Ergo Phizmiz Dates - Oct - Dec 2011

Greetings from the realms of chaos. Lots of things happening in the coming months...

04/10/11
"Disappearing Boxes" broadcast on Deutschland Radio Kultur (repeat of the WDR3 broadcast from July)

06/10/11
"The Third Policeman" live at the Kazimier, Liverpool, organised by UpitUp Records.

09/10/11
"The Third Policeman" live at The Waiting Room, Eaglescliffe

15/10/11
Ergo Phizmiz live pop & disco van show, at Serralves Museum of Art, Porto, Portugal

23/10/11
Release of Ergo Phizmiz / R. Stevie-Moore 7" single "Food & War" on Care in the Community Recordings

06/11/11
"The Third Policeman" live at Musicport Festival, Bridlington

08/11/11
Ergo Phizmiz live session on Marc Riley, BBC6 Music

09/11/11 and 10/11/11
"The Third Policeman" live at The Cube, Bristol, organised by Qujunktions

11/11/11
Premiere broadcast of "The Carnival in the Mirror Marches Into the Sea", a new 30 minute radio piece, on Deutschland Radio Kultur

25/11/11, 26/11/11 and 27/11/11
"The Third Policeman" live at Worm, Rotterdam

09/12/11
"The Third Policeman" live (and premiere broadcast) at Soundart Radio, Dartington

10/12/11
"The Third Policeman" and Howtosayto live at Bridport Arts Centre

"Disappearing Boxes" wins Horspiel des Monats, Deutsche Akademie der Darstellenden Kunste

We're rather happy to tell you that Ergo Phizmiz's autobiographical radio piece "Disappearing Boxes" (created for Studio Akustische Kunst on WDR3) has recently been awarded Horspiel of the month by the Deutsche Akademie der Darstellenden Kunste.

You can read a (German language) review of the piece, and listen to a short extract at their website.

And here, by the wonder of Google translate, is some kind of approximation of what they're saying....

"Ergo Phizmiz is a 30th-rounder from the UK, which is in "Disappearing boxes" goes on the search for traces of his early career as an opera composer. Except for a few snippets of newspaper and a BBC interview from her only recording is received an overture. His whimsical, fictional auto opera story is about a shy boy who decides cheered on by his devotion to Monteverdi at the age of 10 years to compose operas - just as he was convinced of it as a four year old to be Popeye.

Without classical training was his musical training in hearing the same old pieces at home, playing the music student of his father every day during the organ lessons in endless variations. Coupled of course with the enthusiasm for technological options such as high-speed dubbing or multi-tracking, he opened the four-lane tape recorders and computers. His first opera, a farce, set in a pizzeria and the 13-year-old student with the school orchestra for the performance brought brought him dubious fame as the "Boy Genius". At age 16 he was already composing on again, stand-up comedian and was only returned on his multi-faceted musical experiments with 30 letter to the opera. Ergo Phizmiz is for his self-deprecating narrative, which is incidentally also as a brilliant deconstruction of the high-cultural genre of opera, a wonderful balance between text and music. Music is free for him to Lewis Carroll's "Auto-Boojum": it exists only when it is listed commits, so with each performance slow suicide. This fascination with the fleeting existence of music runs through the dazzling, from seemingly endless sources of dining and music sound collage that makes this a unique radio play, puzzle play acoustic."

Disappearing Boxes : Credits

Broadcast 01/07/11 on Studio Akustische Kunst, WDR3



Written, Composed, Performed & Produced by Ergo Phizmiz



Additional voices by Margita Zalite & Pete Um


Mechanical improvisations and jazz-tube with Erik Bumbledonk




Cassette tapes from Ergo Phizmiz's teenage years, incorporating musical compositions, comedy performances, and a local radio interview, c. 1992/3




Opera fragments by Ergo Phizmiz, from “La Puce de Neige” (2009, for Patrick Sims/Buchinger's Boot Marionettes) “The Mourning Show” (2010, for DePlayer) and “The Third Policeman” (2011, by permission of A.M. Heath Ltd.)



The song “Celandine” by Ergo Phizmiz appears courtesy of Care in the Community Recordings




Sampled (PD & CC sources): The United States Army Old Guard Fife & Drum Corps “Toccata from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo” (Creative Commons) * Enrico Caruso “Ideale My Idial”, “Campaneasera” * Archie Mayer “Svengali” * Maria Callas interview & performance * D'Oyly Carte Opera Company “The Pirates of Penzance” 78 RPM recording * Lewis Carroll's “The Hunting of the Snark” from Project Gutenberg * Paderewski piano performance * Tom Kennedy “Pigtails & Chopsticks” * Pitman's Gramophone Course of Typewriter Keyboard Instruction * Jenny Howard “Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's Forty”


All sampled sounds from archive.org, freemusicarchive.org, and the archive of Bryan Innes Parker






Thanks to Felix Kubin, Martha Moopette, Vulnavia Vanity, Talulah & Autumn

Disappearing Boxes, on Studio Akustische Kunst, WDR3, Germany

Broadcasting on Friday 1st July, 23.05, on WDR3, Germany.

At the age of 12 , with no formal musical training, I wrote my first opera. This was followed over the next three years by ten further operas. The local newspapers described me, perhaps a little prematurely, as “Teesside's answer to Mozart”.

Between the ages of 12-16 I wrote ten operas, a symphony, two cantatas, and countless songs & instrumental music.

At 16 I abruptly abandoned composition and music entirely. At this point I decided to become a stand-up comedian, a line I pursued for the next five years before, eventually, returning back to music via electronic means.

Due to various circumstances, multiple changes of accommodation, and the many boxes of music-manuscript being stored in various people's attics, all of the music I composed as a teenager has, to all intents and purposes, disappeared.

I didn't write another opera until the age of 30.

Last year I found an audio cassette of an interview I took part in on local radio in North-East England, at the age of 13, about an opera I had composed, a farce that took place in a pizza parlour. Aswell as the interview the tape also features a MIDI recording of the Overture to that opera, the only surviving fragment of all my teenage compositions.


"Disappearing Boxes" is an impressionistic attempt to retrospectively analyse this mass of invisible operas that may never see the light of day. The work will attempt to explore the mindset of a teenager suddenly compelled to spend the majority of his time composing operas, whilst simultaneously exploring the medium of opera historically and culturally.


Part detective-tale, part musical analyses, part autobiography, part art-history, this piece will fuse the personal with the theoretical, using radio to delve deep into the way the creative process works.


From WDR3:


Mit 16 Jahren beschloss der junge Mann aus dem Nordosten Englands, Standup-Komiker zu werden. Bis dahin hatte er seine Pubertät zum nicht geringen Teil mit dem Schreiben von zehn Opern, einer Symphonie, zwei Kantaten, Liedern und Instrumentalmusik verbracht. Beim Umzug verschwanden dann allerdings sämtliche Schachteln mit den Noten. Erhalten ist nur der Mitschnitt eines Radiointerviews des 13jährigen Komponisten. Ausgehend von diesem Band versucht Ergo Phizmiz nun die Rätsel seiner Jugend und der Operngeschichte zu verstehen.