LCMF 2024
LET’S CREATE
‘To commit to the bit is to play it straight – that is, to take it seriously. A bit may be fantastical, but the seriousness required to commit to it is always real... That’s what makes the bit funny: the fact that, for the comic, it isn’t.’
– from Females by Andrea Long Chu
Where would we be without the trickster? Shapeshifter, border-crosser, mischief-maker, lord of misrule, god of the in-between, catcher of contingency, vandal, joker: they are our guide, our patron saint, our aesthetic saviour. For our 10th anniversary we turn to them: Reynard, Eshu, Coyote, Raven, Hermes, Loki, Brer Rabbit, Anansi. Call them what you will. You shall know them by their fruits.
And look what gleaming tools they possess for tripwiring reality. Through nearly 40 premieres and new commissions, exploring pranking, trolling and committing to the bit, obstinacy and obstruction, deception and cheek, shitpost modernism and omnicringe – via AI movies, pantos, a monotone symphony, a noise opera and the last sounds Plato heard – LET’S CREATE will celebrate the trickster spirit in music, art and film.
Let our Reynards shepherd you to the sunny uplands.
Read music critic Eduard Hanslick’s response to our 10th anniversary programme.
‘The capital’s most adventurous and ambitious festival of new music’
The Guardian
‘London’s most important festival’
The Wire
‘Vastly ambitious and massively popular’
The Daily Telegraph
LCMF was founded in 2013 to provide a home for the promiscuous music lover. Since then we’ve presented nine critically-acclaimed multidisciplinary festivals and premiered over 100 works. Artists who we have commissioned and hosted, or whose works we’ve premiered, include: Cosey Fanni Tutti, Julius Eastman, Cerith Wyn Evans, Roscoe Mitchell, Pauline Oliveros, Mica Levi, Lina Lapelytė, Tony Conrad, Klein, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jennifer Walshe, Yvonne Rainer, Charlemagne Palestine, Elaine Mitchener, Rebecca Saunders, Glenn Branca, Moor Mother, Ed Atkins, Annea Lockwood, John Giorno, Laraaji, Timothy Morton, Bhanu Kapil, Toby Jones, Nkisi, Gábor Lázár, Maryanne Amacher, Cassandra Miller, CA Conrad, Christian Marclay, Joan La Barbara, Fatima Al Qadiri, Morton Subotnick, Maggie Nicols, Gerald Barry, Katalin Ladik, Rashad Becker, Tyshawn Sorey, James Ferraro, Anne Bean, Ragnar Kjartansson, Pan Daijing, Robert Ashley, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sophia Al-Maria, Michael Finnissy, Mark Leckey.
In 2016 we curated the world’s first retrospective dedicated to the work of composer Julius Eastman. In 2018 we founded the LCMF Orchestra, dedicated to commissioning work by composers who’d never written for the orchestra before; to those whose work rarely gets heard in Britain; and to ambitious, spatialised orchestral pieces.
In 2016 we curated the world’s first retrospective dedicated to the work of composer Julius Eastman. In 2018 we founded the LCMF Orchestra, dedicated to commissioning work by composers who’d never written for the orchestra before; to those whose work rarely gets heard in Britain; and to ambitious, spatialised orchestral pieces.
LCMF is run by writer/curator Igor Toronyi-Lalic and composer/conductor Jack Sheen. In 2021 we became a charity (no. 1193409).
LCMF 2022 was the ninth festival in nine years, following editions in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and the world's first retrospectives of the composers Julius Eastman and Bernard Parmegiani. In 2020, in association with Whitechapel Gallery, we presented a night of performances online by Elaine Mitchener, Himali Singh Soin, Christopher Kirubi, Oliver Leith and Elvin Brandhi. In 2021, in association with Cabinet Gallery, we presented a complete reading of Ed Atkins’s novel Old Food (Fitzcarraldo), narrated by Toby Jones, at the Wigmore Hall.
For press, advertising and sponsorship enquiries, contact: lcmf@lcmf.co.uk
Special thanks to artist Emily Tilzey for designing the LCMF logo