BITÁCORAS
2025
UK TOUR
Oscar Edelstein (Piano)
in concert
with Deborah Claire Procter (Voice)
CONCERT DATES
FRI 28.03.25, PM
SAT 29.03.25, 7.30PM
SUN 30.03.25, 4.00PM
Formerly St Paul’s church, it was built by a Presbyterian mission around 1856. Locals created the St Paul’s Arts Trust in 1989 to take responsibility of restoring the building to create a venue. Project Director, Robert Richardson who had wide ranging interests from classical to jazz music, was a big part of the success. Now with a new interim team led by Matthew Jameson and patrons Sir Ian McKellen and Marie McLaughlin, shows are hand picked for this intimate and atmospheric venue.
Starting off in London in the Isle of Dogs. You can then catch the concert in three Scottish towns - Dumfries, Stirling and Aberdeen. Next Alnmouth in Northumberland, not far from Newcastle. Lastly Bracknell near Reading.
See you there!
SAT 05.04.25, 7.30PM
With strong links to the renowned Scottish poet Robert Burns, who wrote several pieces specifically for its stage, the Royal is the oldest working theatre in Scotland. Its door first opened in 1792 after actor manager George Stephen Sutherland approached local people to raise money for a purpose-built theatre to take the place of the Old Assembly Room in the George Hotel. Now it’s a place to attend world-class touring productions and since 1959, each year The Guild of Players put on a Panto and five shows.
WED 16.04.25, 7.30PM
A medieval tolbooth was the first building on the site, completed in 1473. It was then a court and jail, and even hosted a parliament in the reign of James VI. In 2000 it was turned into an arts venue with courtroom becoming the performance space, the robing room a bar and the council chamber a restaurant. Now the extended Grade A-listed building retains many original features like the domed ceiling in the auditorium as well as incorporating state of the art technology throughout the eight floors.
SAT 19.04.25 7.30PM
John Smith - who succeeded Archibald Simpson as City Architect - designed the building as the North Parish Church to accommodate 1700 parishioners. Its design is similar to St Pancras Church in London. In 1831 it opened and was in use for over 120 years. After its closure in the 1950s, the building reopened as an Arts Centre in 1963. Now as both an arts venue and independent charity it is dedicated to delivering an accessible and varied programme and providing creative learning opportunities.
WED 23.04.25 7.30PM
The Playhouse was originally built in 1925 as a 700 seat cinema and occasional music hall, eventually closing in 1979 before being bought by NTC Touring Theatre Company who converted the ground floor. The upper floor was leased out to the Alnwick Playhouse District Trust who reopened the newly refurbished Alnwick Playhouse in December 1990. In 2018 the Playhouse closed once more for a major refurbishment. The ground floor was transformed to include the addition of the Library and Visitor Services and the café and Studio facilities were improved to this much loved focal point for the community.
Another venue with quite a history - before the 1600s the area was part of Windsor Forest. In 1801 it was owned by George Canning who holds the record as the shortest serving UK Prime Minister lasting only 119 days. During the First World War South Hill Park was used as a war work collection centre as surrounding villages brought woolen garments to be sent to France. Leap forward to 1952 and the BBC bought the building to provide services in the event of a national emergency and to operate as their European services section.. By 1975 it was transformed in to an arts centre and now with the help of National Lottery Board and Bracknell Forest Council it has become a prominent centre for arts known as a hub of artistic significance.
In his new concert Oscar Edelstein from Argentina plays his “un-classic” piano accompanied by tapes and texts, with vocals and video made by Welsh multimedia artist Deborah Claire Procter.
As a composer, pianist and researcher Edelstein is well known for his mix of music which intertwines the popular, classical and contemporary - making him compelling, hard to define, and often considered as leading the avant-garde from Latin America.
Colleagues and critics over the years have compared his music to “á la free jazz” or to names like Cecil Taylor, Zappa, King Crimson, Cage, Varèse, Bartok, Piazzolla, and one conductor even described directing his orchestral work “Cristal Argento I” as like being inside a Picasso painting. But as Edelstein has said, more important than any generous comparison, it’s about originality and being decisively Latin American with all the paradox, passion and politics which that implies.
This concert is a homage to the wise art of hands encrypted in notations, drawings, poetry - the writings of an ancient journey which for us creates the only reality that matters.
Composition & Piano:
Oscar Edelstein
Voice & Video:
Deborah Claire Procter
“Bitácoras” translates as “binnacle” and refers to the ship’s logs which are usually kept on long sea voyages. In ancient times it included a book where sailors recounted their travels and recorded everything that happened. A binnacle is the place where this valuable information was stored to protect it from adverse weather conditions and the vicissitudes of the journey.
Talks
The Musical Imagination: Between Rivers and Crystals
MON 14.05.25 7.30PM
ROYAL CONSERVATOIRE OF SCOTLAND
Acoustic Theatre / Sonic Crystals / Musical Perspective
A poetic journey through the principal ideas that founded the research program Teatro Acústico (Acoustic Theatre). From reflections in front of the Paraná River, to the creation of music-theatre performances that work with concepts of spatial modulation and acoustic perspective.
Developments and inventions from Acoustic Theatre the award-winning research programme co-directed by Oscar Edelstein at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (Argentina).
Edelstein shares his musical universe with students, staff, researchers and members of the public.
Free
Registration details to follow
Watch this space for more updates about talks and workshops by Oscar Edelstein and Deborah Claire Procter during this UK Tour and make sure to join the newsletter by clicking the link below. We'll update you fornightly on anything relevant.
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The music of Oscar Edelstein - as a composer and pianist from Argentina - is hard to pigeon hole and he is well known for crossing the lines between musical genres with his works for orchestras, ensembles and operas.
With a reputation for intense and polished playing, with “visceral” being the word used by one critic for this boundary defying music, the unifiying force for his composition is a desire to communicate through music that is dynamic, emotionally charged and passionate.
The dialogue between art and science, and music's historic position as within the study of science has fasinated Edelstein as he continually develops new ways to think about musical composition.
This extensive research includes creating a system of control and notation of the acoustic space, which he calls The Acoustic Grid, and with a team of scientists co-led by physicist Manuel Eguia at the Universidad de Quilmes they have created an entirely acoustic system of amplification using the scientific principal of Sonic Crystals. The full results were performed in 2024 at the biennial Festival Nueva Ópera Buenos Aires.
Deborah Claire Procter (Cardiff, Wales, UK) is a singer and multimedia artist. With a degree in theatre at the University of Exeter, her Masters in Fine Arts was from the University of Wales, Cardiff. Her performances have been shown in numerous prestigious theatres and galleries such as The Ferens (Hull), Spacex (Exeter), Hemsley Theatre (Madison, USA), and Museum Theatre (Chennai).
On graduating her first job was with Theatre Alibi (U.K.) and through them she received training with Gardzienice Theatre Association in Poland.
With a commission by Welsh Independent Dance, she began making videos with dancers, one of which "Am I This?" was chosen for The Dance on Screen Festival at The Place, London. Another was shot in Argentina with Sandra Grinberg (Trisha Brown Dance Company).
She received the Creative Wales Award and in 2004 won the first of two grants from Wales Arts International to visit Argentina, to begin training musically with Oscar Edelstein, and to make the voice-work of different performances such as Insanas (directed by Silvia Pritz), as well as Rivers and Mirrors, El Caballo Fantasma, and La Carta Imaginaria by Edelstein.
“Taking inspiration from myriad genres, the composer-cum-director-cum-pianist is one of the most innovative musicians around.”
Sophie Hern, Metro Cardiff
"It’s musical in a physical sense, authentic dithyrambic music, realised simultaneously with milimetric precision…”
Federico Monjeau, Clarín
“The electronic part carries the game of the orchestra into another space, another world, another sound universe, like a dream, like a recollection, or how it looks through a kaleidoscope, a prism with various refractions. A powerful percussion mechanism machine was in action, concentrated beams of sound of stream over the listener. It's exciting to hear such avant-garde new music from Latin-America.”
Roswitha Frey, Badische Zeitung
“Edelstein’s works are characterised by transcending the limits between the popular and the academic.”
Diario Hoy, La Plata
“…the incredible Welsh vocalist Procter (her voice acting like one more instrument) …a one of a kind singer that is a lucky cross between Cathy Berberian & the free jazz vocalist Lauren Newton.
Jorge Garcia, El Amante
“The rhythmical, multilayered sound fields develop like waves. Edelstein’s close woven music, continuing the tradition of Varèse, has a force which goes under the skin with great vitality."
Christian Fluri, Basellandschaftliche Zeitung
“An unpredictable journey around a kind of sonorous poetry...
From the most tenuous and crystalline, up to the real explosion, it's a fundamental disc, for its importance and originality but especially for its power of communication.”
Diego Fischerman, Página 12
“Edelstein possesses a formidable pianistic technique…”
Iberia & Latin American Music Society, London
“Edelstein - one of the most outstanding composers
of avant-garde music in Argentina.”
Martín Liut, La Nación
“To the singer Procter it is only necessary to be grateful to her for the opportunity that welcomed the audience to be able to re-discover the incomparable and inimitable singularity of the beauty of the human voice. Her intervention (perhaps for coming closer to something that might unite scat or the onomatopoeic phonetics of certain African traditions) was simply dazzling for the technical solvency in the range, and her versatility…”
Carlos Marín, El Diario
“Edelstein writes in the form of an ideogram on the bodies of the interpreters who through their instruments and the grounding of extensive rehearsals, translate a protocol of signs designed by Edelstein. This language is essentially theatrical. ...the piano of Cecil Taylor now resounds... Past and present are constructed in a place of the future.”
Abel Gilbert, Revista Otra Parte
UK TOUR 2025
Fri 28.03.25, 8.00pm
Sat 29.03.25, 8.00pm
Sun 30.03.25, 4.00pm
SAT 05.04.25, 7.30PM
WED 16.04.25, 7.30PM
SAT 19.04.25 7.30PM
ABERDEEN ARTS CENTRE
WED 23.04.25, 7.30PM
SAT 03.04.25 7.30PM
QUESTIONS
