Saturday 9 November / 7.30pm

Choral ensemble Musarc have teamed up with singer, composer and performer Melanie Pappenheim to create a dramatic collage that explores the spaces of the gallery, and sets music and physical performances in response to themes in current exhibitor Peter Dreher's paintings.  Surrounding the idea of repetition, iteration and compulsion, Musarc will be presenting a broad spectrum of choral works from Knut Kysted's Immortal Bach to new, site-specific performances and some of Musarc's previous commissions, including Corpus Sonus by Sam Belinfante for voices and dictaphones, and Namesaying by Neil Luck.

Musarc is one of London’s most progressive amateur choirs.  It is at the heart of a research project at The Cass School of Architecture, London Metropolitan University, that explores performance and composition in relation to the creative process, and investigates listening in the context of architecture and the city. The ensemble regularly collaborates with artists and composers to develop work that challenges traditional ways of making music, and sets up situations that extend the idea of citizenship and civic agency into the realm of music, art, performance and education.  Musarc has performed at Bold Tendencies, Turner Contemporary, V22, and the Royal Maritime Museum. In 2012, it presented Bang! Being the Building as part of the Barbican’s OMA/Progess show and its voices could be heard in Ed Atkin’s Us Dead Talk Love at the Chisenhale Gallery. The choir has collaborated with experimental music label Entr’acte, and commissioned new work from many  artists and composers including Claudia Molitor, Benedict Drew, Esther Venrooy, Neil Luck, Marc Behrens and Sam Belinfante. It is currently one of four contemporary ensembles on Sound and Music’s Portfolio programme and also runs Field Studies, an annual field-recording and musique concrète summer school in London. Musarc was founded in 2008 by Joseph Kohlmaier who is it’s creative director, and is conducted by Cathy Heller-Jones.