Time-based Performance
HAM-HANDED: video, words & music for players apart (60 minutes)
a performance about racial relationships as experienced via musical recordings, from the perspective of a white American musician raised on recordings of funk and trained in Western classical music. With the help of guests, Steve critically examines his own position and his musical Afro-centrism, paying tribute to experimental musicians Cecil Taylor & Lester Bowie; the first American of African descent to host her own TV show, pianist Hazel Scott; hip-hop artists Rakim & Eric B, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar; as well as to Jesse Jackson & Muhammad Ali. HAM-HANDED asks whether scrutinizing race as a white man, no matter how critical the attempt, is doomed to fail.
I am thinking of the famous bedrooms on the great farms in Brazil
(3 hours)
solo site-specific performance installation of readings and instrumental sounds performing the ‘monastic’ copying out of texts onto a laptop, with texts on the topic of other possible worlds within our world (heterotopias) and aesthetic political strategy, respectively by Michel Foucault and Stevphen Shukaitis, and texts pertaining to current university-sector strike actions
4 bonang pots (small Indonesian pot gongs) (pelog 1, pelog 2 with mini tambourine on top, pelog 3 upside-down; slendro 2), ukelele, child’s accordion, electric hair trimmer, electric fan prepared to hit against cardboard)
created for ‘Unfinished’ Event (Barbican OpenFest) at The Charterhouse (London), curated by Nell Catchpole and Jan Hendrickse
2018
Well I want it in writing, the smallest event and the secretest agency
a theory-fiction music show (45′)
with:
Stephen Hastings-King (prepared piano)
Ricardo Wilson (film direction, technician improviser, chorus member)
Charles Ogilvie (scene 5 concept, video animation)
Christopher Miller (bonang)
Kélina Gotman (dance)
Steve Potter (prepared piano, speaker)
Meredith McCoy (violin)
Jessica Eley (cello)
Daniel Ginestier (physicist)
Julia Mintzer (stage director)
Annetta Alexandridis, Craig Campbell, Jonathan Strauss (chorus)
2016
Kinderproducts (work-in-progress)
relational music-theatre (60′)
written and performed by Whiggly Ensemble (Steve Potter, Federico Reuben, Justin Christensen & Eugene Feygelson)
folk improvisation, a “speaking” piano, audience sing-alongs and dance-alongs, puppet storytime, nap-time, product design, fashion show, silent film, drawing activity, intervention, and community soup-making
2013
One-hundred Combat Troupes (work-in-progress)
scenes for 6 musicians, 4 actors & 1 singer (25′)
alto sax, trumpet, cello, double bass, 2 percussion
written in collaboration with Kélina Gotman
commissioned by the London Sinfonietta
2012
“that guy was such an asshole…”
voice and piano (6′)
2011
ADORENOSTORIES (The University in Ruins)
time-based work for music, performance poetry, rehearsal, critique of the university, and Killer Tomatoes
lecturer/performer and piano (30′)
co-written and performed with Kélina Gotman
2011
KRONO-METRE: A CATALOGUE OUT OF TIME
micro-saga (music/interactive lecture/dance) after Hesiod’s Theogony
lecturer/performer and piano (34′)
co-written and performed with Kélina Gotman
written for the 2010 Making Sense Colloquium in Paris
2010
Of Little Consequence, or The Officers
Scenic music (chamber opera) for 6 vocalists and 15 instrumentalists, (57′)
awarded the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Spoleto Prize 2006
featured at New York City Opera VOX 2008
2006
Vocal, Choral
THROUGH WORK, NO. 12A (5’33”)
SAATB
2021
COUNCIL SYSTEM
written for Musarc
2019
SHINE, So Long, Take My Father’s Fortune, Help, Take My Brother (13′)
Music subtracted from Arnold Schoenberg’s Drei Volksliedsätze op. 48 (1948), rearranged and recomposed for choir with bonang pots, ukelele, cowbells; and signs with words
written for Musarc
2018
PARADIGMS
In ten parts, for low female voice and piano (42′)
(audio: No. 2 / No. 7)
written for Cara Curran, alto
2009
Piety
low female voice, accordion, electric gtr, flute, violin, bass clarinet, synth. and perc. (11′)
awarded the Centre for the Humanities and Health composition prize (Wellcome Foundation/King’s College London)
2009
Unstuck in Time
AATTBB chorus, a cappella (8′)
written for The Gents
2004
Passing Through
SATBB chorus, a cappella (3′)
written for Amherst College Concert Choir
2000
Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes
two solo voices, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and chorus of English professors (8′)
2000
Nature Simulacrum
Seven songs, for SATB chorus and piano (23′)
1998
Large instrumental ensemble / orchestra
PLAY
19 musicians & conductor (15′)
written for George Benjamin and the London Sinfonietta Academy Ensemble
2013
old people in the wrong house (dancing with robots)
15 players (10′)
written for Nouvel Ensemble Moderne
for the 2011 Domaine Forget summer course
2011
to each their own…
orchestra (50 players) (15′)
2010
that
ensemble and shower curtain (15 players) (14′)
2007
Children, How Shall I Send Thee?
three instrumental groups and accompanied male chorus (20′)
2004
Instrumental ensemble (5-9 players)
AWTHHNTISSADEE
solo horn and seven players (10′)
written for members of Philharmonia Orchestra
for the Music of Today Series at Royal Festival Hall London
2008
tautology
flute, alto flute, 2 clarinets (+bass clarinet), harp (6′)
written for Lontano Ensemble
2007
the pale criminal
wind octet and percussion (7′)
written for ASKO Ensemble
2004
Small instrumental group (1-4 players)
music very festively come amongst them very incompatibly
4 Paetzold recorders (2 doubling alto recorder, 1 doubling tambourine) (9′)
2015
Music for the Sleepy
a story of new parents
clarinet, viola, piano & objects (18′)
2015
the plums that were in the icebox
solo piano (2′)
written for the wedding of Vicki and William
2011
Quartet More & More
string quartet (10′)
written for Arditti String Quartet
for the 2010 Darmstadt Ferienkurse
2010
Dance EA1
solo piano (4′)
2001
God Shaving
four percussionists on household objects (4′)
2001
Out of, Under, Towards
double bass, clarinet and piano (9′)
2000
wronghouse.art 