Words
SHORT BIO
Electroacoustic composer and improviser focused on modular synthesis,
collaborators include Axel Dörner, Thomas Lehn, Ute Wassermann, David
Sylvian, Sidsel Endresen, Audrey Chen and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
Work featured on KONTAKTE Biennale für Elektroakustische Musik und
Klangkunst, International Computer Music Conference and Moers Festival.
Albums with Evan Parker, many solo albums, including Several Circles (cusp
editions) and collaborations. Initiated two editions of the Sines & Squares festival
at Manchester University focused on modular and analogue synthesis and curated
several concert series in Berlin. Two Ph. D.s: the first on Improvised Music from
the University of London, 1992, the second, a Portfolio of Electroacoustic
Compositions, University of Manchester, 2020. Leads a Master’s degree in
Creative Production (Music) at Catalyst Institute, Berlin.
Dr. Dr. Richard Scott - PhD, PhD, MusM, BSc (Hons.)
LONG BIO & ARTISTIC STATEMENT
1. Introduction
I am a composer, improvisor and educator residing in Berlin. For the last few years I have been focussed on the compositional and improvisational possibilities of modular synthesis, working with many collaborators including Axel Dörner, Jon Rose, Richard Barrett, Thomas Lehn, Audrey Chen, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Michael Vorfeld, Ute Wassermann, Shelley Hirsch, Frank Gratkowski, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Chamber Remix Festival, Köln and Seicento Vocale.
I was initially inspired to play electronic music by teenage experiences seeing Cabaret Voltaire perform and hearing Stockhausen and Jon Hassel’s music on the radio. I was introduced to free improvisation in the 1980s by John Stevens, and later studied saxophone with Elton Dean and Steve Lacy, and electroacoustic composition with David Berezan and Ricardo Climent. Since early underground cassette releases in 1989 I released many albums, for example with Grutronic and Evan Parker for PSI records, a solo double LP, Several Circles, duet albums with Axel Dörner, Audrey. Chen, Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Clive Bell and an record with Twinkle3 and Sidsel Endresen. I initiated two editions of the Sines & Squares festival at Manchester University which focusses on modular and analogue synthesis and has helped found several concert series in Berlin: Basic Electricity, AUXXX, Klangkeller and Sound Anatomy. He has his own Sound Anatomy weblabel imprint.
My work has been featured on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, BBC Radio 3 and 4, International Computer Music Conference, London Jazz Festival, BEAM, Bratislava NEXT Festival of Advanced Music, SARC Sonorities Belfast, Berlin Interaktion Improvised Music Festival and MANTIS Electroacoustic Music Festival, Manchester.
I hold two Ph.D.s; the first for this thesis on Improvised Music from the University of London in 1992 and a second for a portfolio of electroacoustic compositions completed at the University of Manchester in 2020. I currently lead and teach a Masters degree in Creative Production (Music) at Catalyst Insitute in Berlin.
My electroacoustic suite Several Circles was described as, "fantastically colourful and abstract", "brilliant and confounding" and as "a universe all of its own". My music has been compared to that of Francois Bayle, Todd Dockstader, Morton Subotnik, Autechre and Derek Bailey.
2. Artists Statement
My artistic work has been primarily engaged with two questions: how can electronics be regarded as commination? And how can an exploratory, improvisatory method create compositional form? Although much of my performance work over the years has been in realms of free improvisation, n recent years this interest in composition and structure have become a more important focus, so in 2011 I took some time to go back to University and to complete an MA in Electro-acoustic Music, and my (second) PhD in Electro-acoustic composition at Manchester University which I received in 2020.
As well as composing and performing I have reflected and written about music for over 30 years; as a music journalist and sociology research student in London to more recent academic presentations on the subjects of free improvisation, modular synthesizers and electro-acoustic composition. I was awarded a PhD for my study of free improvisation when I was still young and the themes I discussed then are still fascinating to me now. I see improvisation as an important root of any creative practice and as something that can be readily combined with other ways of working. Improvisation has profound things to teach us socially, educationally, politically, psychologically and philosophically. I explore these themes in the two articles. The Molecular Imagination and Free Improvisation and Nothing included. Yet increasingly I do not see improvisation and composition as separate, at least in my own work, but also in my understanding of artist such as Beatrice Ferrerya, Richard Barrett and Thomas Ankersmit.
2.1 Some Personal Musical History
My musical training has been unconventional. In the 1980s I played guitar and synthesiser and sang with post-punk electronic band, inspired by Cabaret Voltaire and Public Image Limited. I later became influenced by the music of Ornette Coleman, Jon Hassell, Albert Ayler and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aus Den Sieben Tagen and, while I was studying at the London School of Economics and started to play the saxophone. London in the late 1980s was full of remarkable musicians, such as Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, and Keith Rowe who, as a beginner, I was lucky to be able to play with. I studied Indian classical and West African music and eventually I studied jazz harmony and more recently turned to electro-acoustic music and composition.
In London in the 1980s I was fortunate to get the chance to study group improvisation practice with John Stevens. The Spontaneous Music Ensemble and his Search and Reflect teaching workshops proposed a refreshingly radical approach to music-making which I still find very inspiring. Steven's teaching and ideas also stimulated me to complete my first Ph.D. dissertation exploring the precedents for, and consequences of free improvisation as a cultural form. By the time I submitted my PhD thesis in 1993 I was already far more interested in creating new music than I was in academic research and so I decided to be a musician rather than a sociologist or musicologist. I started my own bands, set up a small CD label and released my first albums. For ten years I dedicated myself to soprano saxophone (studying with Elton Dean and Steve Lacy) and I completed an intensive two year Higher National Diploma (UK) course in Jazz Harmony and Technique. During this time I took several trips to Africa to study and to work with local musicians in Gambia, Casamance and Senegal. Non-Western music-making has always been a most important part of my personal research. I also spent months wandering in Asia with a clarinet, listening, meeting and playing with local musicians. I became infatuated with the strangeness of Japanese music in this time and I still like to work with musicians inspired by it whenever possible, for example my duet with guitarist/daxophonist Kazuhisa Uchihashi, performances with Tomomi Adaci, Toshi Nakayama and Rieko ….. and my several albums (Ampanman and Twinkle3) with shakuhachi player Clive Bell. As both a studio composer and improvising performer my concern is with tangibility, gesture, resonance, space and the body. In all of this I am sure I have been as deeply informed by my experiences of African and Asian music, punk, theatre, dance and painting as much as I have by European and American music.
2.2 Interactions with Technology
After 2000 I again became very interested in electronic music, computers and synthesizers. In the last ten years I have worked with most of the major music software platforms. As a long term as an artistic resident at STIEM I developed and a sophisticated self-designed/hacked midi controller instrument, the WiGI, based on the Buchla Lightning. The past three years have been dedicated to analogue synthesis and I finally achieved my ambition to have an electronic performance instrument that is as fast responsive as flexible as the saxophone was. This has gone very well and in the past three years I have played more concerts than ever before and released several albums, with several more to come in 2016. I have worked with many musicians, composers and artists including Evan Parker, Shelley Hirsch, Jon Rose, Axel Dörner, Michael Vorfeld, Sidsel Endresen, Jaap Blonk, Richard Barrett, Thomas Lehn, Frank Gratkowski, Hayden Chisholm, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Audrey Chen, Olaf Rupp, Hilary Jeffery, Kasper Tranberg, Helmut Lemke, Ute Wasserman, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Christian Kobi, Steve Heather, Andre Vida and Anri Sala. Since 2012 I have a been busy as an organiser and curator in Berlin, managing two long-running concert series of experimental and improvised music, AUXXX and Basic Electricity since 2012 and a series at Spektrum, starting in 2016. In 2014 I initiated a festival and symposium, Sines and Squares, dedicated to analogue and modular synthesizer performance and composition held at Manchester University. In December November 2016 I launched a label, Sound Anatomy with over 20 releases so far.
2.3 Multi media/Transmedia/Multimodal collaborations
Although composition and performance have alsays been my main commitments, I have also had many collaborations for example withs with dance, theatre, painting, video, songwriting, Japanese poetry and worked extensively with sound design, audio mixing and mastering, electronic instrument design etc including Twinkle3, ft David Sylvian and Kazuko Hohki: Upon This Fleeting Dream: Japanese Death Poems (Cortizona Records 2022) .
I have trained with theatre/movement teachers Jos Houben, Sten Rudstrom, Katie Duck and Julian Hamilton and I have been musicians in residence at many dance and interdisciplinary festivals. Video performnces with Akiko Nakayama, Mark Pilkington, Insa Langhorst and Sanja Starovic I was musician-in-residence at various international dance festivals, including several years at Ponderosa Berlin, Freiburg and Göttingen Contact Dance Improvisation festivals. I studied Action Theatre (a physical theatre improvisation training method) for several years, including intensive courses with Sten Rudstrom and Ruth Zapora. Between 2002 and 2008 I taught improvisation and performance skills to mixed groups of musicians, dancers and actors at Compagnie Songes in Valence, France and the Festival of Multidisciplinary Improvisation in Bilbao, Spain.
In the last years I started increasingly working in the context of New Music, for example “Fünf Interventionen aus der Fremde,” Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, SINUSTON-Festival Magdeburger Tage der elektroakustischen Musik, Black Wood Dialogues composition for Bass Clarinet and electronics (with Marjie van Gorkon) MANTIS Electroacoustic Music Festival, and Moers festival 2021/Arte: Seicento Vocale & Richard Scott. Compositions by Gesualdo, Vivier and Richard Scott.
Curriculum Vitae
Qualifications and Training
Doctorate: PhD, Portfolio of Electro-acoustic Music Composition from University of Manchester. (2020)
Doctorate: PhD from London University. Noises: Free Music, Improvisation and the Avant-garde; London 1965 to 1990 (sociological analysis of improvised music) (1993)
Masters: Mus.M. Electro-acoustic Music (Distinction), University of Manchester (2010)
Higher National Diploma: Jazz Theory and Musicianship, South Manchester College (1999)
Ordinary National Diploma: Sound Engineering and Studio Production, South Manchester College (1995)
Bachelors: BSc (Hons.) in Sociology from London School of Economics (1986) “A” Levels in Art, Economics, Sociology and Government and Politics (1982)
Employment
I have been primarily a freelance musician, composer, academic and sound engineer for much of the last 30 years, performing my own music, organising, producing mixing and playing in many ensembles. However, I have also had roles of formal employment:
Current Employment: Masters’s degree Programme Lead at Catalyst - Institute for Creative Arts and Technology, Berlin (Permanent contract since June 2018, I will leave in September 2023)
June 2014 – 2018: External examiner for Sonology MA students at the Dutch Royal Conservatory at The Hague, The Netherlands.
Dec 2015 to present: Director of Sound Anatomy Records http://soundanatomy.com/
March 2014 – Jan 2016: Guest Lecturer and Teaching Assistant at Manchester University giving workshops on advanced sound recording techniques, electroacoustic music, audio-visual composition (part-time)
January 2011 to Jan 2013: Lecturer on BA Hons. degree courses on Sound and Audio Theory and Studio Technique at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, University of Lancaster (part-time)
2003 to present: I run Audience, an independent audio production company, recording and producing a wide variety of electronic and acoustic projects, including music for TV and film, theatre and dance. Currently based in Berlin and focused on audio mastering
1988 to 2002: Freelance journalist reviewing Jazz, free improvisation, African, Asian, Drum and Bass, Experimental and Contemporary music for The Wire, Q, Time Out and BBC World Service
1991 to 1993: London Musician’s Collective (LMC) Administrator with responsibility for concert programming, organisation and marketing
Other Recent Professional Roles
Composer in Residence: Electric Spring Festival/Huddersfield University Electroacoustic Studios. March 2017
Composer in Residence: EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm. March 2016
Composer in Residence: Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. May 2015
Festival Initiator, Organiser and Peer reviewer for compositions and paper submissions Sines and Squares festival, Manchester 2014 and 2016. I raised sponsorship and support from several business donors, such as Moog and Korg and from the University of Manchester for the Festival.
Artistic Resident at STEIM, (Studio for Electro Instrumental Music) Amsterdam developing infrared performance technologies. 2008-2013
Peer reviewer for New Instruments for Musical Expression (NIME) conference, Norway 2012
Selected Compositions
Richard Scott “Fünf Interventionen aus der Fremde,” Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Mensch, Musik (Premiere 3rd Feb 2023)
Richard Scott (solo). Live auf dem SINUSTON-Festival Magdeburger Tage der elektroakustischen Musik. 29.10.21
“Thunder Actually Bicycles…” Electro-acoustic composition premiered at Forum Wallis Festival für Neue Musik www.forumwallis.ch. July 2021.
Moers festival 2021/Arte: Seicento Vocale & Richard Scott. Compositions by Gesualdo, Vivier and Richard Scott. Full concert is here: https://youtu.be/Nsh3UFJNFWU
Tama Arts and Music Festival, Tokyo, Japan. “Music Floats Upwards”. Electro-acoustic composition by Richard Scott. https://tamafes.tumblr.com/Tokyo Electracoustic music festival. March 2021.
BEAST Feast festival. University of Birmingham, May 2020. “Music Floats Upwards” . Electro-acoustic composition by Richard Scott. http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/beast-feast-2020/
Multichannel (ambisonic) installation piece Buzz Sculptures commissioned by the Neue Musik Initiativ in Berlin, performed at the Martin-Groper-Bau museum (Berliner Festpspeile) and Spektrum Centre for Art and Technology, Berlin. September 2017/January 2018
Black Wood Dialogues composition for Bass Clarinet and electronics (with Marjie van Gorkon) MANTIS Electroacoustic Music Festival, Manchester/Leicester De Mon forte University. March 2017.
Several Circles: final version (acousmatic diffusion). International Computer Music Conference/Sound, Music Computing Conference. Athens. September 2014
A Short History of Stuttering. Prize Winner. UK 60×60 Mix 2012 composition competition.
August 2011. International Computer Music Conference: Strike One by Richard Scott’s Lightning Ensemble.
November 2010. Sonorities Festival, SARC, Belfast: Call Them Improvisers! Ensemble directed by Evan Parker
Selected Recordings
Twinkle3, ft David Sylvian and Kazuko Hohki: Upon This Fleeting Dream: Japanese Death Poems (Cortizona Records 2022) https://cortizona.bandcamp.com/album/upon-this-fleeting-dream
Delirious Cartographies by Richard Scott (Arbitrary Records 2022) Electroacoustic/Multimedia https://arbitraryrichardscott.bandcamp.com/album/delirious-cartographies
“Everything is always at once” by Richard Scott (Discus Records 133CD 2022)
https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/everything-is-always-at-once-133cd-2022
Stardust RH by Richard Scott, realised on the Hordijk Modular Synthesiser, from Hordijk, Vol. 1 by Various Artists, Flag Day Records 2021 https://flagdayrecordings.bandcamp.com/track/stardust-4rh
Richard Scott and Axel Dörner “A Journal of Elasticity” Bohemian Drips 2021. LP/CD/Digital album https://bohemiandrips.de/product/bd014-axel-dorner-richard-scott-a-journal-of-elasticity/ The album can be heard here: https://bohemiandrips.bandcamp.com/album/a-journal-of-elasticity
Tales from the Voodoo Box: solos for EMS Synthi A Synthesiser. Richard Scott (Sound Anatomy 2017) https://soundanatomy.bandcamp.com/album/tales-from-the-voodoo-box-solos-for-ems-synthi-a-synthesiser
Several Circles. Richard Scott (Cusp Editions CD/2 x LP, 2016) https://cuspeditions.bandcamp.com/album/richard-scott-several-circles
Seven Types of Ambiguity. Axel Dörner and Richard Scott (Sound Anatomy 2016) https://soundanatomy.bandcamp.com/album/seven-types-of-ambiguity
Hiss and Viscera. Audrey Chen and Richard Scott (Sound Anatomy 2016) https://soundanatomy.bandcamp.com/album/hiss-and-viscera
Natura Venomous. Parak.eets with Ute Wasserman and Emilio Gordoa (Creative Sources 2016) https://soundanatomy.bandcamp.com/album/natura-venomous
Together in Zero Space, Grutronic and Evan Parker (PSI Recordings 2012) https://www.discogs.com/Grutronic-and-Evan-Parker-Together-In-Zero-Space/release/3147648 Essex Foam Party, Grutronic. (PSI Recordings 2010)
Wood Wind Tide, electroacoustic duets with shakuhachi with Clive Bell (Kwan Yin Records 2007)
The Magnificence of Stereo, Richard Scott with Rex Casswell (plunderphonic/ electroacoustic). (sruti BOX Records 1992)
Selected Performances
Richard Scott “For Rob Hordijk” Solo Performance, Petersburg Arts Space, Berlin, 23 October 2022.
Richard Scott & Pitchshifting/Soundpainting Orchestra. Audioart Festival, Pula, Croatia, 22nd and 23rd September 2022
Precarious Technologies Richard Scott & Nic Collins. Vovne series: PAS Berlin,15th June 2022.
Duet with Joke Lanz, Ausland/Wabe Berlin. Kazu's Honeycomb Festival. https://ausland-berlin.de/kazus-honeycomb-festival-day-1
Moers Festival/Arte, June 2020, Richard Scott Solo concert https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/097995-045-A/richard-scottaerosolo-7/
Die Akademie der Künste. KONTAKTE ’19. Biennale für Elektroakustische Musik und Klangkunst, Thomas Lehn Ute Wassermann, mit Thomas Lehn und Richard Scott, für Stimme mit Analogsynthesizern
Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln. Sounding #06, Concert with Joker Nies and workshop presentation, November 2019
Wels Music Unlimited Festival, performance with Shelley Hirsch and Roger Turner. September 2019
Japanese tour with Kazuhisa Uchihashi, including concerts with D.J. Sniff, Akiko Nakayama & Toshimaru Nakamura. June 2019
Evan Parker and Grutronic. Konfrontationen Festival, Jazzgalerie, Nickelsdorf, Austria. July 2006
Publications
Post-Acousmatic Practice: Re-evaluating Schaeffer’s heritage. Monty Adkins, Richard Scott and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay. Organised Sound. vol. 21.1 May 2016
Guest editor of a special issue of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community CeC eContact journal on Analogue and Modular Synthesis http://econtact.ca/index.html
The Molecular Imagination: John Stevens, The Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Free Group Improvisation, in Schroeder, Franciscka (ed.) 2014. Improvisation and Performance. Cambridge Scholars’ Press. (2014)
Free Improvisation and Nothing: From the Tactics of Escape to a Bastard Science, in: ACT – Zeitschrift für Musik & Performance 4 (2014), Nr. 5.
Artaud’s Snake: gesture, time and play – a composer’s report on the use and development of the WiGI infra-red wireless gestural system. Paper delivered to the International Computer Music Conference Proceedings (2011)
Getting WiGI With It. eContact journal Article about the development of a wireless infrared gestural instrument (2010)
Public Lectures and Presentations
Research Presentations: The voltage-controlled analogue synthesizer as a tool for composition and performance. Universität der Künste Berlin/ University of Manchester Berlin/Manchester. March 2017
Improvisation with a Modular Synthesiser. EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm. March 6th 2016.
Advanced Analogue Synthesis. University of Manchester NOVARS research matinée presentation. Manchester. March 2015
Composing with Modular Synthesizers. Visiting Professorial Lecture, Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. May 2015
The Beauty of Forgetting: predetermination, time and spontaneity in programming for electroacoustic composition and improvisation. Paper. From Tape to Typedef Symposium, Sheffield University Jan 2013
Intimacy, Interaction and Improvisational Technologies. Paper. Leeds International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition. December 2012
Recent Financial Support Awarded
Artistic Research Stipendium, Sound Art and New Music, Berlin 2023
Stipendium der Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Berlin 2020/21
Musikfonds Neustart Kultur Stipendienprogramms 2020/21 awarded, but not taken because of Stipendium der Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Berlin
Financial support from Harry Clough Foundation for PhD study at Manchester University. 2013-2020
I was supported by STEIM for my research project there. June 2008 to June 2013
I was supported by the Arts Council of Great Britain for the first year of my project with STEIM. June 2008-2009
Artistic Referees
Professor Richard Barrett, Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory, The Hague, Netherlands +31 70 315 14 66 richard@furtlogic.com
Professor Ricardo Climent, Professor of Interactive Music Composition, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL United Kingdom, +44 (0) 161 275 3246 ricardo.climent@manchester.ac.uk
Professor Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Professor of Composition & Studio Director, Department of Music, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, United Kingdom, p.a.tremblay@hud.ac.uk, +44 (0) 1484 47 36 08
Dr. Dr. Richard Scott, PhD, PhD, MusM, BSc (Hons.)
Nationality: British/German
Berlin, 22th March 2023