GOLDEN
Singing Lesson & Mobile Chorus
Friday 20th October 2006, 5 – 7pm, Beaconsfield, London
Composer and musician Mat Davidson was commissioned by artist susan pui san lok, to compose a short three-minute score for five voices, called Chorus (2006), taking her ongoing audio series, Songs (2005), as a point of departure.
Where Songs extracts and arranges sung utterances of the word ‘golden’ from Western songs featuring ‘golden’ in their name, to create a series of strange interludes at once plaintive, joyful and wistful, Chorus translates this material for live performance, again with the single lyric, ‘golden’.
Singing Lesson involved amateur singers in an open rehearsal led by Mat Davidson, learning one of five parts aided by mp3 or CD players. Participants were invited to preview Chorus below, and download all five parts in advance. After the rehearsals, the singers went on to perform their parts as a Mobile Chorus, animating Beaconsfield’s various spaces with several seemingly impromptu and occasionally harmonious musical interludes.
Singing Lesson, Mobile Chorus, and the later Mobile Ballroom take their cue from the mobile clubbing phenomenon, and the idea of the ‘spontaneous’ musical number, interested in both reproducing and demystifying their affects.
Mat Davidson, Chorus (2006), audio, 3 mins (piano version, preview)
