Writing With Noise is a one-day workshop featuring writer Frances Morgan and saxophonist Rachel Musson that focuses on experimental writing about experimental music.
Participants will engage with different examples of experimental writing and explore a range of writing techniques.
They will generate some experimental writing of their own through exercises and there will be an opportunity to develop this work for publication.
Lunch will be provided.
Frances Morgan is a writer and editor based in London.
A former deputy editor of The Wire, Frances has been writing about music, sound, film and art since the late 1990s, contributing to The Wire, Frieze, Sight & Sound, and many other publications, including academic journals, zines and books.
Currently working towards a PhD about electronic music histories in the Critical Writing department of the Royal College of Art, Frances has recently collaborated with visual artists Luke Fowler, Laura Oldfield Ford and Patrick Ward on texts to accompany their work, and is writing a book on new feminist music criticism.
Rachel Musson is a saxophonist, improviser and composer living in London, UK.
She is involved with a variety of improvisation projects, including a trio with Hannah Marshall and Julie Kjaer, a duo with vibraphonist Corey Mwamba, and a trio with Mark Sanders and John Edwards.
She has released two albums under her own name, one featuring Liam Noble and Mark Sanders (Tatterdemalion, Babel Records), and one featuring her ensemble Skein (Flight Line, F-ire Recorded Music).
She also plays with the London Improvisers Orchestra and Alex Ward’s Quintet and Sextet, and has performed with a diverse range of musicians on the fluid European improvising scene, including Alcyona Mick, Han Bennink, Liam Noble, Gail Brand, Eddie Prevost, Olie Brice, Federico Ughi, Mary Halvorson, John Russell, Adam Linson, Sebastian Rochford, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Pat Thomas, among many others.
The workshop is part of Ideas of Noise, an exciting new festival of experimental sound taking place in Birmingham, 3rd August across 3 venues (the Edge and Vivid Projects) with a focus on connecting experimental audiences and performers of different genres across the West Midlands and creating opportunities for emerging and established local artists.
With a programme spanning free improve., electronica, sound art, noise, contemporary classical and more, there will be a mixture of performances, installations, workshops and participation areas.
Ideas of Noise is produced by Andrew Woodhead and Sarah Farmer with additional funding from Arts Council England.
Writing With Noise is supported by Riffs: experimental writing on popular music, a journal run by the staff and students of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University.