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Sarah Angliss

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Sarah Angliss
Angliss on theremin in 2014
Angliss on theremin in 2014
Background information
BornWatford, UK
Genres
  • Film score
  • opera
  • theatre music
  • electroacoustic music
  • contemporary classical
  • sound design
  • sound art
Occupations
  • Composer
  • sound designer
  • experimental instrument maker
  • musician
Instruments
  • theremin
  • clavisimbalum
  • recorder
  • Max
  • robotic carillon
Websitewww.sarahangliss.com
The Ealing Feeder - robotic, polyphonic carillon designed and built by Sarah Angliss

Sarah Angliss is a composer, sound designer, producer and performer based in London UK. She creates new music and soundworlds for film, theatre, opera and the concert stage, including her own live performances. Sarah's music uses voices, orchestral and ancient instruments, augmented them with Max, electronics and her own hand-built robotic music machines. Angliss is also a professional thereminist and woodwind player and applies her own extended and electronic techniques to various instruments. In November 2018 she received a Composer's Award from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation[1] and on 8 December 2021 she received an Ivor Novello Award (category: Visionary Award). The Ivors Committee commented she “stays true to her artistic concepts, to create unique compositions that connect to the listener with emotional depth and great beauty, never failing to leave a lasting impression.”.[2] Her opera Giant opened in Aldeburgh Festival 7 June 2023 and transferred to The Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House 6 March 2024.

Alongside her performance, Sarah researches the history of sound culture, presenting topics in print, national radio and at salon talks throughout Europe. Much of this research informs her compositions.

Biography

[edit]

Angliss studied composition and baroque and renaissance music as well as Electroacoustics (in the Acoustics Department of the University of Salford). She also has a Masters in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems (University of Sussex) - this included the study of artificial life, machine learning and robotics. She began extemporising and performing live as a teenager in UK folk clubs - English folksong is evident in many of her electroacoustic compositions (e.g. Wan, on Air Loom, 2019[3]). Angliss now performs live throughout Europe[4] with human co-performers (chiefly percussionist Stephen Hiscock) and musical automata, machines she has devised and built since 2005 to "give her performance an arresting and uncanny physical presence."[5]

Angliss composed an electroacoustic score for Romola Garai's feature film Amulet (2020).[6] This contained horror film was selected for the Midnight programme of Sundance 2020. Angliss' score makes extensive use of female voices and electronics, as well as her robotic carillon (The Ealing Feeder), viola da gamba and augmented, contrabass recorder.[7]

Working as a theatre composer, Angliss has created music and sounds which blur the line between sound design and music for a number of theatrical works including Eugene O'Neill's expressionist play The Hairy Ape at The Old Vic, London and Park Avenue Armory in New York; Anne Washburn's stage adaptation of CBS cult TV series The Twilight Zone (the world's first official stage production of this series) at the Almeida and in the West End ("I’m trying to make sound that gets under your skin"[8]) ; Lucy Prebble's The Effect at the National Theatre (Cottesloe); and (Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's) Once in a Lifetime at the Young Vic.

Angliss has written and presented the radio shows The Bird Fancyer's Delight[9] (about the ancient practice of teaching birds human tunes to bring fashionable music into the home) and Echo in a Bottle[10] (a cultural history of the echo - for the Pursuit of Beauty series) for BBC Radio 4. In April 2017 Angliss released her solo album Ealing Feeder,[11] described as 'a subtle gem' and a 'shimmering minimalist masterpiece' by Robert Barry writing in The Wire[12] and the "most inventive album I've heard in a long while" by Simon Reynolds writing in 4 Columns, New York.[13] This was followed in March 2019 by Air Loom which Sarah performed on UK tour[14][15] that year with singer Sarah Gabriel and percussionist Stephen Hiscock.

In 2002–2003, Angliss initiated and led Infrasonic[16] (aka Soundless Music) - an experiment to explore the strange psychological effects of airborne infrasound (sound below 20 Hz). Angliss noted infrasound is used in sacred organ music[17] to create a sense of awe - it's emitted by bass pipes over 28 feet (8.5 m) long. In 1998 physicist Vic Tandy[18] showed infrasound (from mundane sources) could be causing a sense of unease in a room - feelings that could lead someone to feel they have been haunted. Angliss worked with parapsychologists Professor Richard Wiseman and Dr Ciarán O'Keeffe, pianist GéNIA and Dr Richard Lord and Dan Simmonds from the National Physical Laboratory to investigate infrasound's effect in a musical setting. Their aim was to find out if infrasound could generate a sense of unease or other strange feelings when it's placed within music - feelings that might be akin to those experienced in ostensibly haunted sites. The team worked in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral,[19] then two counterbalanced, experimental concerts in the Purcell Room, London. While audible music played, they fooded each venue with sine waves around 17.4 Hz. The parapsychologists used questionnaires to log the audience's responses at various points in each show (the audience were not told when the infrasound would be occurring) and found tentative evidence that the infrasound created a sense of unease in listeners,[20] even if they were unaware of its presence. Angliss composed music for the experiment and has subsequently used masked infrasound in later compositions, including the score for Lucy Prebble's The Effect, National Theatre.

Angliss wrote a short biography of Daphne Oram for the republication of Oram's treatise on sound and electronics An Individual Note.[21] This was funded by a crowdfunding campaign organised by the Oram Trust[22] in 2016.

Angliss was a resident artist at Limehouse Town Hall[23] and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Sound Practice Research Unit, Goldsmiths.[24]

In 2017, Angliss re-edited the original sound track of Sony-CBS TV series The Twilight Zone,[25] for a new stage adaptation by Anne Washburn (directed by Richard Jones, at the Almeida, London). This included working with the compositions of Bernard Herrmann, Marius Constant, Nathan van Cleave, Fred Steiner and others. This included the creation of new music and sonic effects that blended with the original orchestral material.

In October 2018, Angliss began writing a chamber opera, Giant, supported by a Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship and Snape Music (now Britten Pears Arts). Giant tells the story of the Charles Byrne, known as The Irish Giant, who lived in fear that his remains would go on public display, against his wishes.[26] The piece blends voices with viola da gamba, clavicymbalum and electronics.

References

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  1. ^ "Awards for Artists - Sarah Angliss". Paul Hamlyn Foundation. 20 November 2018. Archived from the original on 6 April 2020. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  2. ^ "The Ivors Composer Awards 2021 winners announced". The Ivors Academy. 8 December 2021. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  3. ^ "Wan, by Sarah Angliss". Sarah Angliss. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  4. ^ "Live dates". Sarah Angliss. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  5. ^ "Sarah Angliss website". Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  6. ^ "Sundance 2020 Interview: Romola Garai on the Horrors You Can't Shake with "Amulet"". The Moveable Fest. 28 January 2020. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  7. ^ Atkinson, Alice (12 August 2020). "Sarah Angliss on Crafting the Score for 'Amulet' with Ancient Instruments, Electronics, and Robotics - Air Edel - Dario Marianelli". Air Edel. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  8. ^ "Twilight Zone composer Sarah Angliss: 'I'm trying to make sound that gets under your skin'". The Stage. 12 December 2017. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  9. ^ "BBC Radio 4 – The Bird Fancyer's Delight". BBC.
  10. ^ "BBC Radio 4 – Pursuit of Beauty, Echo in a Bottle". BBC.
  11. ^ "Album: Ealing Feeder – Sarah Angliss". www.sarahangliss.com.
  12. ^ "Listen: Sarah Angliss music and video – The Wire". The Wire Magazine – Adventures in Modern Music. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  13. ^ "Sarah Angliss". 4 Columns. 18 August 2017. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  14. ^ "Supersonic review – giant monsters and ghoul-sponge at UK's best small festival". The Guardian. 23 July 2019. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  15. ^ "The Quietus | Features | Three Songs No Flash | Start Making Sense: Supernormal 2019 Reviewed". The Quietus. 8 August 2019. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  16. ^ "Scientists at NPL sending out 'good vibrations'". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  17. ^ Bergit, Arends and Thackara, Davina (2003). Experiment : conversations in art and science. London : , 2003.: Wellcome Trust. ISBN 9781841290430.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. ^ Tandy, Vic; Lawrence, Tony (April 1998). "The Ghost in the Machine" (PDF). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. 62 (851) – via Richard Wiseman.
  19. ^ "'Silent' concert causes mood swings". 26 September 2002. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  20. ^ Wiseman, Richard (2007). Quirkology - the curious science of everyday lives. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0330448093.
  21. ^ "DAPHNE ORAM – AN INDIVIDUAL NOTE – Fused Magazine". Fused Magazine. 17 June 2016. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  22. ^ "The Trust". Daphne Oram. 10 July 2014. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  23. ^ "London's Lost Worlds of Sound". Limehouse Town Hall. 20 September 2016. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  24. ^ "PureGold presents: Sounding the Great Hall". Goldsmiths, University of London. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  25. ^ Ede, Christian (28 November 2017). "Sarah Angliss To Rework Bernard Herrmann's Archive". The Quietus. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
  26. ^ Devlin, Hannah (22 June 2018). "'Irish giant' may finally get respectful burial after 200 years on display". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
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