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Totally Thames Trust is organising „Bascule Chambers Concerts 2019“ featuring two pieces by the award-winning Lithuanian composers Julius Aglinskas and Egidija Medekšaitė.

Following last years sell out concert series, composer/curator Iain Chambers brings new music and poetry to Tower Bridge‘s huge Bascule Chamber. These unmissable, atmospheric concerts provide a unique way of experiencing one of Victorian engineering's greatest feats.

This year‘s „Bascule Chambers Concerts 2019“ feature an amazing line up of renowned and upcoming performers.   The world-renowned new music ensemble Apartment House performing with vocalist Elaine Mitchener, fresh from her acclaimed Jeanne Lee Project. Together they will give the European premiere of Charles Mingus’s String Quartet No. 1 – never heard anywhere since its first performance in New York in 1972.  Apartment House and Elaine Mitchener will also perform recently unearthed music by the iconic American composer Julius Eastman, who died in 1990 aged only 49.

Among an array of other performances, tours and poetry readings, there will be new music for string quartet and electronics - performed by Apartment House - by composers Julius Aglinskas, Iain Chambers and Egidija Medekšaitė using of the atmospheric acoustic of the huge, brick-lined Bascule Chamber.

The works of Julius Aglinskas avoid the clichés of the academic music. Like many of his peer composers who have not lived through political turmoil, Aglinskas shows tendencies towards the ideas of pluralism and individualism. His music does not serve as a platform for ideologies. On the contrary, from the very first piece, his compositions are imbued with something rather intuitive, exhibiting gestures close to those of the Anglo-Saxon music. At the same time they exude coldness and solitude. This aesthetic sentiment of melancholy does not, however, call for an excessive attention. The composer’s true self becomes evident in pieces composed in a meditative, ‘Feldman-esque’ fashion, injected with a dose of nostalgia. In his works based on repetition-of-the-same counting is nonessential and rhythm plays a minor role. It is an idiosyncratic and genuine expression of longing. The elements of structure obey, or are subjected to the acoustic status quo, without turning the piece into something concept-less and banal. (Edvardas Šumila)

Piece for string quartet and live electronics - “…” by Julius Aglinskas was performed in London during 2018 in showcase concert cycle “Open Ear” organized by BBC Radio 3 at St. Luke’s concert hall. The piece was performed by contemporary music ensemble “Apartment House” which is led by violoncellist Antonas Lukoszevieze. Ensemble has plans of cooperation with Julius Aglinskas and at the end of this year they are planning to record the album of his pieces in London which is going to be released by Music Information Centre Lithuania.

Another Lithuanian composer featured in the programme - Egidija Medekšaitė - has completed her composition studies under Rytis Mažulis at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre; secondly, she graduated in textile design from Kaunas University of Technology. She is organically linked to her composition mentor through her research into the microdimensions of music and the ‘digital’ principle, pointing to both the way the compositions are calculated and the use of digital media, while her textile studies have given a strong ideological and structural impulse to her music. The structures of Indian music often find their way into Medekšaitė‘s post-minimalist work. All the same, in listening to her music it does not seem that it is constructed on strict structuralist principles, rather, it sounds like a hypnotic, ambient flow of sounds, flowing through forms in space. For the „Bascule Chambers Concerts 2019“ Egidija Medekšaitė brings a world premiere of her pieces „SHRI“ related to melancholia, vulnerability and sensitivity. Egidija Medekšaitė will soon have another world premiere of her new piece „Textile_6‘ at the „Listenphony“ festival in London on October 2nd, 2019.

The Bascule Chambers Concerts are supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and by PRS for Music Foundation and the Lithuanian Culture Institute.

For more information and tickets: https://totallythames.org/event/bascule-chamber-concerts-2019

Lithuanian Cultural attache in the UK