Events

Date: 9 April 2025   Time: 12:30 - 13:30

Location: Performance Lab, Engineering Building, Mile End Campus, QMUL, E1 4NS Map 

C4DM & AIL Seminar: Alexander Hawkins: Some Questions from the Field: A Performer in Conversation with New Instruments

QMUL, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science
Imperial College London, Dyson School of Design Engineering
Centre for Digital Music Seminar Series & Augmented Instruments Lab Open Seminars

Seminar by: Alexander Hawkins

Date/time: Wednesday, 9th April 2025, 12:30pm

Location: Performance Lab, Engineering Building, Mile End Campus, QMUL, E1 4NS

Title: Some Questions from the Field: A Performer in Conversation with New Instruments

Abstract:
Although I have only ever worked as a professional musician, I did obtain a PhD in law before beginning my career. This was in a somewhat liminal area of the subject: my university called it 'law', but others might have called it 'sociology', others 'criminology', and so on. I also taught many 'law' undergraduates during my doctoral studies: but the philosophers, historians, economists, statisticians, and others would all have recognised much of the territory as their own. An 'augmented instruments' group may well bear out something similar, in terms of a variety of disciplinary approaches, and we are probably all familiar with the fascinating insights this variegation can yield, as well as the frustrating moments of somehow 'talking past' each other.

In my musical career, there is possibly something similar going on. I am fortunate to work regularly with artists of wildly different aesthetics, in contexts which are sometimes fully improvised, and sometimes fully notated; which sometimes look like 'jazz', sometimes like 'classical' musics, sometimes like 'traditional' musics, sometimes like 'electronic' musics, and so on. 'Idiom' and 'innovation' are therefore ideas on which I reflect a great deal. I would like to think that I spend a lot of time chasing sounds which I've never heard, but at the same time, have to acknowledge my instrumentalist's obsession with control and technique.

In this seminar, I would like to take a 'liminal' stance, and think out loud about what augmented instruments might mean in the context of my own practice as a composer-performer: as a way of teasing out some conceptual ideas, as well, perhaps, as some of the insecurities and questions of the musician who is fascinated by, but not necessarily fluent in, the possibilities.

Bio:
Alexander Hawkins is a composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader who is 'unlike anything else in modern creative music'. Regarded as one of his generation's most innovative thinkers, his own unique soundworld is shaped by a profound fascination with composition and structure, alongside a love of chance and open forms.

His writing has been said to represent 'a fundamental reassertion of composition within improvised music', and his voice one of the 'most vividly distinctive...in modern jazz'. As a pianist, he has been described as 'remarkable...possessing staggering technical ability and a fecund imagination.' Concerning his organ playing, critic Brian Morton recently commented that '[t]he most interesting Hammond player of the last decade and more, [Hawkins] has already extended what can be done on the instrument.'

Hawkins is a frequent solo performer, and also appears in groupings ranging from duo through to large ensembles. He can be heard live and on record with a vast array of contemporary leaders of all generations, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Joe McPhee, Nicole Mitchell, Jonny Greenwood, and many others. He has been widely commissioned, by the likes of the BBC, and festivals such as the London and Berlin Jazz Festivals. He was named 'Instrumentalist of the Year' in the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. In 2018, he was elected a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri.