Friday 15 April 2011

THE LANGUAGE MOMENT

Featuring Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Maggie O'Sullivan, Phil Minton and Ben Gwilliam & Phil Davenport@ The Green Room, Manchester, Friday 15 April 2011

The Green Room and Text Festival present an evening of virtuoso vocals and groundbreaking sound art.

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet who regularly appears at poetry and music festivals, as well as dabbling in the dark arts of the concrete. Nothing can prepare you for the power and dexterity of his performance, the richness of his sound poems, and his amazing control of his material. His huge contortions twist his mouth to stun the audience.

Phil Minton is a dramatic baritone with a free-form style of "extended techniques" that are extremely unsettling. His vocals often include the sounds of retching, burping, screaming, and gasping, as well as childlike muttering, whining, crying and deep-throated drones; he also has an ability to distort his vocal cords to produce two notes at once. Phil Minton's voice occupies a category apart, as joyously accessible as it is radical.

For over thirty years, Maggie O'Sullivan has been one of the leading figures of British innovative poetry. An international performer and visual artist, she is committed to excavating language in all its multiple voices and tongues, known and unknown.

Davenport the poet and Gwilliam the sound artist merge language and the sound of the world. Their intricate tape-recordings are a chorus of human speech becoming noise pollution becoming birdsong.

Event also featured soundworks by Sarah Boothroyd and Matt Dalby.

Ticket Prices: £9.50/£6.50
Venue: Green Room 54-56 Whitworth St West Manchester M1 5WW 0161 615 0500

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