John Potter, tenor
Ambrose Field, composer and live electronics
Ambrose Field created Being Dufay in 2007, using extracts from Guillaume Dufay’s songs and motets sung by John Potter. From the outset, it was conceived both as a studio album and an hour-long concert event. In this live realisation of a studio sound world, Dufay’s music is presented intact, not something weird and alien, but rather an 'investigation' into the potential already in the original material. John sings the Dufay lines, while Ambrose digitally multiplies and modifies the newly composed material from more than 100 original tracks. The result is a rich, contemporary sound world which retains the essence of 15th-century Franco-Flemish polyphony. Ambrose is working on the next programme, which we hope will be ready by next summer.
The live version is a mulit-media event with films by Mick Lynch. The CD was launched with the first live version of the piece at the Resonanzen festival in Vienna and in the UK at Opera North’s Howard Assembly Room, and has now been performed all over Europe as well as the USA and Australia. The Press reports for the recording have been very encouraging:
Die Zeit (Germany)
http://blog.zeit.de/tontraeger/2009/03/20/angriff-der-klonkantorei_2145
Clubfeeling (Germany)
http://www.clubfeeling.de/feeds/tag/elektro/
DN Artes (Portugal)
http://dn.sapo.pt/inicio/artes/interior.aspx?content_id=1184913&seccao=M%FAsica
New Zealand Herald
MusicalCriticism.com (UK)
http://musicalcriticism.com/recordings/cd-being-dufay-0309.shtml
and the blogosphere has been excited too:
http://www.vancooten.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=189#body
There is a video montage over a live recording from the Perth Festival (Australia) on Mick Lynch’s site www.artlynch.com
The News page has details of upcoming performances. For more info visit the Being Dufay website at http://beingdufay.com
Hear a sample from an early mix on the audio player below.
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John Potter & Ambrose Field rehearsing in the Rymer Auditorium, York
Below: Photographs of John & Ambrose rehearsing at the Vienna Konzerthaus:
