There is no gap between bird and song: album launch and concert

Legendary Swiss music label Hat Hut Records, renowned for its releases in contemporary and improvised music, announces the release of a new album dedicated to the compositions of Scott McLaughlin.

The album there is no gap between bird and song features acclaimed multi-instrumentalist Marco Fusi performing seven distinct iterations of McLaughlin’s open-score composition. The piece challenges the traditional dynamics of performance by treating the instrument not as a passive tool, but as an active collaborator. Taking its title from a talk by sound theorist Salomé Voegelin on "thinking sonically," McLaughlin’s work explores the thin threshold where human intention meets material resistance.

The disc is seven different instances of the piece, an open score where Fusi navigates his instruments now defamiliarised by string-preparations. Across the disc, Marco plays viola and viola d’amore ‘prepared’ with rigid discs that couple the strings together to alter sounds and responses on often-unpredictable ways. The instrument became a strange tool, a landscape both familiar and new. Deeply sedimented movements with bow and fingers produced unexpected ruptures, as harmonics appeared in unexpected places or stratified into multiphonics. The balance between musician and instrument shifted: rather than simply being controlled, the instrument interferes with intentions, resisting and redirecting the bow’s energy to follow preferred paths of timbre, or even proposing its own resonance entirely.

The launch will be followed by a concert at 19:00, with Marco Fusi playing there is no gap between bird and song and Martin Iddon’s Cherry Ripe. To find out more and register, please visit: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/leedsuniversity72/2355987.

Scott McLaughlin is an Irish composer and improviser based in Huddersfield (UK). He started out as a shoegaze/experimental guitarist before studying music in his 20s at University of Ulster then MA/PhD University of Huddersfield (with Christopher Fox, PA Tremblay, Bryn Harrison, and James Saunders). His music focuses on phenomena of sound, on contingency and indeterminacy in instruments, and performers responding-to and working-with that agency of the instrument. His work has been performed by Zubin Kanga, Heather Roche, Mira Benjamin, Explore Ensemble, BBC SSO, and others. Currently, Scott lectures in composition at the University of Leeds.

Marco Fusi is a violinist/violist, a researcher in music performance, and a passionate advocate for the music of our time. Among many collaborations with emerging and established composers, he has premiered works by Jessie Marino, Tim McCormack, Yu Kuwabara, Evan Johnson and Kristine Tjøgersen, among others. Marco has performed with Pierre Boulez, Elena Schwarz, Lorin Maazel, Susanna Mälkki, Alan Gilbert, and frequently plays with leading contemporary ensembles including Klangforum Wien, MusikFabrik, Meitar Ensemble, Mivohttps://www.hathut.com/s Quartet, Ensemble Linea. He has recorded several solo albums, published by Kairos, Stradivarius, Col Legno, Da Vinci, Geiger Grammofon, New Focus Recordings. Marco is currently Assistant Professor of Artistic Research at HEMU Lausanne and Associate Researcher at the Orpheus Instituut of Gent.