BlankPage- Francesca Thompson, recorder & live electronics / Gilberto Bernardes, saxophone &    live electronics. 

BlankPage was formed as as result of an ongoing collaboration between Francesca and Gilberto to build a flexible platform for improvisation with live electronics. The core of the project centres around a patch, and its extensions, built by Gilberto Bernardes using the programme Pure Data (PD), and is generally for use with one controller and one instrumentalist, who can freely switch roles. Both instrument and electronics are improvised and play equal parts in the performance.

"Francesca Thompson and Gilberto Bernardes are a very promising new duo

 bringing together one of the oldest and of the newest instruments in the

 history of music. Thompson's playing is at times delicate and at times nearly

 ferocious, and this range of expression is matched by Bernardes' dedication to

 to bringing real musicianship to the computer. I'm looking forward with great

 interest to hear how this new duo develops." - Richard Karpen, composer

Francesca is currently working with Laurens to build a piece based around new ideas and sounds of scales, which will be partly fixed and partly improvised, for recorder and live electronics.

In conjunction with the oboist Bart Schneemann, composer Claudia Rumundor and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Francesca is taking part in a performance project whose aim is to radically question the way we perceive music, and the way in which music is performed today. The group is open to any instrumentation, and to all possible styles of music. First performances will begin in May 2008.

This is an ongoing project, which was first begun in 2007 and will run until 2010-11. It involves the commissioning of two programmes of new music, one for recorder solo, and one for recorder and harpsichord, both with and without electronics and/or tape. To date, composers from Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, the U.K. and U.S.A. are taking part.

The idea of the project is to explore the new in all its forms. Older works will be programmed together with the new works, ranging from anonymous Mediaeval songs and dances to fourteenth-century ballatas, variations of van Eyck, Bach suites, and many of the seminal contemporary works for recorder, by composers such as Andriessen, Berio, Eggert, Stockhausen, Tedde and others. Together with these fixed works, contemporary improvisations (with and without electronics) and early improvisations, such as variations of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian dances, and eighteenth-century French suites, will also be performed- thus including all possible incarnations of the new.

First performances of complete programmes will be sometime in the 2009/10 season, although a number of the works will be premiered throughout Europe before this time. If you are interested in writing for the Generate Project, or would like to know more, please contact Francesca.

Le Petit Rien- Francesca Thompson, recorder & Francesco Corti, harpsichord

Le Petit Rien is a recorder and harpsichord duo which explores early repertoire from (mainly) the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and specializes in early Italian Baroque and high French Baroque music. The duo also has an interest in contemporary music for harpsichord and recorder, and will perform the new works of the Generate project (see above) together.

Francesca Thompson- recorder

Maite Labaru- violin

Eilidh Martin- cello

Francesco Corti- harpsichord

Together, the four musicians aim to revive the improvisatory style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, working not only on improvised dance forms and suites, but also on a free (although appropriate) style of ornamentation. Aside from this, they are keen to explore as wide a repertoire as possible, as well as contemporary repertoire- in other words, to perform old music as new musicians.