A new performance by Jamie Hamilton and the Phaedra Ensemble,exploring the territory between spoken language and musical sound, through the stammered voice.

A Mouth In Search Of A Voice is a new performance by composer Jamie Hamilton and Phaedra Ensemble, made with the voices of people who stammer. Over the past year Hamilton has worked with stammerers across the UK, recording their speech as compositional material, which is then collaged, layered and woven into a score for live ensemble, electronics and video.

These voices move between recognisable speech and something stranger, stretched into texture and rhythm, recounting storms that twisted trees from the earth and the paths speech takes through the brain, told as flat, bewildered testimony.

Live strings, bass clarinet, keyboard and electronics play through and around these recordings, accompanied by a two-screen video diptych by Conor Foran, founder of Dysfluent magazine.

Hamilton's electronics draw on physical modelling of the human vocal tract –  recreating the voice at different stages in its evolution – and repurposes medical speech analysis software as a musical instrument.

Hamilton, who stammers, has long worked with phonemes and sub-syllabic sound, in a practice shaped by his dysfluent speech. He produced Meredith Monk and Phaedra Ensemble's forthcoming album Realms, and co-directs the ensemble.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio) — Read more — Read less