Endings is a creative collaboration between composer Jeremy Peyton Jones and electronic composer and sound artist Kaffe Matthews. The collaboration combines material for voices and ensemble with live electronic manipulation focused around a series of vocal settings of the final paragraphs of works of modernist literature and the writing of David Gale. The programme also featured the large scale works And the days are long for electric guitar, live electronics and amplified ensemble. The purpose of the research was to deliberately bring together the usually separate styles and idioms of acoustic and electronic music and explore new means of combining them which address the problematics inherent in both. The research explores the interface and tension between contemporary live electronic music which typically doesn’t rely on traditional notation and involves improvisation, and more traditional acoustic music relying on notation and fixed scores. Electronic music often lacks a strong live performance element and its improvisatory nature can be obscured or lost in delivery whereas acoustic music has great potential for re-contextualisation through the extension of the spatial, textural and timbral elements using electronics. An additional purpose was the exploration of the collaborative process and an analysis of the changing roles of notation, experimentation and improvisation in contemporary performance practice. The combination explored here is different from what is conventionally understood as electro-acoustic music and is transferable to any kind of live music which seeks to explore new means of presentation and collaboration.

First performed by Regular Music II with Kaffe Matthews, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, 24 May 2012
Further performances:
Purcell Room, QEH, Southbank Centre London, 26 May 2012
Arnolfini, Bristol, 31 May 2012

Endings represents a unique collaboration bringing together Regular Music’s vibrantly theatrical live sound with the noisy rhythms and abstract cyber landscapes of Kaffe Matthews’ music.

The focus of the collaboration is a series of vocal settings of literary endings works of modernist literature including the final paragraphs of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Don De Lillo’s White Noise, an extract from Pablo Neruda’s epic poem Alturas de Macchu Picchu and other vocal settings from recent music theatre productions including Against Oblivion concerning loss, destruction and decay using the words of writer David Gale. The programme also features the large scale work And the days are long for electric guitar, live electronics and amplified ensemble.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/7906