Drawing from her collaborators, influences and own personal archive, cellist and composer Lucy Railton guides us through an hour of music of interest and inspiration, alongside discussing her collaborative project with Studios resident Laura Grace Ford; the result of Railton's short-term residency at Somerset House Studios in 2018.
Whilst in residence, Railton focused on psychogeographical practices, composing a sonic work of text and recordings gathered from drifts with Grace Ford, presented at Somerset House Studios' annual contemporary music series, ASSEMBLY. Responding to the complex and palimpsestic character of Thames-side Wapping, the composition looked to river systems as both a literal and metaphorical manifestation of connectivity, constructing a sound world of undercurrents that relate people, places and time.
Lucy Railton is a British cellist and composer living between London and Berlin. Since 2007 she has been active as a curator, a performer of contemporary music and as a solo artist. Over the years she has performed and recorded with creators from a range of disciplines including Kit Downes, Catherine Lamb, Rebecca Salvadori, Peter Zinovieff, Beatrice Dillon, Phillippe Parreno, Kali Malone, Sofia Jernberg, Christian Lillinger, Rhodri Davies, Angharad Davies, Laura Grace Ford, Akram Khan, Nicolas Becker, Alex Hills, Alison Knowles, the Tate Modern, Blank Forms, the ICA, the Harmonic Space Orchestra and the Ever Present Orchestra. She has been commissioned by Somerset House, Borealis Festival and INA GRM, Paris and has been a resident at EMS, Sweden and Dark Ecologies/Sonic Acts Norway, and has been involved in presentations of work by Maryanne Amacher and Henning Christiansen amongst many other productions during her time as co-director at London Contemporary Music Festival and Kammer Klang. She has previously released solo and collaborative albums on Modern Love, PAN, ECM, Confront Recordings, Ftarri and SN Variations, with a split side release with Max Eilbacher on GRM / Editions Mego Portrait Series. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London and the New England Conservatory, Boston.
