Caos Harmonia and 111 Productions

Andi Spicer was born in England but has lived in South Africa for the past six years. He has been associated with the 111 group of South African painters, poets, musicians, video and performance artists in Johannesburg.

He has given numerous performances of his music at Gallery 111, including free improvisations with composer and artist James De Villiers. He has written five symphonies, four string quartets and a number of other large orchestral works including Anglo-Boer War and Virtually Ambient Shostakovitch. His music traveled with Transmigrations, an exhibition of South African art works that toured Mexico and the US and was also at the Pretoria Art Gallery in 2002. He formed Caos Harmonia, a group of musicians and singers to perform his works.

He uses electronics extensively in his music.

Caos Harmonia is the group of artists and musicians who gather and perform whenever Andi or one of the other members feel its time to create something new. For the present production the group consists of core members Andi Spicer, Andrew Toms and James de Villiers. Chris Edwards who performs vocals on Yes/No joins Caos Harmonia for the first time.

Left-right:

Andrew Toms

Chris Edwards

111 facilitates the coordination and technical aspects of work undertaken by Caos Harmonia as well as other cultural groups such as the Botsotso Jesters for whom the CD, Purple Light Mirror in the Mud was composed, arranged and produced.

111 started life as a gallery space (Gallery 111) and web site. Due to the technical nature of contemporary art practice 111 has become more involved with production aspects ranging from the staging of exhibitions and experimental music gigs to production and packaging design of CDs, layout and design and marketing material. email: 111@111.co.za

anglo boer war

A Gallery111 Caos Harmonia project consisting of a real space exhibition plus a Music CD and a multimedia CD Rom. Shown below is the cover of the CD . Now on sale at the gallery for R100 per copy

Andi Spicer of Caos Harmonia:

Someone once said that my music was collage. He meant it as a compliment - I took it as an insult. But it set me thinking. There is collage in the use of samples, but also in the styles and themes transplanted into the music. A great influence has been the Hungarian composer Ligeti, with his massive chords and shifting tone clouds. But Boulez and Lutoslawski along with Henze all have their place.

A recent discovery is the music of Russian composer Alfred Schnittke. He threw off the mantle of original style and in doing so created one of the most distinctive sounds (styles) of the 20th Century classical music genre. His senior, Dmitri Shostakovich, once said: 'Nothing is distilled water'.

In 'The Anglo Boer War - Cycle I'  there are many of my loves. Seek them out, they're not deeply hidden.

This is not a celebration of war; it's a requiem. It's also not a stand alone work of music, but a collaboration with and inspiration from South African artist James de Villiers. Experience the music and visuals together.

The String Quartet No.3 was written around the same time as Anglo-Boer War Cycle I and in many ways is an extension of the feelings and thoughts about the previous piece. It uses electronics and samples to enhance The Cubist Quartet's performance. It's a break in style from the previous quartets and perhaps points to future compositions.

Originally, The collage for three guitars was part of Anglo-Boer War, but didn't fit with any of the other movements. So I pulled it out on its own and will now form part of a series of guitar with electronics compositions which I'm presently working on. It uses themes and scales from the living Japanese composer Takemitsu who has written much beautiful music for guitar.

The Symphony No.1 is a real departure for me. It started as an exercise in writing for large orchestra and percussion and grew suddenly into a piece nearly 30 minutes long. Once again war and loss are the undercurrents of the work. It's bombastic and looks back a little but I tried to combine more romantic structures with dissonances. It grows from an attachment to the British composer Havegail Brian, who wrote huge symphonies with some of the largest orchestras ever seen. He also broke the movements into small sections and used themes, sometimes just for a few seconds before disregarding them, never to be heard again in the work. But as always I had in mind the compositions of Ligeti and Lutoslawski as well as Boulez. Perhaps their influence is more apparent in the Anglo-Boer War, with its extreme darkness, dissonances and stark percussion.

Andi Spicer,
Johannesburg, December 1999.