Distractfold, are a group of performers, composers and curators all acting out of shared love, passion and interest in the music and culture of our times.
Recent + upcoming projects.
Distractfold with Conrad Tao [POSTPONED]
Thursday, May 23, 2024 7:30 PM @ Merkin Hall NYC
Pianist-composer Conrad Tao invites UK-based new-music collective Distractfold to make their NYC debut with the world premiere of Andrew Greenwald’s A Thing Made Whole VIII and music by Jürg Frey, Hanna Hartman and Mauricio Pauly. A leader of his generation, Tao is “the kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music” (New York Magazine).
Programme:
JÜRG FREY – Extended Circular Music No. 2 / Conrad Tao, piano
HANNA HARTMAN – The Cloud Factory / Distractfold
ANDREW GREENWALD – A Thing Made Whole VIII (World Premiere) / Distractfold
MAURICIO PAULY – Charred Edifice Shining / Distractfold
ANDREW GREENWALD – A Thing Made Whole V / Distractfold with Conrad Tao
Another Sky Festival
Another Sky is a new London-based festival celebrating experimental music from the SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) region and diaspora - 2023 is our first edition. Join us in listening, in watching, in dancing and in connecting for two days and three nights. We’ll present composed, improvised and electronic music; short films and moving-image works; six new commissions; a film workshop and an independent label & publisher fair. Another Sky is co-directed by Sam Salem أسامة سالم (composer; co-founder Distractfold Ensemble; RNCM) and Emily Moore (Southern Bird artist management & production; former co-director Kammer Klang).
Over the course of the 3 day festival (Sep 29 - Oct 1st) Distractfold will be premiering four new works by Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi کیمیا کوچک زاده یزدی, Nilufar Habibian, and Jad Atoui جاد عطوي, and presenting an existing work by Zeynep Toraman.
Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University.
Distractfold performs new works by Stanford graduate composers Celeste Betancur, Seán Ó Dálaigh, Lemon Guo, Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi, Mike Mulshine.
FREE and Open to the Public
Future Music #4 Festival w/RNCM PRiSM and the BBC Philharmonic
Distractfold is excited to be in residence at the Royal Northern College of Music from February - October 2022. They will be working on 2 new student works with Megan Steinberg and Bofan Ma as well as presenting a new work by Sam Salem to be performed together with members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Mark Knoop.
Distractfold + Weston Olencki @ IKLECTIK, London
November 30th | 8PM | £10 in advance | £12 on the door
Come join us @ Iklectik Art Lab London: Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Ln, London SE1 7LG. Distractfold presents the three world premieres of new solo works by Zeynep Toraman, Santiago Diez-Fischer, and Sam Salem, alongside Berlin-based trombonist and composer, Weston Olencki. + UK premiere of The Cloud Factory by Hanna Hartman.
PROGRAMME
Part 1 - Distractfold
- if objects were not solid - (2022) for bass clarinet and tape, by Santiago Díez-Fischer.
- shallow water - for solo electric guitar (2022), by Zeynep Toraman.
- The Cloud Factory - for bass clarinet, cello and amplified objects percussion (2020), by Hanna Hartman
Part 2 - Weston Olencki
- Bury Me Deep - (2022) for solo trombone and fixed audiovisual media by Sam Salem.
Tix via Bandcamp
Supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
Distractfold @ the Yoko Ono Lennon centre, Liverpool
Special thanks to the team at the auditorium and to Paul Turowski for making this happen!
We’re looking forward to performing this exciting programme again (including works by Hunjoo Jung, Andrew Greenwald, Sivan Cohen-Elias, Bára Gísladóttir and Sam Salem) over the next few months at shows in London and Berlin.
Let’s go 📦🔪🥁🎤🪴🎻🎷💻💦🍜🥟🧽
The New Unusual, Concert Film…
Thanks to everyone who joined us last Sunday for the initial release of The New Unusual Concert Film!
We're hugely grateful to everyone who has made this project possible: our incredible composers; wonderful venues and sound engineers; Arts Council England and the Ernst von Siemens Trust for their support; Bandcamp for giving us early access to this streaming platform and of course YOU ALL for taking the time to listen! Hopefully SEE you all soon, stay safe!
..Album
The New Unusual is a series of 11 short solo works commissioned in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and recorded in the homes of Distractfold performers between December 2020 - January 2021. Building upon their podcast series, Conversations from Quarantine, The New Unusual seeks to bring together composers, musicians and audiences from around the globe at precisely the moment that COVID-19 keeps us furthest apart. The New Unusual composers are:
Lee Fraser; Sivan Cohen Elias; Santiago Díez-Fischer; Andrew Greenwald; Hanna Hartman; Anna Korsun; Giulia Lorusso; Sam Salem; Donal Sarsfield; Steven Kazuo Takasugi and Ute Wassermann.
Performed by Daniel Brew, Alice Purton, Rocío Bolaños and Linda Jankowska.
With the projects global reach presenting an exciting range of internationally recognised composers, including from the UK, Europe, the US, the Global South and the Middle East, Distractfold are excited to present this musical socio-cultural document of the time that we are living in and the conditions under which musicians and composers are currently working.
We’re incredibly proud of this project and grateful for the work of all our collaborators and everyone involved! Special thanks to the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation for making this possible.
Columbia Composers Digital Premiere ft Distractfold
In July 2021, Distractfold held a virtual residency with Columbia Composers live from the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester. Postponed due to COVID from their 2019-2020 concert season, this adapted online residency saw the rehearsal and audio/video recording of 5 new works composed by:
Bill Dougherty
Sam Yulsman
Bethany Younge
Nina Fukuoka
Uri Kochavi
MIDLANDS
1. Dreamt in Fire
2. And Despite The Support Of Your Despair
3. There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack
4. How To Build A Machine
Midlands is many things to me. It is equally psychogeographic and biomythographic. The psychogeographic is concerned with the city of Derby, in the Midlands of the UK.
Derby is the site of the first water-powered cotton mill, the engine of the Industrial Revolution and William Blake’s original “dark Satanic Mill”. And yet, Derby today is largely post-industrial. To gather this thread of the narrative of Midlands, I walked the 120km of the River Derwent, a river that bisects Derby and whose flow shaped our world.
The biomythographic is concerned with my experience of growing up in Derby as Other in the 1980s. Now, in my own midlife, I wish to channel these experiences, with alchemical aims.
Thus, finally, the outline of the territory of Midlands begins to reveal itself. It describes a literal and ineffable geography, an exterior and interior landscape. Or else, it is a ritual, undertaken to transform darkness into light.
“How To Build A Machine” contains a sample from “Acid Test” by Gorilla (Whitby, Kersey, Cooper, Gatford), which is taken from the Extended Play EP and used with the permission of the authors.
- Sam Salem 2019