residencies
Mahler & LeWitt Studios
Artist residency, 2022, Spoleto, Italy
In Spoleto, Cevanne developed new work (both visual and sonic) and rehearsed for an EP and book launch. She worked from the music room in Casa Mahler as well as in the Sol LeWitt studio. At her Open Studio (pictured in the slideshow below) she displayed arched window designs on the walls of her studio; conceived as compositional apertures they bear fragments of birdsong heard in Spoleto. The studio floor became Cevanne’s playground, with sketches and notations for new works. These included notes for a multi-day, durational performance involving writing lines of music on incense paper (used in rituals in Armenia): each day a phrase is played and then the music burned. Thereafter, when it is played on subsequent days (when a further phrase is also played and burned, adding to the composition) the music from the previous days must be recounted from memory. Themes of loss and memory – also misremembering – place and migration, recur throughout Cevanne’s work.
Random String Festival + Coventry City of Culture
Ludic Rooms, 2021-2022
Crewdson & Cevanne were commissioned to create a multi-media piece for the Random String Festival along the Coventry Canal. Encouraged to consider a 21st Century narrative of the waterway, and imagine the traditions of future folk, Crewdson & Cevanne created an audio-visual installation projected onto the backs of billboards and reflected in the canal. The pair wrote nineteen rituals for crossing water, marking nineteen bridges leading to the terminal Canal Basin. These were animated by local artist Jessica Glover, printed by Secret Knock as a book of augmented reality, and released as an EP of folk songs by Accidental Editions.
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Girton College, University of Cambridge
Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner, 2o20-2022
As a Visiting Fellow, Cevanne collaborated with artist-in-residence Luke Burton to create Glass Ball, a digital video and sound installation for the College chapel, the audio collage using local found sounds and references to Girton alumna Delia Derbyshire. ​ She wrote an introit for the Girton College Choir, a musical setting of Malcolm Guite's poem, Resurrection. The choir also featured on her Welcome Party album for NMC Recordings. At the end of her stay, she wrote a short piece for the Girton brass band, led by early instrument specialist Jeremy West.
GLASS BALL 2020
Luke Burton & Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian digital video and sound
Snape Maltings
Artist Residency, 2019, Suffolk, UK
Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian and Seta White spent 10 days in residence at Snape Maltings to study a story which began there in response to a (cancelled) plan to build a carpark over the habitats of endangered species. Their Armenian 'Pinch Punch' team was joined by librettist Ziazan and dramaturg Abi Zakarian.
575 Wandsworth Road (National Trust)
+ London Symphony Orchestra
Artist in residence, 2015-2017, London, UK
Cevanne was composer-in-residence with the London Symphony Orchestra at 575 Wandsworth Road, generously supported by Susie Thomson and the National Trust.​She created a body of work in response to the house of Khadambi Asalache, a poet, civil servant and son of a Kenyan chief who filled his home with intricate fretwork carvings.​Work created while in residence was double nominated for the Ivors Composer Awards, winning the Jazz category with Muted Lines commissioned by Trish Clowes. The project has resulted in Welcome Party, an album available on NMC Recordings.
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Handel & Hendrix In London
Composer-in-Residence, 2012-2014
Cevanne was composer-in-residence in the house where two influential musicians once lived - George Frideric Handel and Jimi Hendrix.​She created a visual-sonic game of chance, En Garde (card, ink), for percussionist Manu Delago and harpsichordist Satoko Doi-Luck.
In her final year, she produced an 'eye-music' score, House Music, for bel canto specialist Ziazan and accompanist Tessa Marchington. The score has windows cut through the pages in the shape of the facade of the Handel and Hendrix's house. The music and words can be read through the windows for performance, and as you progress through the pages, the context of those words changes.​
As curator, Cevanne invited artist Maya Ramsay to collaborate with guitarist Chris Montague and bassist Calum Gourlay. Maya created 'WALL OF SOUND' from rubbings of Hendrix’s wallpaper. Its wood chip texture created dots on music manuscript, from which the musicians derived clusters of notes to create new music, supported by PRSF.​
The première was held by the London Jazz Festival 2015, Southbank, and opened Hendrix’s restored flat to the public in London 2016, sung by BAFTA winning-actress Jessica Hynes.
