Writer, composer, collagist, theatre & opera maker, radio producer, songwriter, and performer Ergo Phizmiz. The scourge of modern opera and Paul McCartney's favourite meat substitute.
Ergo Phizmiz presents the UK premiere of his experimental opera "Vogel Europa" at the Toi Toi Opera Club Night, London, October 28th 2015, presented by the Helios Collective.
"Vogel Europa" is an opera using song, found-sound, mixed
language, and rhythmic spoken word, taking cues from the intoned voice
operas of Robert Ashley and the simultaneous sound-poetry exhibits of
the Dadaists. The opera also makes direct reference to the work of
Polish writer Bruno Schulz, mixed with autobiographical references and
stories, fantasies, and multilingual bird-name directories from old
records. Finally, we will meet the last bird in the universe and
discover what his swansong is.
Puppet Centre and Tête à Tête co-production in collaboration with Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
Music and Words: Ergo Phizmiz
Gala is a puppet-opera inspired by the aged Gala Dali’s rapacious relationship with Jeff Fenholt, a young actor then playing the role of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway.
In a collaboration springing from the 2012 Puppetry in Opera Conference, Tête à Tête works with Isobel Smith (Grist to the Mill), and puppeteers together with singers from Trinity Laban on a longer commission from Festival favourite Ergo Phizmiz following his 2012 Lite Bite Caring in the Community.
Director: Bill Bankes-Jones
Design/Puppetry: Isobel Smith
Music Director: Timothy Burke
Gala: Becca Marriott
Jesus Christ Superstar: Alex Gilchrist
Maid: Laura Monaghan
Puppeteers: Isobel Smith, Teele Uustani, Darren East
Puppet Centre and Tête à Tête co-production in collaboration with Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
Music and Words: Ergo Phizmiz
Gala is a puppet-opera inspired by the aged Gala Dali’s rapacious relationship with Jeff Fenholt, a young actor then playing the role of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway.
In a collaboration springing from the 2012 Puppetry in Opera Conference, Tête à Tête works with Isobel Smith (Grist to the Mill), and puppeteers together with singers from Trinity Laban on a longer commission from Festival favourite Ergo Phizmiz following his 2012 Lite Bite Caring in the Community.
Director: Bill Bankes-Jones
Design/Puppetry: Isobel Smith
Music Director: Timothy Burke
Gala: Becca Marriott
Jesus Christ Superstar: Alex Gilchrist
Maid: Laura Monaghan
Puppeteers: Isobel Smith, Teele Uustani, Darren East
“UOEIA”, an operina on the
histories of yodelling by Ergo Phizmiz, based on books by Bart
Plantenga. In woodland school, two young foxes are presented with the
history of the world through yodelling: the enchantment of the
planet, the birth of civilisation, through to the attempted
destruction of yodelling by church and state, all culminating in the
rescue at sea by yodelling by Harry Torrani, the English yodelling
cowboy, of Mercedes Gleitze, first lady to swim the English channel.
“UOEIA” is performed by what,
appropriately enough, should be termed “Swiss Family Phizmiz”, in
a mixture of vocalisation, performance, shadow-puppetry, masks,
paper-collage, and animation, with a kaleidoscopic music score that
twists between original acoustic composition and sound-collage from
across the history and richly varied cultures of yodelling.
Writer, Director, Composer: Ergo Phizmiz
Performers: Martha Moopette, Talulah Lotus, Autumn Poppy, Ergo Phizmiz
Video: Ergo Phizmiz, Simon Mathewson, Martha Moopette
With "That Global Glottis" DE PLAYER presents a program poised on the cutting edge of where experimental sound meets opera and the phenomenon known as yodeling. The technique of yodeling basically accents that jolt of air that occurs during the rapid movement between chest and head voice. While opera singers are taught to polish away that vocal leap with glissando techniques, yodelers do the opposite: they highlight the breaking of the voice.
"That Global Glottis" features a reading, a film series, and a Late Night Performance Event that spotlights this unique vocal technique as global phenomeon. The program was developed in close collaboration with author bart plantenga, renowned for his books YODEL-AY-EE-OOOO: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World and his recently published Yodel in Hi-Fi, From Kitsch Folk to Contemporary Electronica. Both books emphasize the fact that yodeling is found everywhere from pop to opera, not just among the Swiss and in the Alps but also among the African Pygmies, the Nazi Jugend SS, Bollywood star Kishore Kumar and countless others.
In December 2011 Ergo Phizmiz recorded four Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, acappella, from memory, for Vicki Bennett's mammoth 744 hour radio-broadcast "Radio Boredcast".
These recordings, along with the rest of the Boredcast, is now archived by the ever marvellous WFMU.
"Around the age of 11 or 12 I became obsessed with the comic operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan. This fascination lasted around 3 years. There were posters of W.S. Gilbert (the "S" stands for Schwenck, rather spectacularly) and Arthur Sullivan on my bedroom wall.
For years the thought of returning to their works "from memory" has been at the back of my mind. My very boring contribution to Radio Boredcast is "acappella" versions of the G & S operettas "HMS Pinafore", "Iolanthe", "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado".
Some of them I know better than others. In the cases where I didn't know the melodies, I made them up or roughly talked through them. I also decided to not use different voices for characters (these recordings are my second takes - the first takes sounded like The Goon Show and to be honest I had far too much fun doing them for it be genuinely boring), and to omit stage directions, so we are left with a very boring barrage of Victorian words, tuned and untuned, from my tired, monotone voice."
Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, and multimedia artist. He makes pop, theatre, installations, opera, radio-art, radioplays, sound-collages and performances. He lives in Bridport, UK, and has a headache. He never wants to perform Gilbert & Sullivan again.
Queen Ergo Phizmiz the 1st of England is delighted to announce this new, handsomely packaged CD release on Populista, a division of Bolt Records curated by Michal Libera.
Comprising a live recording made in Warsaw during September 2011, a 20 minute interpretation of Robert Ashley's disturbing piece, interleaved with cut-ups of Michael Winner's "Winner's Dinners" column.
Created in collaboration with Alessandro Bosetti, Lula, Maciej Cieślak, Julia Ziętek, and DJ Lenar.
A limited number will be available to buy shortly through ergophizmiz.net ... if you just can't wait, you can order the CD at Monotype Records.
Populista is a brilliant series of releases, and every installment of the series is highly recommended. If you want Costes performing the Marquis de Sade, Bernard Schutz & Reinhold Scheindl performing Schumann, or Rinus Van Alabeek performing Luc Ferrari, then this is the place to get them.
"A whirlwind tour through the life and work of maverick writer, collagist, radio-producer and opera composer Ergo Phizmiz. Performing excerpts from music-theatre pieces dating back to his early teens to current work-in-progress and experiments, the evening will provide a personal and kaleidoscopic overview of the work of one of the UK's most uncategorisable and prolific artists."
"One day in the mid 1940s in Fruita, Colorado, a poultry farmer was flummoxed by the continued survival of a decapitated chicken. Over the next 18 months Mike the Headless Chicken became a celebrity, touring the land as a wonder of nature, until an inglorious end in an hotel room (which can hardly be called untimely, since his head had died a year and a half earlier). This new Kentucky Fried Live Action Dada Cartoon opera by Elvis Herod, presented with The Gang of Rogues (returning to the festival after last year's controversial "The Third Policeman"), is a poultry-indigestion nightmare in garish technicolor."
Starring Martha Moopette, Richard Clare, Vulnavia Vanity, Elvis Herod, and Ergo Phizmiz.
Ergo Phizmiz has joined the boredom of the Vicki Bennett curated, mammoth 744 hour broadcast Radio Boredcast, commissioned by AV Festival 2012.
Thu 1 March – Sat 31 March
Radio Boredcast is a 744-hour continuous online radio project, curated by artist Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) with AV Festival. In response to our ambiguous relationship with time - do we have too much or not enough? - Radio Boredcast celebrates the detail, complexity and depth of experience lost through our obsession with speed.
With over 100 participants Radio Boredcast includes new and unpublished works, freeform radio shows, field recordings, interviews, monologues and much, much more. Thematic playlists will run throughout from “Acconci” to “Zzz…”
You can listen continuously for a month, or for hours, minutes or seconds. Online 24 hours each day, at www.avfestival.co.uk or www.thepixelpalace.org. To launch Radio Boredcast live from 1 March you can click the red radio icon in the header above, or via the individual link for each day below.
In the meantime, the schedule for the whole month is listed below, with details of each show and information about the artists. You can also subscribe now to the Radio Boredcast podcasts. Thanks to all the contributors.
Co-commissioned by AV Festival and Pixel Palace, hosted by BASIC.fm.
Ergo's contribution involves acappella performances of the entirety of "The Pirates of Penzance", "HMS Pinafore", "Iolanthe" and "The Mikado", comic operettas by W.S. Gilbert & A.S. Sullivan.....oh dearie me.....
Around the age of 11 or 12 I became obsessed with the comic operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan. This fascination lasted around 3 years. There were posters of W.S. Gilbert (the "S" stands for Schwenck, rather spectacularly) and Arthur Sullivan on my bedroom wall.
For years the thought of returning to their works "from memory" has been at the back of my mind. My very boring contribution to Radio Boredcast is "acappella" versions of the G & S operettas "HMS Pinafore", "Iolanthe", "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado".
Some of them I know better than others. In the cases where I didn't know the melodies, I made them up or roughly talked through them. I also decided to not use different voices for characters (these recordings are my second takes - the first takes sounded like The Goon Show and to be honest I had far too much fun doing them for it be genuinely boring), and to omit stage directions, so we are left with a very boring barrage of Victorian words, tuned and untuned, from my tired, monotone voice.
Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, and multimedia artist. He makes pop, theatre, installations, opera, radio-art, radioplays, sound-collages and performances. He lives in Bridport, UK, and has a headache. He never wants to perform Gilbert & Sullivan again. http://ergophizmiz.net
An opera to take place inside a cabinet, preferably wooden, by Ergo Phizmiz.
The text is written by David Niven, from his autobiography "The Moon's a Balloon".
Made with two pieces of metal, an electric guitar, a musical saw, a midi keyboard, a cassette recorder, a floor tom, a plastic tube, a euphonium mouthpiece, the end of a recorder.
Well folks! We're back. "The Third Policeman" has premiered, much (very tired and rather intense) fun was had by all.
Audience so far have loved it and detested it, as indicated in the image above. Which is, of course, just the way we like it....
Today's issue of The Times featured a rather splendid review of the show, below...
This link will take you to a photo gallery of images taken by Claire Shovelton (the above image is taken from Claire's gallery).
The lovely Tom Ravenscroft has also been drumming up support for the show, via his 6Music show where he featured a ten minute mix of songs and music from The Third Policeman, and in his New Statesman column, where he writes:
"You should probably expect to be at first a little startled - the music will be wildly unpredictable as I suspect will be his actions. I would be almost concerned if you had witnessed anything like it before. He is a burst of imagination, colour and noise, which has in the past left me sitting jaw collapsed on the floor, speechless as to how someone can so beautifully map out such madness."
And finally, today's blog would not be complete without this image of the Gang of Rogues a few minutes before going our separate ways.
Many thanks to Caroline & Izzy, Bill, Anna, Nell and all the other lovelies of Tete-a-Tete...
And let's not forget thanks to the Third Policeman team Erik Bumbledonk, Vulnavia Vanity, Oblivian Substanshall, Martha Moopette, Mike Wade, Bryan Innes Parker, Lucinda Guy, Talulah Lotus & Autumn Poppy. See you for more shows from October to December......
"If it's anything like his last [opera], The Morning Show, an opera about DJ Chris Evans going slowly mad and ending in him believing himself to be a crow, then I strongly advise you try and attend. For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Ergo, he is an exceptionally difficult fellow to describe, he has over the years produced a body of work that crosses over every kind of music and sound imaginable, and he can imagine considerably more than you or me."
Reporting from the underneath of Grindia Studios, Bridport, is artist, actor, composer and raconteur Vulnavia Vanity, who plays the Protagonist in Ergo Phizmiz's "The Third Policeman".
Hello cheekies, it's Vulnavia here.
Is it about a bicycle?
Of course it is. Why else would you be here were it not for the magnetic pull of the slender frame, the soft ring of the bell, the firm yet supple grip of the handlebars beneath your fingers, the hypnotic spin of the wheels?
Yes. The bicycle is truly a masterpiece crafted by the human hand, second only perhaps to the jam sandwich or the typewriter.
All this said, personally I have an irrational fear of riding a bicycle.
This stems from a traumatic experience in France when I was brave enough to mount a bicycle, only to discover that bicycle brakes are pretty damn strong, and when my little journey around the garden ceased to a halt, I fell onto the frame, crotch first.
My testicles bled.
It would give me copius amounts of pleasure to sail along the streets on a beautiful, vintage model with a little basket on the back to pick up bread from he boulangerie.
But I'm afraid this will never happen.
But at least The Third Policeman helps me live out my fantasies.
The rehearsal process has been very interesting thus far and has gone surprisingly smoothly, although we still have a terribly long way to go in four days.
This is a role unlike I have ever played before, in the sense that a great percentage of the show I am interacting with other characters who are just recorded voices.
I've been exploring my characterzation quite extensively over the last week or so and have eventually discovered the Protagonist's physicality. In a style almost reminiscent of Bouffon Clown, the Protagonist has his deformity (the wooden leg) and this completely compromises how he moves, his stance and also his attitude. This yonder photograph captures it rather well:
To finish, we have also been playing with shadow behind the projection and have discovered taken some quite lovely images. Look at Grandma Vulnavia for example:
And Grampa:
Ergo & Oblivian dance:
And we say a tender hello to a newly dead friend.
Nanu-Nanu & all that, lovelies ♥
And here is Vulnavia Vanity in his prime, with his rather splendid single "Worse Things Happen at Sea"....
And resplendent in Ergo Phizmiz & Martha Moopette's "Barbette" from "Fulcanelli's Shoes"...
The second instalment of the Sounds From the Underground Chamber podcast features Ergo, Erik & Vulnavia rehearsing the Finnucane section of The Third Policeman.
Autumn Poppy and Bubbles
Erik in flight
The coronation
Ergo throwing DeSelby shapes
I'm a robber with a knife
Oblivian & Ergo chat to Autumn, whilst Erik appears to piss up the wall
Second day of rehearsals done and dusted, real progress made today....
We are delighted to introduce the first of a new podcast series "Sounds From the Underground Chamber", documenting the rehearsal process of The Third Policeman.
Erik Bumbledonk dies in a corner
Ergo & Erik look at a chair
Martha Moopette post-goosing
Erik stabs Vulnavia in the head with a ladder
Ergo demonstrates the art of throwing empty cans into a bin
Mr Phizmiz's pursed lipped coquettish look, just before a light fell on his head
Vulnavia in foxy mode
Building a puppet theatre and back projecting
Martha Moopette getting jiggy with the iron on glue
Vulnavia regarding a giant pair of underpants
Shadow puppets
Vulnavia hasn't managed to remove the ladder from his head
Ergo Phizmiz's electronic neur-operatic vaudeville machine adaptation of Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman" opens at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival on August 20-21, Riverside Studios, London. Tickets are available here.
Links for booking of all other shows will be online soon.
Can't wait? Download the free album of Third Policeman Remixes....
