A COMPOSER who plays 180 record decks simultaneously is among a group of artists to receive funding from a major arts body.
Liverpool-based Philip Jeck has been handed an award for the “original voice” he creates by salvaging old records and record players from junk shops and playing them together.
Jeck is best known for his Vinyl Requiem, performed in 1993, featuring 180 record players, 12 slide projectors and two film projectors.
He was among a group of artists who each received a sum of £45,000 from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which will be paid to them in £15,000 instalments over the next three years.
“It’s fantastic to be recognised and the money will help take the pressure off,” says Jeck, who moved to Liverpool from the South 15 years ago.
“I’m not 100% sure how I will use it yet but I’ve been working for some time on the idea of creating a big piece with other musicians.”
The father-of-one, who performed at FACT in Liverpool last February, attended art college before spending time in New York in 1979, where he met “ a lot of amazing DJs”.
They inspired him to create works like musical collages, made up of clips from other recordings.
Jeck, who will turn 57 this weekend, works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops, which he plays as musical instruments.
He has composed and performed scores for dance and theatre companies including Anatomy Performance Co, Yolande Snaith Theatredance, Movie n’ Opera (Vienna), Laurie Booth and Steve Paxton.
“I feel like I’m a serious musician rather than an artist, although I do it in a way that can be related to the methods you might use to make a sculpture or a collage work,” he says.
“I use fragments of different sounds and arrange them into the sound I want to create.”
The awards, which claim to be the most generous in the UK and are now in their 16th year, are designed to give artists the freedom to develop their own creative ideas.
Broadcaster and composer Michael Berkeley says: “They make a tremendous contribution to art and music in the UK. In the current climate for arts funding this contribution is more important than ever.”
The Awards for Artists were also given to visual artists Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Mark Dean, Melanie Gilligan, Seamus Harahan and Mary Redmond, and to composers Chris Batchelor and Tansy Davies, during an evening reception at the Royal Institute of British Architects, in central London.
LISTEN to a clip of Philip Jeck’s work Sand at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/audio
