See, We Assemble II. Hendrickse + Patterson + Brahms / Lim + Purcell. St Bonifatius, 23 Mar, 6–8pm

See, We Assemble II is Musarc’s latest invitation for the audience to enter the apparatus of the recording studio with its controls, props and wires, recorders, reels, and sonic apertures: to be a witness as the ensemble starts the machines that make the archive instant, to audit that we were there together, not invented by AI, driving a plough through a magnetic field, recording to the left, liveness to the right, cooking, preserving, post pickling on air.

In the first part of the programme, the ensemble attempts a collective performance of Benjamin Patterson’s seminal Fluxus piece Paper Music (1960), originally scored for five performers and 75 sheets of paper. ‘See, We Assemble’ from Henry Purcell’s semi-opera King Arthur (1691), for which the choir is joined by musicians from Standard Issue, is rendered with new words by Joseph Kohlmaier and Edwina Attlee in an arrangement for chorus, small ensemble and objects the singers animate on a foley table. A new rendition of Jan Hendrickse’s ongoing project with the ensemble of manufacturing overtone-flutes from proprietary plumbing components and dowels makes the choir test the harmonic and material affordances of air vibrating in a column, and the common anatomy of instruments and voices.

The second part of the programme features a performance of Johannes Brahms’s epic 1879 motet Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen, set to a verse from the book of Job which opens and closes with the ‘why’ of the theodicy, the vindication of divine providence in the presence of suffering and injustice. The version Musarc will be performing features interventions by composer Sylvia Lim and will be recorded on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder, played back into the space and recorded again. The final artefact captures the reduction, loss and what may be sacrificed when direct experience is deferred. At the same time, the record defies entropy and creates something new through translation, interpretation, and its ability to be continuously repeated, copied, restored, remastered. Parts of See, We Assemble II are repetitions and audits in themselves, with Lim’s version of the Brahms motet and the new lyrics for the Purcell first having been performed by Musarc on the occasion of See, We Assemble at LCMF in 2019, but never recorded.

Doors to the event open at 5.30pm. The recording programme starts at 6pm. The atmosphere is informal and the evening is punctuated by breaks between performances and takes. Drinks and food prepared for the audience by members of the ensemble is available all evening. The event is expected to end at 8pm.

The event takes place in and is generously supported by one of the East End of London’s many modernist churches, St Bonifatius, itself part of a giant record of the transformation cities undergo in the face of destruction and deterioration, and the persisting power of refuge and community.