Snow at Clod Ensemble Studios, March 2023

29th, 30th and 31st March at Clod Ensemble Studios.

Performance length approximately twenty-five minutes.

What was there before the snow fell?

Snow, the immersive cross-disciplinary experience from Clod Ensemble, returns for its first public showings in six years between 29th-31st March. Fusing unique staging with soaring choral music and poetic storytelling, this performance installation is a bracing demonstration of the genre-averse approach which makes Clod Ensemble one of the UK’s leading performance companies.

Much of Snow hangs on the unmistakable voice of Peggy Shaw, a legendary figure on the New York City art scene and a founding member of both the performance troupe Split Britches and the seminal avant-garde venue/collective WOW Café Theatre. Delivering text written by herself and Clod Ensemble’s co-artistic director Suzy Willson, Shaw moves back and forth between a lyrical spoken style and hushed, incantatory singing.

The text is a haunted palace of memory, with the narrator’s past, present and future collapsing in the wake of an unnamed betrayal. Words and music unlock the world of a traveller who, finding themselves thrown into darkness under the snow, searches for a reconciliation with the ghosts that haunt them.

Accompanying Shaw’s words is a virtuoso composition from Clod Ensemble’s co-artistic director Paul Clark. Stormy choral arrangements do battle with jagged percussion; the playing of Yukihiro Isso, a Noh flautist who has collaborated with jazz legends like Cecil Taylor and Evan Parker and who comes from a family dynasty of Noh players dating back to the 16th Century, struggles to take flight amidst electronic warp and weft.

This is a chance to experience a unique sound and light piece in the intimate, welcoming surroundings of Clod Ensemble Studios on Greenwich Peninsula.

There will be two showings of Snow each evening of the run. Those with tickets to the 8.30pm showing on Thursday 30th March will be able to attend a Question & Answer session with Willson and Clark after the performance. A bar will be available until 10pm every evening.

Snow Teaser Trailer from Clod Ensemble on Vimeo.