A cross-genre microtonal piece inspired by the geology and geography around the chasm known as ‘Lud’s Church’.
Photo: Richard Whalley
ensemble VORTEX
Stephen Altoft, 19-division trumpet and flugelhorn
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos, voice, electroacoustic composition
Richard Whalley, Lumatone, composition
with
John McAuliffe, poet
Anke Bernau, researcher
The creative power of this geographical/ geological Unikat (German) fuels the imagination to think bigger. This led us to ask writer John McAuliffe to create texts and composer-singer, Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos, to add an electroacoustic layer to the work. Anke Bernau, a researcher into moss, has also provided additional inspiration.
Photo: Richard Whalley
Stephen Altoft(left) with Richard Whalley (right) who performed and recorded Richard’s original work, Lud’s Church for solo 19-division trumpet and multi-tracks, is also contributing new material to the aural landscape as an improviser. Enriching the work is the addition of the human voice, field recordings and sound art, photography and new instruments. Our aim is not just to bring the landscape into concert hall, theatre, performance space, moreover to draw the audience in to Lud’s Church.
Richard Whalley is a composer and pianist living in Manchester, where he is a Senior Lecturer in Composition at the University of Manchester. His compositions take their inspiration from the passage of time and memory, analogies with visual art and sculpture, from geopolitics (e.g. the plight of refugees, the fallout from Brexit, the climate emergency) and – increasingly – from nature: physical processes which may be huge (e.g. glaciation and erosion of mountains) or microscopic (e.g. looking in detail at the structure of plants). As a pianist he regularly performs classical and contemporary music as a soloist and ensemble player and has given numerous premieres.
Stephen Altoft is dedicated to the creation of new repertoire for the trumpet. As a solo artist, and with percussionist Lee Ferguson as duo Contour, he has given concerts throughout Asia, Europe, the United States and Canada. For over twenty years he researched the microtonal possibilities of the trumpet with composer, Donald Bousted, and at Musik Gillhaus (Freiburg, Germany) has developed a fourth (rotary) valve mechanism to enable the conversion of his existing trumpets into microtonal instruments (a 19-division B flat trumpet and quarter-tone C trumpet). More recently, he has also been developing programmes for flugelhorn in 12-, 19-, 24- and 38-divisions of the octave in an harmonic environment.
The scope of Stephen’s work as an improviser began with the experimental (new music) and now includes what has been referred to as ‘intuitive music’: being open to a variety of styles, sounds and spontaneous influences. He currently has projects with the accordionist, Karin Fleck, the double bassist, Johannes Nied (FLOWduo, microtonal music) and the guitarist/ lutenist and composer, Gilbert Isbin.
Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos is an electroacoustic composer and singer based in Manchester. Her electroacoustic works, focused on the use of animal sounds within electroacoustic composition to create new sonic means for nature connection, have been performed at conferences, festivals, and exhibitions around the world, including the ICMC, NYCEMF, EASTN-DC, BEAST FEaST, MANTIS, ArtHouse Jersey, Diffrazioni Festival, Espacios Sonoros, TAma Festival, and Ecos Urbanos. Her works have also been released by Empirica Records (FIXED.wav 2021) and ABLAZE Records (Electronic Masters vol. 8). In 2024, Sarah completed an AHRC NWCDTP funded PhD in electroacoustic composition at the University of Manchester, where she afterwards taught for a year as a Lecturer in Electroacoustic Composition.
Photo: Richard Whalley
Sarah is a member of KANTOS, a chamber choir comprising the top choral singers across the North West of England. As a soprano soloist, Sarah enjoys exploring the contemporary and the challenging, including microtonal works.
Anke Bernau is Senior Lecture in English and American Studies at the University of Manchester. As well as specialising in late medieval literature and culture, she has a long-standing interest in ecocriticism and ecopoetics. As these latter interests have come to shape her research more and more, her work has moved decisively into the field of plant humanities. Current work in that area includes a co-edited special issue on ‘Plant Temporalities’ for the journal Medieval Ecocriticisms (forthcoming Spring 2025), and acting as a Principal Investigator for MossWorlds a project that looks to the future of plant-human urban relations as it explores the political, botanical and aesthetic histories and stories of moss in Manchester from the nineteeth century onwards.
John McAuliffe was born in 1973 and grew up in Listowel, County Kerry. He studied English Literature in Galway, before moving, in 2002, to the Manchester where he still lives. He has published six collections with The Gallery Press. His first, A Better Life (2002), was shortlisted for a Forward Prize. His second collection Next Door was published in 2007, Of All Places (a PBS Recommendation) in 2011 and The Way In (2015). The Kabul Olympics (2020) was an Observer Poetry Book of the Month. His Selected Poems was published in October 2021 and his sixth collection, National Theatre, will be published in October 2024. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing and Associate Publisher at Carcanet Press. He co-edits PN Review and The Manchester Review, as well as writing for other publications, and he previously worked as chief poetry critic at the Irish Times and as Deputy Chair of the Irish Arts Council.
Ensemble VORTEX
Originally coined as ’The Vortex Ensemble’ by Donald Bousted, the founder of Microtonal Projects,. VORTEX arose out of an ensemble of musicians performing both composed and improvised microtonal music as part of Microtonal Projects’ events at The Vortex Jazz Club, UKMicroFest, Colorscape Festival and the Tate Britain Late@Tate ‘Microtonal’ event co-curated by Donald Bousted and Stephen Altoft.
Upcoming Performances:
30th April, 2026, University of Manchester: Performance and Composition Workshop