On Friday 15 August 2025 at 7pm (doors open at 6pm), the Vocal Constructivists are performing a FREE concert, ‘Somerset Dreams’, in the courtyard of Somerset House, London WC2R 1LA. We are honoured to be part of The Spell or The Dream, by Somerset House Studios artist Tai Shani.

Our programme presents works that blur traditional disciplinary, social, and aesthetic boundaries in an effort to cultivate greater sensory awareness. Using Pauline Oliveros’s ‘Deep Listening’ techniques, poetic interpolations, and theatrical movements, the Vocal Constructivists will overlap and juxtapose pieces by Barbara Alden, Robert Ashley, Carole Finer, Nye Ffarrabas, Ron Kuivila, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Michael Parsons, and the Scratch Orchestra.

Read about it here. Although Walk-Ups are welcome, you are encouraged to book (free) tickets here. Hope to see you there!

Join us for medieval fabliaux, Renaissance fragrent vines, operatic extracts, advertising slogans, music hall songs, and contemporary compositions that feature the most overlooked organ and its sensory powers. Alongside new works by Barbara and Jane Alden, we will perform nasal excavations by Lord Berners, Judith Bingham, Geoffrey Bush, Lou Gare, Charles Hutchins, Pete Morris, Dmitri Shostakovich, Nicolas Slonimsky, and anonymous. Bharatanatyam and contemporary dancer and scholar Hari Krishnan’s representation of scent will teach you how to inhale anew.

On 1 June 2024, joined by special guests, artist Junshu Gu and dancer Hari Krishnan, the Vocal Constructivists offered innovative musical explorations of the sense organ we overlook: our nose. We were honored to be in the architecturally stunning St Paul’s, Bow Common.

We perform works by US Artist Fellow Jin Hi Kim, Scratch Orchestra founder Michael Parsons, the inimitable Linn D., voice expert and poet Barbara Alden, visual artist/musician Alison Cross, the mercurial Kurt Schwertzik, Fluxus artist and poet Nye Ffarrabas, movement transcriber Simone Forti, the balletic Constant Lambert, Deep Listening proponent Pauline Oliveros, her Swiss collaborator Margrit Schenker and electronic pioneers Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky. We are honoured to be joined by dancer and educator Hari Krishnan and the creative observer of Living Tones, Jin Hi Kim herself.

The Vocal Constructivists are extremely sad to learn that the artist Tom Phillips CBE RA, ‘the most literal man’, died on 28 November 2022. Climbing through the window to get acquainted with Irma, Grenville, the Nurse, Toge and all his friends, has been a pivotal experience on the VC journey. We continue to ‘stir the violet notes’, as the words that Phillips revealed and concealed resound and shape our ongoing collages of sounds and syllables. It was ‘an unbelievable dream’ to prepare and perform Irma in his presence, both in person and online. 

The Vocal Constructivists returned to Pentameters Theatre on 20 December 2022 to perform 1952 at 70, in celebration of the 70^th birthday of landmark experimental pieces. VCs offered fresh interpretations of Earle Brown’s December 1952 and John Cage’s 4’33”, alongside works by Morton Feldman, György Ligeti, Otto Luening, Władysław Szpilman, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and a premiere by founder member artist Alison Cross (b. 1952).

Scratch and the Sequence

Following a busy two years online, the Vocal Constructivists resumed live performance in summer 2022 with a sell-out show at Pentameters Theatre, London. The programme revisited groundbreaking works of past decades and premiered several new pieces. Scratch and the Sequence questioned the contents of Linn D’s Nothing in Nothing, explored being Half Rite, listened to Barbara Alden’s Inner Word, chased Ben Zucker’s Wolffs, crumpled Nye Ffarrabas’s paper concerto with eggs, buzzed after Simone Forti, vibrated Daniel J. Wolf’s spectral madrigals, woke up Jin-Hi Kim’s Living Tones II, and it was back to the board with Cornelius Cardew’s Schooltime Compositions and Alvin Lucier’s Opera with Objects.

To celebrate their tenth anniversary, the Vocal Constructivists are hosting a series of events that invite you to listen, learn, share, and perform with us. The festival, through the square window playfully sequences through these activities over two days. With no entrance fees, no mud, and enough space for all who want to pitch their virtual tents (for brief or longer stays), this festival offers opportunities for creativity, participation, reflection, Q&A, and lively engagement with music-making. There are three structured “events” each day: the first involves a choice of seminars, the second features guest speakers, and the third presents Vocal Constructivists in performance. There are additional opportunities for discussion. This festival is offered in memory of Scratch Orchestra pioneer and broadcaster Carole Finer († March 2020).

Further details and schedule here