Taut by Ingrid Plum

"Succinct and nourishing... a luxuriant space between almost excessive precision and looser improvisation", The Wire.

TAUT: 14 scores by 14 different composers, written specifically for Plum to perform using voice, percussion and electronics.

After being workshopped by Plum during a residency at Rosehill Arts in Brighton, TAUT was performed in its entirety at IKLECTIK in London on 11 March 2018. This performance was recorded for the 75-minute live album TAUT.

The 14 artists invited to create scores for TAUT are Stephan Barrett, Bobby Barry, Lisa Busby, Tania Chen, Graham Dunning, Jez Riley French, Helen Frosi, Iris Garrelfs, Nick Hudson, Kelly Jayne Jones, Lia Mazzari, Kev Nickells, Greta Pistececi and Timothy Thornton. The scores take a variety of forms, mixing traditional western notation with poetry, painting, photography and other approaches. These include Pistaceci's exquisite yet brutal embroidered score, Chen's instructions to create a spontaneous performance from women's magazines such as Vogue, and Dunning's photocopied cut-up analogue method.

Plum specifically chose artists working in different fields in order to get a range of notational devices that challenged the notion of what a score can be. "The score is a mnemonic device for a performer and a transmission of information," Plum notes in the book, while asking whether, in light of cuts to music education in the UK reducing access to learning classical music notation, the ability to write a traditional score is in danger of becoming an elitist practise.

The range of scores in TAUT also allow greater freedom of interpretation by the performer, allowing Plum to explore the gap between the sound imagined by the composer and the sound as performed. Several of the scores set out to challenge the performer, questioning the limits of the human body as an instrument just as they explore the physical process of creating the score itself.

The only rules were that each score should fit on one side of an A4 page with up to 200 words of additional notes allowed, and be of approximately five minutes duration. These pushed Plum to interrogate the notion of the performer, asking whether it is their job to emulate, interpret or improvise, or all three, resulting in her most challenging work as a singer and improviser to date.

TAUT is released on Thursday 14 June alongside a limited edition book featuring the scores and interviews with all the artists involved.

'Succinct and nourishing' - The Wire
'Gorgeously atmospheric vocal techniques woven around field recordings & electronics' - The Guardian

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