The British Music Information Centre's Cutting Edge series is a unique initiative. Focusing on the newest of new music, the 17 concerts take place every week throughout the autumn, and showcase a huge range of repertoire. With over 80 premieres of works, mostly by young British composers, the series provides a rare and welcome opportunity to experiment with programming and presentation.
The concerts have a relaxed and inviting setting, and the opening programme, given by four players from the ensemble Nosferatu, was a quirky and eclectic curtain raiser for the whole series. Christopher Fox's KK for saxophone and percussion was the first world premiere of the programme; a fast mix of volatile riffs and intense, high-register melodies. Yannis Kyriakides's Chaoids was an essay in rhythmic drive, scored for saxophone, percussion, violin, and electronics. Each player inhabited a separate world of tempo and texture, and each fought ferociously to maintain their independence in the midst of these competing layers of music. The electronics provided a grindingly dissonant backdrop, and the piece ended with the players yielding to the sonic onslaught around them.
Music by Paul Newland and Paul Whitty took a less confrontational approach. Newland's Trance was a sequence of modal, meandering lines. Whitty's take-it-or-leave-it, a world premiere, was full of understatement and wit. The four players produced tiny notes interspersed with long silences. Just when it seemed that the piece was going to become an extended, Feldman-like study in concentration, the music ended as unassumingly as it had begun.
There was more absurdist drama in Emily Hall's Mr Bradley Martin, an atmospheric setting of a William Burroughs text for three players, featuring percussionist David Price as a lugubrious narrator. Violinist Darragh Morgan became a one-man folk band in Theo Loevendie's Dance, with morris bells to accompany the music's manic energy.
The most memorable premiere of the programme was Luke Stoneham's Left on Silver Lake. Stoneham's music transformed the four players into a surreal salon band, with its warped rhythms and urbane melodies. It was a fitting conclusion to the night's chaos.
· Season continues until December 12. Details: 020-7499 8567.
