On Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 June, Kings Place played host to Tendrils, a new sound installation from Valgeir Sigurðsson, created with Daniel Pioro, as part of the latter’s curated weekend for the Earth Unwrapped series. Tendrils was commissioned by Kings Place and supported by Cockayne Grants for the Arts.
The immersive work lasted forty minutes and performed on the hour across both days. Pioro’s violin and Sigurðsson’s electronic soundscape combined to take audiences – encouraged to relax and sink into the work, which took place in the near darkness of Hall Two - into a journey of deep listening about Earth and its hidden mysteries, and act as a sanctuary from the world outside.
Pioro is a longstanding collaborator with the Icelandic composer and a key fixture of the Bedroom Community label. In March 2023 he joined Sigurðsson and viola de gamba player Liam Byrne for the premiere of Dream Matter Foundations at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room. The 20-minute piece mixed the raw immediacy of live stringed instruments with esoteric contemporary electronics and processed sounds, and extended Sigurðsson’s continuing artistic preoccupation with dreaming, sleepwalking, and mysteries of the nocturnal. In spring 2022 Pioro and Byrne toured Dust and Dissonance to Germany.
Sigurðsson has devised several notable sound installations. In June 2022 he created the nine-hour Sleep Concert for the Arctic Arts Festival. Audiences were reminded to “bring sleeping bag and sleeping pad” to a performance where they were encouraged to drift in and out of sleep to a meditative, somnambulant musical backdrop. The work for electronics is soothing and meditative in character, wrapping around the audience’s dreams and framing their late night or early morning thoughts.