Eno at the Brighton International Festival, and in London’s Science Museum Imax cinema. Emma co-curates with Tony Whitehead A Quiet Night In, music nights exploring the creative possibilities in quiet/silence. In summer 2021 A Quiet Night In was commissioned by Exeter’s Outside the Box Festival to make at the end of the day, a devised piece for humans sounding with an outdoor habitat. In 2017 A Quiet Night In performance was recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio’s 3 ‘Exposure’, hosted by Verity Sharp, in a concert showcasing new and experimental music.

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Artmusic

The website artmusic.org.uk serves as an extensive resource dedicated to contemporary art music in the United Kingdom, focusing primarily on British composers and their works. It provides detailed and systematically organized information on a diverse range of British composers, their biographies, compositions, and related recordings. The site also includes articles, news updates, and event listings that reflect the current landscape of art music, supporting research and engagement with contemporary British music culture. Additionally, the platform archives concert programs, reviews, and scholarly texts that contextualize the evolving trends within British art music. This resource is valuable for researchers, musicians, educators, and enthusiasts interested in the development, dissemination, and performance of modern classical music originating in the UK. Through its comprehensive documentation, it contributes to preserving the cultural geography of Britain's contemporary music scene.

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Listening through layers of land

With Shore Land, JeeYeung Lee has created a sound walk that contemplates Chicago's lakefront as a liminal space between land and water, simultaneously a public good, treaty violation, and strategy to suppress insurgence.

JeeYeun Lee

pedestrian acts

By de Certeau: In “Walking in the City”, de Certeau conceives pedestrianism as a practice that is performed in the public space, whose architecture and behavioural habits substantially determine the way we walk. For de Certeau, the spatial order “organises an ensemble of possibilities (e.g. by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g. by a wall that prevents one from going further)” and the walker “actualises some of these possibilities” by performing within its rules and limitations. “In that way,” says de Certeau, “he makes them exist as well as emerge.” Thus, pedestrians, as they walk conforming to the possibilities that are brought about by the spatial order of the city, constantly repeat and re-produce that spatial order, in a way ensuring its continuity. But, a pedestrian could also invent other possibilities. According to de Certeau, “the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform or abandon spatial elements.” Hence, the pedestrians could, to a certain extent, elude the discipline of the spatial order of the city. Instead of repeating and re-producing the possibilities that are allowed, they can deviate, digress, drift away, depart, contravene, disrupt, subvert, or resist them. These acts, as he calls them, are pedestrian acts.

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