Headspace

HeadSpace is the culmination of a project which commenced in 1999, when Carnyx  Co., working with funds donated by the Diageo Foundation, commissioned composer and sonic inventor Rolf Gehlhaar to create a new musical instrument which would enable a quadriplegic musician to engage with fellow performers at the highest professional level. Head=Space is a highly sophisticated and powerful electronic musical instrument, controlled by subtle movements of the player’s head coupled with small, but delicate and precise air column, as in a wind instrument.

The musician for whom Head=Space has initially been developed, and who uses it to perform in the premier of my piece, is Clarence Adoo. Until a car accident left Clarence paralysed from the neck down, he was a fine professional trumpet player. All the characteristics which define Clarence as a person, and as a musician, remain unaffected by his accident – but the medium through which he used to express himself as a musician, the trumpet, is now denied him. It has always been our hope that Head=Space could become a medium through which any person could potentially express themselves. In Clarence’s case, the instrument is being driven by a professional musician of highly developed skills and aesthetic sense – but it is obvious that Head=Space also represents an extremely potent educational device, which any person with movement related special needs could learn to control and express themselves to their full potential.

Rolf Gehlhaar developed Head=Space sufficiently for Clarence to start working with it in 2001. Like any musical instrument, one can’t just pick it up and perform immediately – you have to practice, long and hard. Once the instrument existed in a useable form, it was essential to simply leave Clarence to “get on with it”. When Ian Ritchie, director of the St. Magnus Festival, broached the idea of John Kenny composing a piece for the 2005 festival, Kenny suggested involving Clarence and Head=Space. Ian Ritchie immediately took the idea up, demonstrating their mutual enthusiasm for the carnyx as a symbol: the head, as the true centre of our personality and passion, the totemic beast of our ancestors reborn as a 21st Century musical medium, is a wonderful analogy for the development of Head=Space – and to play it in the festival named for Orkney’s decapitated patron saint would truly be “The Entertaining of the Noble Head”.

HeadSpace is a quartet for trumpet, trombone, the head=space instrument, and sound projectionist. The musicians who premiered HeadSpace at the 2005 St. Magnus Festival, and subsequently for a BBC documentary filmed live at the SAGE Gateshead, are: Torbjorn Hultmark playing trumpets and flugal horn, John Kenny on trombone and carnyx, Clarence Adoo on Head=Space, and Chris Wheeler as sound projectionist. The textures created in the piece derive from a search for shared sonorities, but also in the rhythms and cadence of speech, or proto speech, which is implied by any concentration on the “head”. The piece unfolds in one continues movement, containing fourteen sub sections.

Since 2006 the HeadSpace Ensemble has gone on to develop new repertoire, and now offer themselves for recitals and workshops featuring Clarence Adoo and the Head=Space instrument.

John Kenny

The four musicians of the HeadSpace Ensemble first got together in 2005 as a result of the St Magnus Festival's commission for a piece of music by John Kenny. John's piece was to include the ground-breaking new The Headspace instrument, created by Rolf Gehlhaar in conjunction with Carnyx & Co, specifically designed to be played by the tetraplegic musician Clarence Adoo. The wide range of instruments and sounds available within the group, as well as the musicians' exceptionally broad musical and theatrical experience, opened up a whole new set of musical opportunities and thus inspired the creation of the HeadSpace Ensemble.

BBC TV spent three days in February 2006, filming the headSpace Ensemble's rehearsals and subsequent performance at The Sage Gateshead. The resulting documentary was broadcast later that month.

''...a truly moving and inspirational occasion.'' ''But what really matters is where Clarence and, indeed, the music profession as a whole can take this ground-breaking project now and in years to come.''
Ian Ritchie, Director, City of London Festival

''...Only the most inventive composers, performers, venues, and instruments will survive. Their ideas may be uncomfortably different from ours, but they are the ones who will keep brass music moving and alive. One brilliant new transformation...represents a pioneering effort of performance, composition and instrument making, presided over by Clarence Adoo...Rehearsing with him a few weeks ago in the RSAMD was humbling and inspiring in equal measure. More than anything, it gave me a sense that our instrument is being passed down into so many different and brilliant sets of hands....''
''...An indomitable spirit, a hunger to perform and the innovative contributions of composer John Kenny and instrument designer Rolf Gelhaar are bringing him to the stage again, with probably the most versatile and far-reaching instrument ever designed for a disabled performer...''
''...Using Headspace, Clarence moves virtuosically through a vast repertoire of sounds: trumpets, pianos, thunder and waves. He creates an electrifying performance space; fantastic new possibilities for the instrument, for the music...''
John Wallace OBE, prinicpal of the Royal Consevatoire of Scotland.

Clarence Adoo

Until a serious car accident in 1995, Clarence Adoo was sub-principal trumpet with the Northern Sinfonia.
His career as a musician, following his graduation from The Royal College of Music in London, spans two decades during which time he has worked in all forms of music - from pop and jazz, to classical. He worked for a time with Courtney Pine and the Jazz Warriors, and in several West End shows, and has also free-lanced for many orchestras including Scottish Opera, City of London Sinfonia, London Sinfonietta, Bournemouth Sinfonietta and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Today, despite his accident which has left him paralysed from the shoulders down, Clarence has retained a role with the Northern Sinfonia as Education Animateur. He visits schools, colleges and adult groups in the north of England to lead music workshops or discussions on music and composers, and has been selected on several occasions for the panel of BBC Young Musician of the Year.

Clarence is an inspiration to the many people who know him - not least since the day in 2005 when the Headspace Instrument [hSi] enabled Clarence again to perform on the concert platform. His reaction was “ this is the first time in ten years that I have felt like a musician again”

The Clarence Adoo Trust was set up in 1995 to enable Clarence to purchase specialised equipment necessary for him to retain an active and independent life. Thanks to the fund, Clarence is able to live in a specially adapted house in Newcastle, use a mouth-controlled computer for his work, and travel across the UK for his various work-commitments.

Torbjörn Hultmark

Torbjörn Hultmark was born in Sweden in 1957 and came to live in the UK in 1985.

Torbjorn Hultmark studied trumpet, conducting and composition at the Gothenburg Conservatoire of Music and at National Centre for Orchestral Studies, Goldsmith's College, London - his main teachers were Bengt Eklund (Gothenburg) and John Wallace (London).

Alongside his work as a member of Chaconne Brass, Notes Inegales and the Headspace Ensemble, Torbjorn Hultmark works with orchestras and ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Chamber Orchestra of Europe as well as film and TV session work. Torbjorn has worked as a soloist with orchestras and ensembles such as the Northern Sinfonia and, at the 2007 Albert Hall Proms, the BBC Philharmonic.

Torbjorn's music has been performed extensively and recorded on CD (CBCD597 and CBCD 1101) as well as broadcast in Britain (BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM) and abroad. His output is wide-ranging and includes works for large orchestra and choral music as well as scores for different types of chamber ensembles.

He is a Teacher of Trumpet at the Royal College of Music Junior Department and, since 2001, he also runs tootProductions which specialises in classical-music audio recording.

Torbjörn has dual Swedish and British citizenship and lives with his family in a rural village in Berkshire.

Chris Wheeler

Chris Wheeler left his West Country roots at 16 and was accepted into the City of Edinburgh Music School, after which followed two years at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and two years at City University, graduating in 2003 with a Bachelor of Music degree. He currently works in various musical capacities including events programmer, recording producer, artist manager, performer, sound designer & DJ.

During his second year at music college Wheeler tried his luck at club-night promotion amid London’s East End. Although appreciative of the concert hall ethos Wheeler was more interested in breaking down the boundaries of musical genres associated with social spaces; classical can belong in a club and vice versa. After gaining experience at venues like 333 (Shoreditch) and 93 Feet East (Brick Lane), his idea to merge genres in unlikely settings came to the fore at Cargo (Shoreditch) in 2004. It is there where he began a monthly club-night entitled ‘Heritage’, a name inspired by his personal heritage not residing in the box of conservatoire idealism. Beat driven jazz and contemporary dance music came from the main room whilst Classical incarnations kicked off proceedings in other parts of the venue. It was an opportunity for musicians to get away from standard venues and perform to an audience who related to, and encouraged the performance of contemporary or classically based music. The Heritage ethos inspired an outpouring of refreshing new music, which culminated in the creation of the Heritage Orchestra, devised alongside musical partner Jules Buckley.

Aside from the increasing responsibility of the Heritage Orchestra, Chris works extensively as a sound-designer, performing electro-acoustic repertoire.

Chris lives in London aboard his and his girlfriend Hannah’s Dutch barge ‘Margriet’.

hSi

The Headspace Instrument [hSi] is a highly sophisticated and powerful electronic musical instrument, controlled by subtle movements of the player's head coupled with a small but delicate and precise air column, as in a wind instrument.

It is the culmination of a project when Carnyx & Co, working with funds donated by the Deagio Foundation, commissioned composer and sonic inventor Rolf Gehlhaar (see below)to create a new musical instrument which would enable the tetraplegic musician Clarence Adoo to engage with fellow performers at the highest professional level.

''Clarence would have to be able to, only by moving his head, control whatever virtual instrument I could provide. I looked about for possible solutions for mouse-movement control, finally discovering a head-pointing system that takes the place of a mouse: move your head and the mouse-cursor moves on the screen; puff on the tube to make selections. Pointer control is fast, smooth and accurate.

Once the question of control was solved, I was then able to develop the virtual instrument hSi, employing the object-oriented musical programming environment MAX/MSP.

The Headspace Instrument is in fact a large library of instruments, each of which is further programable in order to generate, process and manipulate sounds in different ways; Clarence is thus able to manipulate the instrument in completely predictable ways, employing his visual and aural skills.''

The first public performance took place at the St. Magnus Music Festival on 22 June 2005.

Rolf Gehlhaar

Composer, musician, digital artist, teacher, humanist and inventor of sound=space and the Headspace Instrument.

Rolf grew up in Germany, New Mexico and California, attending schools in Alamogordo and Santa Barbara. In 1961 he attended Yale University, studying science, philosophy and music, and in 1965 began graduate studies in music at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1967, having studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen who was that year a visiting professor at the University of California, Rolf was invited to become Stockhausen's private student and personal assistant in Cologne, Germany. Gehlhaar worked closely with Stockhausen over the next four years. Rolf became the sixth member of the Stockhausen Ensemble - a group of outstanding musicians who were highly influential on the European contemporary musical scene of the time.