Duncan Chapman: concise biography and project links

Duncan Chapman is a composer and musician based in Lincolnshire, UK. Much of his work involves collaboration with a wide range of people to create performances, installations, and recordings.

Recent projects include online live-streaming events, curating a concert for the Aural Diversity project, and performing morning music with Supriya Nagarajan at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India.

He has worked with organisations including BCMG, x-church Gainsborough, and COMA Glasgow, as well as on online performances with Comb Filter (with Simon Limbrick and Adrian Lee), Humbox, and Quiet Knot (with Mike McInerney).

His solo work has been released on the Silent, Takuroku, and Linear Obsessional labels.

Other recent work includes:

  • Three — an album of marimba and live electronic pieces with Simon Limbrick
  • A residency at EMS in Stockholm
  • Performances of Lullaby: Sonic Cradle at Radiophrenia (Glasgow), Casa da Música (Porto), Spot On Festival (Sydney), Portsmouth Guildhall, Woolwich Works, and at the 2022 and 2023 WOMAD festivals

Duncan is actively developing participatory projects using the new multichannel sound system at x-church Gainsborough. He has led events with Music in the Round (Sheffield), Conductive Music, Wigmore Hall, Manasamitra (Yorkshire), Sound Scotland, and Awards for Young Musicians.

He is a board member (and occasional project lead) of Liquid Listening, a musical hydrotherapy organisation, and has mentored many emerging composers through work with The British Paraorchestra, AMP Music, and Sound and Music.

A few selected project links

Waterfall of Kites @ Halifax Minster. Soundtrack for a kite exhibition created through recordings of community choirs, bell ringing, field recordings, and spoken texts about the sounds connected to the choir members’ localities.

Soundmarks of North East Lincolnshire. A project created with communities in North East Lincolnshire featuring the sounds that local people identified as characteristic of where they live.

Gleanings (work in progress)

A series of pieces started during a residency at EMS in Stockholm, incorporating field recordings, generated electronic sounds, and sonification processes

https://dronespace.bandcamp.com/album/gleanings

King and Bells found sound marking a significant cultural moment (explanatory text in the movie)

Extracts from Three: Three tracks composed, recorded and produced by Duncan Chapman and Simon Limbrick.

Quiet Knot: Music for Shakuhachi and Live electronics/field recordings

https://mikemcinerney.bandcamp.com/album/quietknot

Dusk Notes: Duo album with Carnatic singer Supriya Nagarajan

https://manasamitra1.bandcamp.com/album/dusk-note


Gleanings #1 After Stockholm

This is the first of a series of solo pieces created over the last few years.

n March 2022 I (finally after several postponements due to the Coronavirus pandemic) spent a week working in the studios of EMS in Stockholm. This was a particularly productive time with space and resources to explore existing and new things. This piece combines some of the materials that I was working with in the studios. A mixture of processed field recordings and sounds generated with the Buchla modular system. Many thanks to EMS for the time and space to create.

Available from here https://dronespace.bandcamp.com/track/gleanings-1-after-stockholm

Linear Obsessional Self Isolating Compilation

It is really great to be a small part of this wonderful compilation.

 

 

The measure of all circles

A version of the piece “The measure of all things is the breath” , this version has a sequence of images of lights found in lifts on the docklands light railway. The sound is all generated using a Sibelius version of the score (Score is in the SOUNDS section of this website) which has then been performed using a series of live Ableton patches.

This is the Website of Duncan Chapman

 

 

(Photo © Paul Q / http://paulq.co)

Some  interests include …………………………..

listening , invented instruments, sounds, places, noise, participation, performance, electronics, backwards, underwater sound, repetition, thresholds of perception, psychoacoustics, field recordings, hydrophones, binaural recording, sound mapping, installations, movement, interfaces , live electronics, orchestral textures, improvisation , devised musics, circuit bending, vegetables as instruments, long durations, extreme musics, ultra minimalism, repetition (again), “dirty electronics”, site specific performance, collaboration, hacked electronics, radio, sonification, visualisation, timestretching, film, private musics, infrasound, game structures for composition, nocturnal sound events, music as a place to be, education, sounds of the universe, science / art collaboration music for and with dance, sonic art, organ pipes, acoustics, music and architecture, notation………………..

some of this is here

……………………………………………………….and some is elsewhere