enclosure 1 - Concert

Sometime in the early 1400s, a woman named Lady Isabel German stepped through a door into a small room in All Saints Church in Fishergate, York. She never left. Like many women in the middle ages, she had chosen to become an anchoress. Anchoresses lived alone in a small room (or "cell") attached to a parish church and were devoted to lives of pious contemplation. But despite this seemingly quiet and isolated existence, German’s life and impact, like that of other anchoresses, stretched far beyond the boundaries of her cell. The sounds and songs of her devotion stretched simultaneously up towards the divine and out to the people and communities around her, drawing together disparate spiritual and physical realms. From within the narrow confines of her enclosure, German created around her an expansive and reverberating space, a liminal place that transcended earthly containment.
enclosure 1 is the first in a series of works for saxophone and electronics inspired by German’s experience and the performance of sound within her cell. Focussing on interactions between the inherent sounds of the place in which the performance takes place, as well as embodied performance practices, it explores how sound, place and body can weave together to create the types of expansive spaces fostered by anchoresses. The emergence and coalescence of this new environment invite us to gaze for a moment on German’s cell, to imagine the multifaceted spaces she built, and to reach out and hear her experiences.

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Organised by Bothy - Bothy is an organisation that facilitates freelance chamber music making in Manchester. We seek to create space for classical and art music, and to help the people who perform it.

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