James Weeks - Blue Hours (2025)

Get up early and join GBSR Duo for a unique event experiencing James Weeks’s meditative new work for piano, percussion and sine tones, performed against the background of the dawning light. Feel free to bring your own cushion for added comfort!

This new 3.5 hour musical landscape from James Weeks, named after the period just before sunrise when blue wavelengths from the sun's light dominate the visible spectrum, presents the opportunity for a unique concert experience. Presented during dawn at Newton Dee's Phoenix Centre, the overlaid percussion, piano and electronic layers present a developing series of complex resonances and textures for meditative and concentrated examination.

A performance that begins in the darkness of night but ends in daylight, Blue Hours takes its original inspiration from the canonical hours that divide the monastic day; but more broadly from the commonality of devotional rituals across religions and cultures, whether in rising for early prayer, pausing for meditation and reflection or in gathering to listen to music.

Here the communal focus is the precise and magical sonorities of James Weeks' harmonies, an otherworldly environment in which intriguing sonic material is held up for contemplation from multiple angles, developing at the pace of unhurried thought.

A secular reflection on the significance of devotional rituals and their emotional gravity, Blue Hours promises to be a concert experience like no other.

Co-commissioned by sound.