{"id":2247467,"date":"2026-01-23T19:05:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T19:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2247467"},"modified":"2026-01-23T19:05:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T19:05:31","slug":"riot-ensemble-review-from-meditations-to-mariachi-in-new-music-of-maximal-difference-classical-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/riot-ensemble-review-from-meditations-to-mariachi-in-new-music-of-maximal-difference-classical-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Riot Ensemble review \u2013 from meditations to mariachi in new music of maximal difference | Classical music"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2018B<\/span>race yourself,\u201d the concert programme warned. \u201cThis is music that refuses to behave.\u201d After more than 10 years and some 350 world and UK premieres, we\u2019d expect nothing less from Riot Ensemble. This is a group whose promo images once saw them brandishing drumsticks as clubs<\/a>, music stands as Kalashnikovs, that treats new music as a bloodsport: they like to be in at the kill.<\/p>\n

Fresh on the slab were four works from across the spectrum of scope and mood \u2013 \u201cmusic of maximal difference\u201d as conductor Aaron Holloway-Nahum put it \u2013 a playlist designed to bring a polite midweek audience up to frenzied, club levels of intensity before cooling us down and sending us out dazed and disoriented.<\/p>\n

It was hard to find much purchase in the introspective scrabblings and mutterings of Corie Rose Soumah\u2019s Limpidit\u00e9s IV for violin. Performer Marie Schreer gradually appeared from darkness for this UK premiere, coming into focus like a score whose seven episodes seem to take a solo Bach suite and distil it down to essential gestures: finger motions; bow movements; double-stopped chords; breath. Often soundless (or all but), bow whispering back and forth over the fingerboard, left-hand pizzicato barely audible, this is hypothetical music, speculative, ultimately noncommittal.<\/p>\n

What a shock, then, to be plunged without pause into the ecstatic assault of Anna Meredith<\/a>\u2019s 2015 Brisk Widow. Scored for electronics, spotlights and two drum kits (the super-slick Sam Wilson and Jack Ross) it\u2019s a no-holds-barred sonic battle for supremacy in which duelling rhythms \u2013 aural and visual \u2013 punch back and forth across the space, casting the audience as the pinball in an arcade game of quickfire pulses, liquid electronic peals and hammering beats.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>No holds barred \u2026 quickfire drums in Anna Meredith\u2019s Brisk Widow.<\/span> Photograph: Ed Maitland Smith<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Upping the maximalist ante, Alex Paxton\u2019s Shrimp BIT Babyface is a musical supermarket sweep. A swirling big-band fantasy, cartoonish and candy-bright, it seizes great handfuls of musical experience \u2013 mariachi, swing, Christmas carols, school recorder ensembles, a baroque jig \u2013 and flings them all together in a heap, inviting the listener to pick through at their leisure. It\u2019s an enticing invitation, made with swagger and plenty of groove here by Holloway-Nahum and his musicians.<\/p>\n

Which left it to Eden Lonsdale\u2019s Tr\u00e4nen und Ozeane <\/em>(also a UK premiere) to calm the pulse with glassy skeins of sound. Harpsichord, strings and accordion spun horizontal chordscapes: counterpoint in slow motion, polyphony left out in the rain, dissolving into smudgy microtones. Strangely gorgeous, a meditation in greys and silvers after the blinding lights of the Meredith and Paxton\u2019s pastel hit, it took us full-circle back to the start: whispers now concrete, with something real to say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Brace yourself,\u201d the concert programme warned. \u201cThis is music that refuses to behave.\u201d After more than 10 years and some 350 world and UK premieres, we\u2019d expect nothing less from Riot Ensemble. This is a group whose promo images once saw them brandishing drumsticks as clubs, music stands as Kalashnikovs, that treats new music as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2247468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2247467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Riot-Ensemble-review-\u2013-from-meditations-to-mariachi-in-new.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2247467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2247467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2247467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2247469,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2247467\/revisions\/2247469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2247468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2247467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2247467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2247467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}