Alastair White

Alastair White (born 1988) is a Scottish-New Zealand[1] composer and writer. His work is characterised by a lyrical complexity which draws influence from technology, science, politics and materialist philosophy.[2][3]

Operas

The fashion-opera cycle was created between 2018 and 2021. Combining fashion, dance, drama, poetry and music in what White calls 'contingent dialectics,'[4] it was described by BBC Radio 3 as "a whole exciting new genre of art."[5]

In 2018, WEAR premiered at Tete-a-Tete. An immersive performance at The Crossing, Kings Cross, London, it incorporated dance and fashion to explore the role of objects in changing perceptions of space and time.[6][7][8] It was shortlisted for a Scottish Award for New Music,[9][10] and revived by Opera in the City at the Bridewell Theatre the following year.[11][12]

These ideas were developed in 2019's ROBE, an opera death with themes of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and cartography. It premiered at The Place[13][14] and was nominated for a Creative Edinburgh Award.[15][16] It was released by Métier Records in February, 2021.[17]

His third fashion-opera WOAD premiered in 2021,[18] adapting the Scots border ballad of Tam Lin to imagine the implications of multiverse theory. The Métier release was described by Fanfare as "the height of compositional magnificence."[19]

The fourth, RUNE, premiered later that year at the Round Chapel and is due to be released Summer 2022. Scored for three pianos, two singers and four dancers, the work was a collaboration with London-based brand KA WA KEY. Vogue Italia called it "a perfect combination of show and costume."[20]

Beyond the cycle, Hareflight premiered at the start of 2022 at the Leicester Guildhall, drawing influence from Tiepolo's The Discovery of the True Cross to discuss the relationship between truth and knowledge, "proposing an aesthetic of the thought or dance which moves faster than its crystallisation into sentence or gesture."[21]

Other works

In July 2019, his Two Panels for String Quartet was released by the Altius Quartet as part of Quadrants Vol. 3.[22][23] It was shortlisted for a Scottish Award for New Music 2020.[24] 2020 saw the release of the documentary opera A Boat in an Endless Blue Sea [25][26] and the Scots-Yiddish Cantata The Drowning Shore, which incorporated Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance as part of a collaboration with the playwright's descendants.[27][28][29] He is currently composer-in-residence for the Ljubljana-based abeceda [new music ensemble], premiering a new series about negation including Anti-Music and Music Against —. His scores are published by UMP.[30]

Other projects include an original score for the feature film Treasure Trapped,[31] music for the Scottish School of Contemporary Dance,[32] and a multidisciplinary installation for StAnza.[33] He was a founding member of the bands White Heath (Electric Honey)[34][35] and Blank Comrade (Red Wharf), and writes and speaks internationally on musicology and composition.[36][37][38]

He is currently undertaking a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London with Roger Redgate and Lauren Redhead.[39] His studies are supported by the Tait Memorial Trust.[40]

Contingency Dialectics

White describes his compositional methodology as proceeding from a New Materialist philosophical system, one that

foregrounds a radical new concept of subjectivity which can be realised through art: where subjectivity is a process of community that maintains (accepts) the undefiable integrity of individual monads only to combine them into a matrix of human and non-human (aesthetic, technological, etc) structures: that is, for instance, an art in which the creative reassembly of disparate, logical, mutually exclusive but reciprocally containing structures in turn effects the assembly of individuals involved in and experiencing it into a trans-subjective agent: composed of signs, meaning, and human process. This means: letting go of our old-fashioned selfhood as much as any old-fashioned ‘decentring’ in a surge of futures and utopias, in the optimism of a community where our imposed individualities combine, like the white rose of heaven, in the technologies of texts, operas and virtual worlds.[41]

Discography
  • RUNE Métier Records MSV 28265, 2022[42]
  • WOAD Métier Records MSV 28617, 2021.[43]
  • ROBE Métier Records MSV 28609, 2021 [44]
  • Quadrants Vol. 3 Navona Records NV6239, 2019 [45]
  • Take No Thought for Tomorrow with White Heath. Electric Honey EH 1103, 2010 [46]
  • If There Is Hope... with Blank Comrade. Red Wharf RW 104001, 2009 [47]

References
  1. "Awards 2021 – Tait Memorial Trust". June 2021.
  2. "Alastair White". British Music Collection. 29 November 2018. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  3. "The Inside Story: Alastair White and QUADRANTS VOL. 3". PARMA Recordings. 7 August 2019. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  4. Haggett, George K. (January 2022). "Alastair White, RUNE, Tête à Tête Festival, Round Chapel, Hackney, London, 17 August 2021". Tempo. 76 (299): 89–90. doi:10.1017/S0040298221000760. ISSN 0040-2982. S2CID 245133184.
  5. "BBC Radio 3 - In Tune, Mary Bevan, Jonny Byers, Sergio Bucheli, Manchester Collective, Alastair White". BBC. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  6. "WEAR". Tête à Tête – The Future of Opera. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  7. "fashion and opera | Twin Magazine". Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  8. "Wear – an opera performance". King's Cross. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  9. "New Music Scotland". New Music Scotland. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  10. "Scottish Awards for New Music reveal shortlist – M Magazine". M magazine: PRS for Music online magazine. 16 April 2019. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  11. "wear | opera in the city". Schön! Magazine. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  12. "Wear". opera-in-the-city.com. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  13. "theartsdesk Q&A: composer Alastair White on his new opera ROBE | The Arts Desk". theartsdesk.com. 31 July 2019. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  14. "New AI opera to premiere in Camden". London Live. 2 August 2019. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  15. "2019 – Creative Edinburgh". 2019 – Creative Edinburgh. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  16. "Creative Edinburgh Awards 2019: The Winners – The Skinny". theskinny.co.uk. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  17. "Métier Records to release fashion-opera, ROBE, by Alastair White :: Divine Art Recordings". Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  18. "WOAD". Theatre de la Basse. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  19. "Alastair White's Fashion-Opera WOAD, MSV 28617: Fanfare review | Divine Art Recordings". 24 November 2021. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  20. "Moda e teatro: Ka Wa Key veste i protagonisti di Rune". Vogue Italia (in Italian). 17 September 2021. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  21. https://www.pressreader.com/uk/leicester-mercury/20220204/page/26. Retrieved 30 April 2022 – via PressReader. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  22. Vittes, Laurence (2 September 2019). "Quadrants Vol 3". gramophone.co.uk. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  23. "Quadrants Vol. 3 Review". American Record Guide. Winter 2019.
  24. "The Dorico Award for Small / Medium Scale Work sponsored by Steinberg (1-10 performers)". New Music Scotland. 24 February 2020. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  25. Hugill, Planet. "The children of Rathfern Primary School get creative: A Boat In An Endless Sea". Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  26. "A Boat In An Endless Blue Sea". Klara - Blijf verwonderd (in Dutch). Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  27. "The Drowning Shore". British Music Society. 23 November 2020. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  28. "The Drowning Shore: A Cantata in Yiddish and Scottish | Yiddish Book Center". www.yiddishbookcenter.org. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  29. "Compass Presents to Showcase 'The Drowning Shore'". Opera Wire. 16 November 2020. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  30. "Alastair White". United Music Publishing. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  31. Treasure Trapped, retrieved 23 November 2019
  32. "SSCD 'Hard Rain'". Article19. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  33. White, Alastair (2016). "Fantasia for Two Flutes and Piano". DIN. 2.
  34. "On the radar: White Heath". scotsman.com. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  35. "White Heath – Take No Thought For Tomorrow". is this music?. 1 June 2011. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  36. White, Alastair (2019). 'Postmodern Hyperspace in Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 4' in 'Music, Individuals and Contexts: Dialectical Interactions'. Società Editrice di Musicologia. ISBN 978-88-85780-07-1.
  37. White, Alastair. ""For me the greatest measure of a work of art is if it makes me feel uncomfortable or excites me sexually": A Lacanian reading of the Verdi Transcriptions". Principles of Music Composing: Links Between Audiation and Composing. 18.
  38. Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen-. "Music in the body – body in music: The body at the intersection of musical practice and discourse. Conference 4th-6th September 2019 – Georg-August-Universität Göttingen". uni-goettingen.de (in German). Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  39. "Alastair White – Biography". British Music Collection. 29 November 2018. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  40. "Awards 2021 – Tait Memorial Trust". June 2021.
  41. ISSN 1989-1938, Sonograma Magazine. "Heaven's Rose: ROBE and the Philosophy of Fashion-Opera – Revista Sonograma Magazine" (in Catalan). Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  42. "Announcing Alastair White's RUNE fashion-opera | Divine Art Recordings". Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  43. "Alastair White: WOAD". Classical Music. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  44. "ROBE: fashion-opera :: Divine Art Recordings". Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  45. "QUADRANTS VOL 3 - Altius Quartet". www.navonarecords.com. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  46. "White Heath - Take No Thought For Tomorrow / Electric Honey from Piccadilly Records". www.piccadillyrecords.com. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  47. If there is hope... - Blank Comrade | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic, retrieved 5 December 2020
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