Black Fell
Instrumentation: violin, mezzo soprano, game engine
Year composed: 2022-23
Composer website: https://www.martinsuckling.com/
Link to Black Fell, a game-for-music. Click on 'opera' or 'Play Opera' to access the game. NB this will only work on a computer and is unlikely to load of a tablet or phone.
Martin says:
Oh, it's me. Black Fell is a little* different to the other pieces in this series as it requires you to 'play' it yourself through the game interface – though you can just choose to stand still, if you want. The path you take and the sounds you follow will create a piece that is uniquely yours. There is no right or wrong way to do it, and no goal to achieve: just explore and listen. If you play it multiple times you should be rewarded with a richer understanding of both the narrative and of how you influence what you hear by your movements. It won't work on a mobile device unfortunately, but I promise it's worth dusting off your laptop/desktop for.
*actually very
[from black-fell.com]
Martin Suckling is a composer and violinist; he is also Professor and Head of Music at the School of Arts and Creative Technologies at the University of York. His compositions have been championed by many leading orchestras and ensembles including the London Sinfonietta, Scottish Ensemble, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
From 2013-18 Suckling was the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Associate Composer, a partnership which resulted in Six Speechless Songs, a concerto for pianist Tom Poster, and Meditation (after Donne) for chamber orchestra and electronics. Suckling also enjoys a close relationship with the Aurora Orchestra, with commissions ranging from Psalm, for harp and spatialised ensembles, premiered at the Royal Academy of Arts as part of Edmund de Waal’s ‘white’ project in 2015 to an adaption of the Barnett / Klassen children’s book The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse in 2023.
This Departing Landscape, commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic, gives its name to a critically acclaimed orchestral portrait disc released by NMC in 2021. these bones, this flesh, this skin, Suckling’s interactive web-based collaboration with Scottish Ensemble and Scottish Dance Theatre received both a Scottish Award for New Music and a Classical:NEXT Innovation Award in 2021. A chamber portrait disc, The Tuning, was released by Delphian in January 2022, was subsequently shortlisted for a Gramophone Award, and won a Scottish Award for New Music in 2023.