11 February 2021
I enjoyed chatting to Irene Kurka for her podcast series Neue Musik Leben. Irene is a German soprano, particularly associated (in my mind anyway) with Wandelweiser composers. She sang my Complainte at a Klangraum concert in Düsseldorf in around 2010, and then I wrote a solo piece for her in 2012 called The World in tune, recorded on the Edition Wandelweiser label. That Autumn I went to visit her in Düsseldorf to rehearse it, and sat in her garden listening to the bells of two churches ringing the Angelus – this sound memory eventually became my ensemble piece Düsseldorf.