About me
Nathaniel Mann is an experimental composer, performer, and sound designer. His expansive practice bridges music and sound art. He was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2019 and wasan Arts Foundation Fellow in 2018. His work Pigeon Whistles (2013) — a flying orchestra of flute- carrying Birmingham Roller pigeons — won the George Butterworth Prize for Composition in 2015. He is one-third of the experimental folk trios Dead Rat Orchestra and Hack Poets Guild, whose acclaimed debut Black Letter Garland (2023) was named one of The Guardian’s Folk Albums of the Year.
Premios:
- Premio Paul Hamlyn Award: Compositor 2019.
- Becario de la Arts Foundation: Por Musica 2018.
- Pigeon Whistles (2013); Ganó el Premio George Butterworth de Composición 2015.
- Gran Premio – Bienal de El Cairo – Borg Al Amal – con Lara Baladi. 2008
In depth:
Artist statement: Nathaniel Mann.
Perpetually orbiting music and sound, my compositional practice is expansive in scope and equally varied in form. I buse the overarching term ‘composer’ because regardless of ¿format, my work is always rooted in sound and listening culture.
My roles are many; researcher, instrument-maker, archive-digger, surround-sound designer, filmmaker, broadcaster, storyteller, producer, curator, entrepreneur, sonic-artist, folksinger, and 1/3 of Dead Rat Orchestra (DRO).
Through my music I’ve explored:
- The socio-political impact of Britain’s Canals and Waterways (The Cut: 2012)
- Using 100 years of archived sound to transfigure Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum
into an immersive listening-scape. (Embedded Residency: 2012-14)
- A flying orchestra of flute-carrying Pigeons. (Pigeon Whistles 2013).
- The deeply rooted traditions interlinking noise and social control; crafting bronze musical meat-cleavers with Swordsmith Neil Burridge. (Rough Music: 2014)
- The psycho-geographic horror of England’s public execution sites (Tyburnia: 2014-2017)
- The psychic-wranglings of Venice’s most revered exorcist, set against ISIS’s beguiling
Nashids (Mindful Hands: 2016)
- The colonial residue of recorded music in South Africa, in dialogue with Andile Vellum, a
deaf dancer/choreographer based in Cape Town. (Cape-Sound-Stories: 2016)
- The forgotten legacy of an aviation legend, through a fusion of Nepali & British music with
Ex- Gurkha musicians. (Rushmoor-Epics 2017)
- Radio as extension of my compositional practice for BBC-Radio 3/4. (2016-2019)
Research-based, conceptually grounded, and with an acute sense of context and spectacle, my work is fuelled by continued dialogue and collaboration with enthusiasts and practitioners from varied fields; filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, academics, curators, a Pigeon-Fancier and a Swordsmith.
Through my projects I create living contexts for my compositions to exist within, it is often impossible to separate the music from the exchanges and relationships that grow around it.
My compositions do not echo one tradition or genre; they probe history, politics and audio culture: Resisting established frameworks for presenting and creating music; each work is crafted towards its’ setting; adapted and nuanced for each specific invitation.
Raw, elemental and poignant, my performances often feature flailing-axes, sweat, salt and sawdust, and 2000 hexagonal-shards of micro-tuned steel; cascading to the floor in resonant, shimmering joy.
https://hackpoetsguild.com/