Matthew Lee Knowles

leaving time immaterial mostly archaic then extinguished.
I always thought I'd like his sculpture in my garden by Matthew Lee Knowles -first performed by ARCO at the sonic arts network, Brighton 5th July 2008
http://uk.youtube.com/matthewleeknowles
Profile Music:
“Suite: Inherit the Wind"
From my score for "Inherit the Wind" 2007 Guildhall School of Music and Drama, dir. Wyn Jones.
“The Winter's Tale” - Solo Piano Main Theme
this theme is from my score to "The Winter's Tale" by William Shakespeare. This particular track was used to underscore the opening scene.
“A tribute to Erik Satie and Morton Feldman”
for clarinet, cello and piano. THIS VERSION: PIANO, BASS CLARINET AND VIOLA written for and first performed as part of the guildhall new music festival 2006, it has since being performed in London with the composer at the piano. The clarinettist (BS CL) and cellist (VIOLA) both have six lines each and have the freedom of starting in a line and bar number of their choice. The piano doesn’t have this freedom and plays the same thing over again, with slight alterations, setting a imaginary pulse which is not to be adhered to by the players, who should feel their own pulse. This version has much more pace than the previous recordings.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
it was written for the BBC singers and first performed by them on the 1st May 2007. Each singer has their name written vertically on a page with instructions to sing the letters of the name on a pitch which is described as being either high, middle or low. they also have rough durations (example, each letter is to be between 3 and 8 seconds) when they have sang their name they enthusiastically swap parts with someone else and do the same thing again; then they turn over their brightly coloured parts and sing the name of the conductor, who can them silence them at any point, and they must continue miming. this is the kind of thing I like doing.
“Dawning; Blue. black, red”
for mezzo soprano, cello and piano. A song with text by Jon Clay. All the details of the singers part are controlled by use of colour, font size and font style. the cellist has to play certain notes, but in a free style. the pianist has one chord to be played at any times during the piece.
Short Bio:
Matthew Lee Knowles was born in Scunthorpe in 1985, studied with Richard Baker and Paul Newland at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and writes music, poetry, events and happenings whilst teaching piano in London. Happenings include: "six_events" which took place in nearly thirty countries over seven days/ "The Nothing and the Nothingness" where over one hundred performers contributed to an evening of exploration into the subject of nothingness in art, music, literature and dance/ "For the Birds" for seven groups of people reading texts in seven different ways in seven different locations and a happening for the London Festival of Architecture. Compositions recently completed include: "33..44.... for a Speaker"/"Lecture on Chopin" (piano+speaker)/"Ten Text Pieces for Josh"/"The Story of a Magnificent Banquet" (Harpsichord+speaker)/"This is Fluxus (piano+speaker)"/"I always thought I'd like his sculpture in my garden"/three theatre scores/about one hundred mesostics/over one thousand events/numerous piano pieces/thousands of lists/questions/anagrams/palindromes/poems/waxpaintings/scul ptures/videos and photographs Future projects and pieces include setting texts of Jon Clay, more collaborative work with Neil Luck, several commissions and more happenings.
long Bio:
Matthew Lee Knowles was born in Scunthorpe on the 8th September 1985.
He has being involved with theatre from a young age, playing piano and keyboards, working back stage and front of house, as musical director, composer and arranger.
Earlier in 2007 he assisted Adrian Lee, composer at the Shakespeare Globe Theatre, where ‘The Merchant Of Venice’ played.
He has taken part in a John Cage weekend at the Tate Modern, performing ‘Living Room Music’ over and over again.
Matthew has now finished his degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He got a high first and was awarded the Frank Prindl composition prize, after studying with Richard baker and Paul Newland.
His solo saxophone composition ‘Solo for Alto Saxophone’ was workshopped in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2004 and in 2006 his ‘Tribute for Morton Feldman and Erik Satie’ was also workshopped as part of the Park Lane sessions. In 2005 ‘Space Dikhotomia’ was premiered at the Sounds New Festival by Nicholas Cleobury, along with works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Paul Patterson.
A young composer award and further performance was the result of entering ‘Instances’ into a competition. Instances was given its world premiere in June 2006 (Matthew unfortunately missed this performance as he was mugged at knifepoint outside the university) ‘a little more than Nothing but not yet Something’ was chosen for performance after a call for scores by the London Wind Festival and was premiered in October 2007.
‘Post PH(Hong) creates purpose carries about art, neither abstract, only plane minutes then recently into music suggested’ for piano and saxophone was commissioned by Elen Le Foll and premiered at the beginning of May and premiered in Greenwich and repeated a week later at St Andrews in Holborn, with Haruka Shibuya at the piano. The piece was written after studying a painting by Paul Huxley (Hong) “she fixing with her eye . . . a distant bell . . . as she hastened towards it” has just been finished, written for Haruka and Elen for saxophone, piano and two desk bells….lots of running about.
Matthew is currently working on an opera, ‘A Catatonic Romance.’ (this opera has been about three years in the making so far…)
Last year he collaborated with Wigmore Hall and Birkbeck College on a celebration of song project and has written music for the James Turrell exhibition at the Louise T Blouin institute.
With his friend, Vikki Hoodless, Matthew commissioned the composer Adam de la Cour to write a piece for fake Siamese twins, a piano duet resulted called ‘Con-join’. Adam has also created designs for various projects of Matthews.
Matthew wrote a piece for the BBC singers entitled ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’, where the singers perform their own names whilst walking around the performance space with brightly coloured card.
At the beginning of 2007 Matthew wrote the score for ‘Inherit the Wind’ at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. (Dir. Wyn Jones.) and later finished the score for his first Shakespeare play ‘The Winter’s Tale’ which ran in October. Matthew finished working on the music for ‘August’, a Welsh setting of Uncle Vanya, at the beginning of 2008.
Matthew wrote his concerto for voice, entitled ‘outrageously fulfilling & confused, hello to bizarre gay shit and whoosh! goes an illogical imagination’ in 2007 and it is a piece about communication, if the players don’t listen to the soloist, they simply can‘t play and the composition won‘t exist. At the first performance the soloist was Sarah Moule and the conductor was Laurence Crane.
‘Nothing Implied’, a string quartet written as part of Matthew’s course in 2006 was the first piece in a new direction inspired by John Cage. The players are controlled by stopwatches and their scores consist of a number of newspaper quotations and an instruction, in each section, of how many notes to play and in what register. They instrumentally chant the lines very quietly with the aid of practise mutes.
“Activity I” and “Activity II” were written especially for the S’n’M (society of new music) in the pub and basement nights; these pieces were for any number of players and encouraged exploration of the performance space and acted as continued research into the blurred line between performer and audience.
In the 2007 Guildhall Contemporary Music Festivals he performed as composer and pianist in his own works and the works of others, including Jo Kondos’ Metaphonesis for solo piano. He wrote a happening, “Thank you Mr. C”, inspired by Cages Black Mountain College 1952 event. 28 people on stage all carrying out different events and tasks.
The 21st-27th January 2008 saw Matthews' ‘six_events’ performed worldwide, 16 US states and 25 countries. ‘six_events’ was about looking and listening for the art constantly surrounding us and turning ordinary events into performances. six_events allowed us to reflect on what we do in our daily routine, looking for examples where there might be elements of ‘art’ in our own lives, rather than being the passive consumers of ‘art’ created by others. The project was hugely successful, raising many thoughtful points and connecting Matthew to lots of like minded people.
A very enjoyable project with the Canadian dancer, Paul Andre Fortier, came to an end at the end of 2007; along with five other composers Matthew wrote a small piece for percussion ensemble (Sankorfa) to accompany Fortiers solo 30x30 dance.
Matthew worked with the artist Giorgio Sadotti on a project called ‘I am you’ for the opening of an exhibition and gallery in December.
Following on from the July Happening, Matthew curated another happening at the Louise T Blouin institute on Tuesday 29th April 2008 ‘the nothing and the nothingness.’ Around 120 people contributed to the event with 94 people actually performing on the evening. Performers included ensembles, writers, filmmakers, performance artists, composers, philosophers, lecturers, sound/installation artists, photographers, bands, poets, artists, cooks, actors, opera singers and experimentalists. It was an exploration of ideas, writings and thoughts on nothingness and an attempt to present ‘nothing’ in its many forms. The happening was a demonstration of nothing and nothingness where the audience moved freely, experiencing and assimilating the presented ideas, finding their own meanings whilst constantly being challenged to consider this complex subject. The whole event took eight months to prepare.
Matthew organised another happening in Hyde Park, for the London festival of architecture in June and in September presented (with Neil Luck) “For the Birds”, an exclusively spoken word event.
A commission by William Lane was completed last year, for viola, flute and a pack of cards, called ‘Nothing, Something, Everything, Anything.’ William also used several of Matthews pieces for a fluxus event around Hong Kong in August.
Yshani Perinpanayagam was the dedicatee of ‘Lecture on Chopin’ for piano, speaker (Mikhail Karikis) and two page turners (Debbie Sargent, Neil Luck), which was performed this year at the Guildhall Contemporary Music Festival, with Yshani at the piano. For this piece Matthew cut up the entire etudes of Chopin and rearranged them on twenty A3 sheets and wrote a forty minute lecture to be spoken live against the pianist interpreting the pages, which are constantly being moved around, shredded, blown in the air and inserted into the pianists clothes.
A new commission from the ensemble ‘Contrasts’ was finished in January. The piece, for saxophone, violin and piano is called ‘Recently my desire in sky left art to another young forgotten poem, but never in someone only recently suggested’ This piece will be premiered in London and performed twice in Hong Kong.
'Do you see?' for violin and cello (or solo violin and solo cello) was performed by Johnny Chang as part of the 'microscore project' in Auckland in February along with many other 30 second pieces.
Matthew recently visited the Yehudi Menuhin School to talk about his music and the music and ideas of Cage and Feldman.
Matthew has recently had some of his works published on Venereal Kittens and had a selection of his scores exhibited at "Notations" which was held at the Slade in January, where he will also performed. "Notations" was an event celebrating Cages publication of the same name and was all about looking at new and interesting ways of notating music. A selection of Matthews graphic scores were exhibited at the Phoenix Gallery in Brighton from the 26th April to 7th June as part of OFF LINE.
Matthew went to Spain at the end of May to perform in a dance piece by a choreographer (Jesus Rubio) at the London School of Contemporary Dance. He worked closely with the composer Michael Picknett to create his own instruments and sounds. Matthew performed in the premiere of the piece at the LCDS at the beginning of the year.
'Something Will Cloud Her Glittering Footsteps' a composition for eight singers was workshopped in June, by James Weeks and members of Exaudi. It is an exploration of what my friends think of the four subjects: Something, Anything, Nothing and Everything. The title is by the writer Jon Clay.
Matthew is working as composer for Paul Burgess/Daedalus Theatre on a new experimental theatre project about Burundi at Camden Peoples Theatre.
Matthew recently created works for an installation at the Nabokov Arts Club, with Paul Burgess and Simon Daw.
Matthew has been making thousands of poems/mesostics/lists/palindromes/anagrams/lists/sculptures/ wax paintings/photographs and videos at the moment, and is a member of the Arco Collective - a new group of performers and composers who recently performed at the Sonic Arts Network in Brighton.
Present commissions include: a violin and guitar duet, a percussion and viola duet, a solo violin piece, a piece for glass harmonica, a piece for 8 piccolos, a bass clarinet duet and a concerto for solo voice. He is also creating a new piece for “Fresh Meat” - a group showing for artists in Commodore House, Battersea Reach on September 25th.
Matthew recently accompanied Mikhail Karikis on the harpsichord at Café Oto in Dalston, where he also premiered (with Neil Luck) “The Story of a Magnificent Banquet” for harpsichord and speaker. The text came from “120 Days of Sodom”, a masterpiece by the Marquis De Sade.
Matthew will perform at the opening of the BBC cut and splice/Sonic Arts Network festival on the 24th of October. He will perform "Goldstaub" (Gold Dust) by Stockhausen which requires the performer to live without food, sleep or communication for four days prior to the performance.
If you read about Feldman, you may have come across the story concerning the descendent of Scriabin who spent her whole life writing music with the intention of it never being heard. “I have always envied this woman, I envy her insanity, her impracticality.” I feel the same.
4 page text piece
From "Lecture on Chopin"
a selection of recent creations:
********************
I don't know anymore.
I never thought I did know anything.
I realise the need to ask questions.
I realise even more that there are answers.
However, these are irrelevant.
However, these are relevant
The answer to the your question is nothing.
The nothing is your answer.
Is that enough?
Why is it not enough?
It isn't anything.
Stop asking.
Never stop asking.
Is it enough?
Why is it not enough?
Will we ever stop asking questions?
Should we stop asking questions?
If the answer is nothing how do we know we have asked a question?
At what point is a question relevant?
At what point is a question a question?
What point do I ask it?
Why is it not enough?
What am I questioning?
Why am I questioning?
I am not questioning.
Therefore I never stop asking questions.
The answer to everything is nothing.
There is nothing.
It is everything.
Should I stop now?
Is it neccessary to continue?
I have established there is nothing so why haven't I stopped?
Did I just ask a question?
How do you know it was a question?
Do you know the answer?
The answer is nothing?
Was that a question?
Why is it not enough?
I should stop.
I should stop?
When do we start to listen?
If nothing is everything.
Then everything is nothing.
Then they are the same.
They defeat each other by being there.
Therefore there is nothing.
Therefore there is everything.
Would you like to be in my head?
Why is not enough anymore?
It is enough.
It is enough?
It is enough!
Enough!
What is enough?
When is it enough?
If the subject is so pointless I should continue.
Should I continue?
What made that a question?
You have no control.
You have more control than me.
I still don't know.
I don't want to know.
I want to know more than anything.
What do I want to know?
Do I know what I want to know?
When should I realise I do not want to know anymore?
When should I realise I cannot know anymore?
How should this happen?
Should I continue?
Below are a number of pieces of mine, made whilst thinking about the concept of nothing