Antoine Beuger

Ockeghem Octets continues Antoine Beuger’s radical series of ensemble pieces, starting from intimate duos and building incrementally to groups of twenty. In this installment, eight performers - including Ryoko Akama (melodica), Kate Halsall (harmonium), Ecka Mordecai (cello), Leo Svirsky (accordion), Seamus Cater (concertina), Sarah Hughes (e-bow zither), Harriet Richardson (flute), and Kathryn Williams (alto flute)- join in a practice of sustained listening and collective restraint. Beuger’s process asks all players to articulate very long, very soft tones, shifting the expressive weight from individuality to ensemble number: it’s their “being eight” that generates the music’s distinct acoustic field.

The score divides into fifty pages; the recording captures twenty-five, each a sequence of subtle, indivisible harmonies. The ensemble’s progression is marked by gradual change: balances and colors move so gently that the music feels both static and breathing. Tones intertwine, overlay, and recede, the beautiful monotone occasionally breached by new instrument color or an especially tender inflection. Silence plays as crucial a role as sound, allowing sustained tones to bloom or fade on their own terms. Rather than pursue drama, the music investigates mutual attention, collective tuning, and a sense of coexistence in present time.

Beuger’s aesthetic - deeply influenced by reductionist and Wandelweiser traditions - values the ineffable over the exclamatory, proposing that simple means can yield profound effects. Ockeghem Octets unfolds as both a meditation and a social practice, creating a sonic architecture for healing, listening, and non-hierarchical being. Simplicity here is abundant: the piece offers space in which musicians and listeners alike can encounter the fullness of musical experience - its balance, calm, and restorative power.