On 1 December Lawrence Power performs Cassandra Miller’s Daylonging, Slacktide at the Purcell Room at London’s Southbank Centre. The 6-minute piece appears performed as part of his programme Fathom, an immersive collaboration with creative studio ÂME that fuses live performance, cinematic projection and 360-degree sound design. Though composed for solo viola – with the addition of a vocal line from the performer – the piece also recalls Miller’s relationship with Juliet Fraser. Miller writes,
In March 2020, I found myself at Snape Maltings to collaborate with soprano Juliet Fraser in the filming of an audio-video installation. The experimental project involved Juliet singing along to (tracing and transforming) recordings of music. On the day that the news of lockdown arrived, she’d been tracing the voices of two brothers who were singing ‘Saqartvelo Lamazo’, a traditional song about the beauty of Georgia. It’s an emotional song and an emotional recording—the brothers are singing together after not seeing each other for two years.
In tribute to that moment in time this piece is inspired by those experiments and is transformed again here for Lawrence’s remarkable voice-like viola playing.
Like Miller’s Thanksong, which receives its first London performance on Saturday 3 December, it received its world premiere online, in a video filmed in and around Snape Maltings, available to watch here.