Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees
Commissioned by_
Royal Holloway, University of London: UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project, Cyborg Soloists
Performer_
Zubin Kanga
Year_
2021-2024
Duration_
68′
Performances_
The National Gallery, London
19 Jan 2024
Het Orgelpark, Amsterdam
1 March 2025
Release_
Flung
CD + Digital (48k/24bit wav) – flung001
10 October 2025
About_
Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees is a large-scale concert work for sampled historical organs and ROLI keyboard. In preparing the piece, Tassie visited and recorded several notable historical organs in the UK and Europe: the Van Straten Organ, a reconstruction of a late-Medieval Dutch organ (dating from 1479) at Het Orgelpark, Amsterdam; period instruments at St Cecilia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh (a 1765 Thomas Parker Enharmonic Organ and a Chamber Organ from c.1680); and the Wingfield Organ, a reconstructed English Tudor organ by the makers Goetz and Gwynn.
These sampled organs are performed simultaneously, using three keyboards: two MIDI keyboards and the ROLI Seaboard Rise 2, a ‘4D’ instrument that allows the player to sculpt and transform their sound in live performance. The work is in three parts: ‘Earth’, a densely layered opening; ‘Air’, a sensuous, microtonal middle section; and ‘Ocean’, in which layered organs pulse and undulate.
Engaging with modes of ritualised and communal listening, Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees is performed on multiple loudspeakers placed around the space, so that sound surrounds and subsumes the audience.
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A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time
Commissioned by_
PRS Foundation and Jerwood Arts Composers’ Fund award, Arts Council England, and The Marchus Trust
Performers_
Benjamin Tassie, Rebecca Lee, Rob Bentall
Year_
2021-2023
Duration_
50′
Performances_
Weston Park Museum, Sheffield
30 November 2023
Release_
Birmingham Record Company (NMC Recordings)
CD + Digital (wav/mp3) – BRC021
24 November 2023
About_
A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time is an album of music for new, water-powered musical instruments. Working with the instrument-maker Sam Underwood, Tassie designed and built three: a harpsichord, a hurdy-gurdy, and a hydraulis, or water organ. Powered by the river, the instruments produce sound mechanically — water-wheels turn to ‘play’ the harpsichord and hurdy-gurdy, while the water organ is sounded as water displaces air within the instrument, a system based on an Ancient Greek design.
The instruments were recorded and filmed in the historic Rivelin Valley in Sheffield. Once a thriving hub of water-powered industry, the river is now home to the archaeological remains of watermills and mill dams dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries; each of the album’s ten tracks was recorded at the site of a former mill. Tassie performed alongside the mechanical instruments, playing the rebec and lap steel guitar, as did Rebecca Lee (bass viol) and Rob Bentall (nyckelharpa).
Combining mechanically-produced historically-informed music, film, field-recording, and live performance, A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time explores ideas of heritage, place, and our changing relationship with the landscape.
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Solo for Computer and Tape
Commissioned by_
The National Gallery, London
Performers_
Benjamin Tassie
Year_
2020
Duration_
16′
About_
Solo for Computer and Tape is a filmed sound-installation made for The National Gallery, London, as part of Myra Hess Day 2020. During the Second World War, Hess curated and performed in a hugely popular series of concerts in the Gallery’s rooms, understanding the need for live music in times of national crisis — something the closure of venues in 2020 left audiences without. Tassie processed recordings Hess had made of Bach, Purcell, and Scarlatti in the early twentieth century to generate new ambient textures, which two 1970s reel-to-reel tape machines then ‘play’ in the installation, guitar pedals and analogue synthesisers processing and adding to the texture, all controlled by an automated laptop.
The work therefore generates a performance without performers, filmed in the empty gallery: a hauntological piece in which Hess’s playing returns as processed, decaying material in the rooms where she once played to a full house.
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Current Projects
Earth of Shine and Dark Mottling, for three microtonal bass viols with Liam Byrne, and O Suns—O Grass of Graves, for saxophone and live electronics with David Zucchi.