THE ROUNDHOUSE, LONDON SEPT. 2009
A live performance of a 1000 minute section of Longplayer is currently in the planning stages.
It will be played on a 25 metre wide instrument made up of six concentric circles of Tibetan Singing Bowls.
Based on Jem Finer’s graphic score for 234 bowls and six players (see left), the concert is scheduled to take place at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London, in September 2009.
In order to fund the building of this instrument and the production of the event, The Longplayer Trust is inviting donations on a bowl-by-bowl basis. When you fund a bowl, it will be engraved with a word of your choice and a premium ticket for the performance will be reserved in your name.
6th Circle: Contrabass£1000
5th Circle: Bass£500
4th Circle: Baritone£250
3rd Circle: Tenor£150
2nd Circle: Alto£100
1st Circle: Soprano£50
After receiving your donation through paypal or bank transfer you will be sent a receipt and confirmation. You may also choose your inscription now or at a later date. Longplayer is a charitable trust, Registered Charity no. 108 7243.
If you don’t wish to buy a bowl but are still interested in supporting Longplayer, please consider making a donation via our paypal account or bank transfer.
Live Performance, Graphical Score
While it plays on in its digital form, Longplayer was conceived as a project which would sustain itself in the near and distant future by seeking new and adaptive strategies for its own continued existence. Research into non-electrical, mechanical and organic implementations of Longplayer began at the time of the project’s initial conception, and both the composer and the Trust have always regarded the original and present day computer-operated Longplayer system as a first (and almost certainly temporary) step in a long process of development and evolution.
Among the suggested systems for the ‘playing’ of Longplayer is a live arrangement for six musicians and 234 Tibetan bowls of varying sizes and pitches. For this, Finer has produced a graphical score (above), by which the deceptively simple system of advancing loops of which Longplayer is composed can be accurately reproduced by live performers.
Longplayer's composition is based on a system in which six sections from a piece of source music are played simultaneously, five of them transposed to different pitches. In the graphic score these find material form as an arrangement of six concentric circular tables, on which are arrayed precisely tuned bowls carefully spaced to correspond with the looped waveform of the original source music.
Beyond the 2009 performance, our long term ambition is to find a permanent home for this orchestral installation, where it can play on into the foreseeable and unforeseeable future.