John Butcher Dublin Fixations

John Butcher, saxophones, pre-recordings, composition

Angharad Davies, violin

Dieb13, turntables

Ståle Liavik Solberg, drums

Sophie Agnel, piano

Lina Andonovska, flutes

Colm O’Hara, trombone

Aonghus McEvoy, guitar

Alan Niblock, double bass

David Lacey, drums and percussion

David Donohoe, synthesiser

Isabelle Duthois, voice and clarinet

In John Butcher’s Dublin Fixations, the musicians bring their own, very personal languages into a composition based on what Butcher calls psychological orchestration: a process of imagining how particular musicians might respond to particular directives, in this work combining precise notation, text, imagery, instructions and pre-recordings. The latter are new pieces that use ‘close-miking’ to manipulate some of the ‘hidden’ sound possibilities of the saxophone. These are then cut to vinyl and manipulated live by turntablist Dieb13.

Fluid Fixations was commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival for a performance in 2021. Dublin Fixations is a new version of this multifaceted composition for improvisers, featuring six members of John Butcher’s original group and six Irish musicians new to the work.
Dublin Fixations naturally moves between small-scale, highly individual combinations and the orchestral totality of these collective forces, aiming to create a coherent structure and sense of unity that still encourages improvisation, so that the musicians engage with the mystery of the work’s internal logic in the spontaneity of the moment.