Coming Up for Air is an ever-growing collection of over 100 new works, each limited to a single breath: one inhale and exhale, that I started in 2017 as a creative response to my chronic respiratory conditions. The collection spans a wide range of artistic expressions—virtuosic, whimsical, sincere, challenging, banal, surreal—each infused with its own unique eccentricities. Composers of all ages and experience levels are warmly invited to take part in the Open Call below.
Coming Up for Air launched with 14 single-breath pieces in 2017 and has since evolved into a multidimensional platform, encompassing performance, education, art installation, and recording. I've taken the project worldwide, including at AżTak Festival (Warsaw), Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (Australia), Constellation (Chicago), Deep Minimalism 2.0 (Southbank Centre), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo), and Royaumont Abbey (France). I have also presented it as an interactive installation, where scores are displayed and audience members can ask me questions about composers' approached to the strict limitation of a single breath, and build up their own mini-programmes for me to play, like a juke-box.
The collection is now being transformed into a mega flute concerto by composer Larry Goves, where each breath that I play has been sourced from the collection of existing works. The world premiere will take place with the Luxembourg Philharmonic in November 2024 at Rainy Days Festival.
The project has also expanded into Coming up for Air in [LOCATION], a multi-stranded artistic initiative focused on the critical effects of indoor air quality with collaborator Dr Bofan Ma. The project centres upon creating a performance-led, multi-sensory installation driven by live indoor air quality data, making sounds with the invisible particulates constituting the air all around us: to question what and who is changing our air today?
Coming Up for Air launched with 14 single-breath pieces in 2017 and has since evolved into a multidimensional platform, encompassing performance, education, art installation, and recording. I've taken the project worldwide, including at AżTak Festival (Warsaw), Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (Australia), Constellation (Chicago), Deep Minimalism 2.0 (Southbank Centre), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo), and Royaumont Abbey (France). I have also presented it as an interactive installation, where scores are displayed and audience members can ask me questions about composers' approached to the strict limitation of a single breath, and build up their own mini-programmes for me to play, like a juke-box.
The collection is now being transformed into a mega flute concerto by composer Larry Goves, where each breath that I play has been sourced from the collection of existing works. The world premiere will take place with the Luxembourg Philharmonic in November 2024 at Rainy Days Festival.
The project has also expanded into Coming up for Air in [LOCATION], a multi-stranded artistic initiative focused on the critical effects of indoor air quality with collaborator Dr Bofan Ma. The project centres upon creating a performance-led, multi-sensory installation driven by live indoor air quality data, making sounds with the invisible particulates constituting the air all around us: to question what and who is changing our air today?
|
"Kathryn Williams, as she demonstrates in the ongoing Coming Up for Air project, is an ingeniously inventive musician as well as being an expert flute player particularly in contemporary music using extended techniques."
- Roger Heaton (TEMPO) "Breath, imagined mostly as a musical parameter combining duration and intensity, suddenly became spatial, theatrical and social." - Tim Rutherford Johnson (Positionen) "The single-breath flute exhalations and playful commissioning of Kathryn Williams, encouraging the audience to breathe with the performer, in a strangely moving exercise in empathy." - Resident Advisor (Deep Minimalism 2.0) |
PHOTOS & VIDEOS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
PUBLICATIONS AND RECORDINGS
Interview in Polish Glissando Magazine, July 2024
|
BBC Music Magazine Article by Tom Service, December 2021
|
Review in Ruch Muzyczny, July 2024
|
Interview in Breathe Magazine, July 2021
|
PhD Thesis (2021)
Coming Up for Air featured on the BBC Radio 3 The Listening Service with Tom Service: Music and Breathing episode.
"How is the rhythm and physicality of our breathing reflected in music? From operatic breath control to circular breathing techniques to a flautist inspired by the relearning of her technique after sinus and asthma problems, Tom looks at a fundamental element of music making."
Includes interview and performances of single-breath works by Brian Ferneyhough, Cee Haines, and Oliver Coates.
Other broadcasts include BBC Radio 3 New Music Show and PBS Melbourne.
"How is the rhythm and physicality of our breathing reflected in music? From operatic breath control to circular breathing techniques to a flautist inspired by the relearning of her technique after sinus and asthma problems, Tom looks at a fundamental element of music making."
Includes interview and performances of single-breath works by Brian Ferneyhough, Cee Haines, and Oliver Coates.
Other broadcasts include BBC Radio 3 New Music Show and PBS Melbourne.
The Coming Up for Air album collects 40 different responses to one straightforward question: what can be communicated in a single breath? This limitation has inspired a wide range of approaches—some composers have contributed a melody, some have foregrounded a physiological challenge, others have offered a single sound, and others still have created their own playful exceptions to the prompt. The contributions are from composers of all ages, backgrounds and levels of experience. The youngest composer represented is just eight years old, and the album brings together aesthetically diverse artists including Chaya Czernowin, Oliver Coates, Amber Priestley, Andy Ingamells, Larry Goves, Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh, Newton Armstrong, Mary Bellamy, Stephen Chase, Sarah Hennies, Mauricio Pauly, and Brian Ferneyhough, who is represented here by the brief excerpt from Unity Capsule that provided the original inspiration for the project.
- Extract from liner notes by Tim Rutherford Johnson
- Extract from liner notes by Tim Rutherford Johnson
|
|
The call for scores is open to all!
Pieces must be limited to the performance of one single cycle of breath. Instructions must be included for the inhalation. All flutes available (piccolo, C flute, alto, bass). Voice/electronics/speaking/physical movement/objects/tape - all welcome! I will workshop and record all completed pieces, and will notify you every time I perform your piece in public. Please write to me with any questions; pieces do not need to be completed to get in touch in the first instance. |
WORKSHOPS
Coming Up for Air is the perfect educational project to deliver to composers of all ages and abilities. I have enjoyed delivering interactive workshops to composers in a variety of settings, including..
Young composers:
Aldeburgh Young Musicians
Bristol Pre-Conservatoire
Chetham's School of Music
Junior Royal Northern College of Music
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
The Purcell School.
Courses:
Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme: Composition, Alternative Performance and Performance Art (CAPPA), Dartington Summer Music School Advanced Composition Course, Sound and Music Skills Session.
Higher Education:
Birmingham Conservatoire
Cambridge University
Carnegie Mellon University
Royal Northern College of Music
University of Huddersfield
University of Leeds
University of York
Birmingham Conservatoire
Cambridge University
Carnegie Mellon University
Royal Northern College of Music
University of Huddersfield
University of Leeds
University of York