Jack Sheen: The Composers’ Fund
During a Manchester International Festival ‘Remote Residency’ throughout cursed 2020 lockdown 1.0, Jack created a piece for an off-kilter ensemble of alto flutes, clarinets, trombones, piano, percussion, and violas, which exists in two formats: a 25’ concert work and an open-duration installation, deconstructing the material of the concert piece and spinning it out across time and space in looser and more unpredictable ways.
This activity will involve recording/filming the concert version alongside producing the pre-recorded audio and materials for the installation version with Octandre Ensemble. Due to the piece’s problematisation of traditional formats, this would otherwise be impossible.
Composers Jack’s age seldom get the chance to create artist-led work on their own terms, unhindered by the constraints commonplace with standard commissions for ensembles, concerts, halls etc. Yet this is what he feels is needed for artists – and the wider art-form itself – to move forward and break new ground. Support from The Composers Fund will allow Jack to do just this, producing a piece that would be simply wouldn’t exist through regular commissioning schemes due it’s instrumentation and dual-form as a concert work and multi-media installation.