EXMO presents: Natacha Diels, Ellie Westbrook, James Oldham, Zack Di Lello

Music Theatre collaborators Natacha Diels, Ellie Westbrook and James Oldham bring new music, gesture, humour and a general revelling in the mundane to the EXMO St John's stage!

First, Zack performs his piece Trees Are People Too, where he introduces the audience to his favorite trees and helps everyone get to know them on a personal level through field recordings, educational materials, conversations, contact mics, and silly voices. Together we will explore the impact humans have had on forest life as well as the impact forests have had on human life. Think of your favorite tree and tell Zack about it!

Then Ellie and James return to a piece of theirs from 2019, which was originally created for Syrup Tracing; or on the significance of rising and/or falling by Waste Paper Opera. Following two "humans" as they depart from their pedestrian lives to go to the moon. Using found sound, patchworked movement sequences, unexpected rhythms and fragmented song they build a strange and uncanny performative universe.

Finally, Natacha presents a new set called Am I Alive, for theremin-driven snare drum, dismembered metronomes, and perpetually accumulating nonsense phrases that gradually coalesce into crystalline sense. Half-remembered conversations with machine friends form the work's text, constructing elaborate stories built of the forever narrowing gap between life and function. The piece flickers between intimacy and circuitry, drone and chaos, beauty and dissonance.

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This event takes place in the Garden Quad Auditorium at St John's College, Oxford. Enter at the Porter's Lodge and follow the signs through the college.

Experimental Music Oxford is a series supported by St John's College at the University of Oxford. All events are free and open to the public.

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