SOUNDS OF NOW: LIGETI QUARTET PLAYS ANNA MEREDITH
Ligeti Quartet
Woolwich Works, Woolwich
Thursday 11 April 2024, 8.00pm
Full price: £13
Students/ Under 18/ UC: £11.25
The critically-acclaimed Ligeti Quartet share tracks from their new album fusing acoustic and electronic music for string quartet by the Mercury-prize nominated composer.
Anna Meredith has achieved incredible success straddling multiple musical worlds, never compromising her raw, individual style. This concert is based around the Ligeti Quartet’s new album, Nuc, providing a survey of Meredith’s career to date, heard through her original works for string quartet.
Nuc was released by Mercury KX on 14 April 2023 and launched in Sheffield with Music in the Round. It started life as a conversation between Anna Meredith and Richard Jones (Ligeti Quartet’s viola player) after realising that after a decade of frequently working together, they had almost an album’s worth of music. So an idea developed in which they would not only make the first studio recordings of Anna’s original music for string quartet, but that Richard (whose previous collaborations include Alex Turner, Jessie Ware and The Waeve), would create new arrangements of existing tracks by Anna including from her award-winning electronic and dance albums.
The result is a joyful, occasionally furious, never too serious, energetic/restful collection of tracks which dazzle with Anna’s signature compulsive harmonies, rhythmic shifts of gear and sparkling textures.
To accompany performances the Ligeti Quartet, with funding from Arts Council England have commissioned Ewan Morris Jones, animator and long-term Anna Meredith collaborator, to design a set of projections. He also designed the video for the first single Tuggemo, featuring a melee of plant, animal and mineral creations which swarm together as the song swells. Created using a combination of 2D animation and AI techniques, the visual is a compelling, colourful and hypnotic evolution story.