Composition update

I'm currently in the process of composing the music for my show Ditto which will be on in January next year. Following an exciting development week with my four musicians a couple of weeks ago I felt powered and energised about going into the composition process.Having five days with my creative team was really great because I learned about all the players' strengths in performance. I'm not going to say I learned about their weaknesses, but I did learn where some were more comfortable than others. For example, two of my musicians are very used to improvising, whereas the other two are more used to note-learning. This is a really interesting mix and will hopefully lead to quite an exciting balance of styles in the final performance.

I am inspired by many things when I'm composing this music. At the forefront of my mind is an interview I read with the British composer Rebecca Saunders. She, like myself, is very interested in silence and she talks of teasing threads of sound from the silence when starting a new piece.She looks at the blank manuscript paper and doesn't think she necessarily has to start at the top, rather she can allow the sound to organically evolve from out of the white blankness. I think this is a really poetic way of working and it's something I've been experimenting with myself.

I'm also really interested in blending various styles of music together and this is having a profound impact on the soundworld of Ditto. I had a niggling idea ages ago that there should be some Renaissance music in Ditto. I have no idea where this idea came from but I couldn't shift it so I'm just running with it! In a way I feel that it will be a great contrast to the stark, rhythmic soundworld of the rest of the piece. I also presented some Renaissance music to a group of children when they came to see some work during the November development on the piece. The children really liked the quality.

I'm inspired by contemporary composers who blur boundaries between various styles of music. Works like Asyla by Thomas Ades - with its rave-influenced heavy beats and repetitive melodies, and Ayre by Osvaldo Golijov - with its frantic switching between operatic and pop vocal styles are really exciting. I'd quite like for Ditto to take the audience by surprise - to lull them into a false sense of security with its blankent of bleak silence, only to jolt them with loud outbreaks of noise and rhythm.

Here is a link to the third movement of Thomas Ades's Asyla:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRQr33PdyiQ

Here is a link to a piece by Rebecca Saunders called Traces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QMzcHuNmbc

And here is a link to a song from Osvaldo Golijov's Ayre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6SZ-KGVQvI

Anmut

Take Off

Last week I attended the Take Off children's theatre festival in Darlington. The festival is the largest showcase of children's work in England so it was great to be able to attend, see some work and make new connections. The festival was only two days long but I still managed to pack in 8 shows, some discussions and plenty of networking opportunities.
In terms of shows there were two highlights for me. First was Sunflowers and Sheds by M6 Theatre Company - a really lovely tale of friendship set on an allotment. Frank is an older gentleman who has just lost his friend. He enjoys sitting in the sun at his allotment reading postcards from his daughter and grandson in Australia. A new owner of the allotment next door, Russian lady Isabella, disrupts Frank's peace however. Eventually these two strike up an unlikely friendship. I thought there was a real charm about the piece with some lovely performances and lots to think about for a young audience: friendship, apologising for mistakes, loneliness, and growing your own veg!

My second highlight was getting to see the wonderful White by Catherine Wheels once again. The show has become such a hot ticket since I saw it on its original run at the fringe. So much so that the venue was overfull and people were having to stand. The show has really matured since I saw it. The performances by Andy Manley and Ian Cameron are really slick and their chemistry has developed. The two are so funny to watch and the children in the audience were chuckling with delight. I urge anyone with wee ones to try to catch this show on tour or when it lands at macrobert for the run up to Christmas.

Ditto development week

Last week I was working in North Edinburgh Arts Centre with my creative team on Ditto. This is the show I am creating with support from Imaginate, to be staged in January next year. Myself and the four musicians (Katy Barry - voice, Fran Pybus - clarinet, Chris Barclay - trombone, and Roy Shearer - percussion) worked in studio 1 of the arts centre to explore the theme for the piece: the spaces between sounds. As you can imagine from such an abstract theme, we ended up creating some fairly wild material and worked really hard to explore possible options of how to translate the theme into sound, music and imagery. A lot of the process involved improvisation. Some of the musicians were used to working in this way while some were less used to not having notes on a page in front of them. I was keen to do a lot of improvisation this week as I knew it would take us into directions I hadn't foreseen. Sometimes this approach didn't really work, but it usually wielded some interesting debate if not great material.

The week was a steep learning curve for me and the team. I wanted to see how confidently they were prepared to move around the space (with and without instruments) and was pleased to see that they all enjoyed the freedom this gave them as musicians. I think we all learned very quickly how the team dynamic was going to work - this was really important as many of the team did not know each other. I also learned how important it is as a composer/director that, even when working with improvisation, it is important to set parameters. This will carry forward into the performance in January too. Whilst much of the music will be composed by myself, I think it's important that we also have some of the joyful spontaneity that can only come from improvisation as part of the performance too. It is therefore my role as the composer to set up how and when this can happen.

On Thursday we were lucky enough to be able to work in the theatre space. This is where the first performances of Ditto will take place so it was great for the team to be able to get used to this space. It's amazing how large it looked at first, but as soon as four musicians with music stands, instrument stands, instruments etc fill the space it became clear that the design for the show (by Kate Temple) will have to incorporate these elements - rather than hide these elements, they can become an important honest feature of the show. One early design thought Kate has had is to have lots of music stands in the space - almost like a forest, with some in their true form, others folded up in sculptural forms and some piled up at the back, as if in a music stand graveyard. I really like this idea as it seems to suggest a visual representation of the music I wish to create: this idea of sounds being created, manipulated, before being discarded for something new; an endless cycle in time and space.

We were also lucky to have some artists/colleagues attend a short sharing of material on the Thursday. This was a great opportunity to present some of the ideas for the piece. We quickly realised what could work (fights over music stands, Renaissance music as a sharp contrast to stark, abstract minimalism, music which aided each individual audience member to have their own imaginative thoughts/narratives in their head whilst listening), and what didn't work so well (an improvisation exercise with too few parameters - no parameters for duration, material which suggested character too early on as this lead the audience to believe these characters would be maintained throughout the sharing). We received some great feedback form the crowd and I hope all are excited to see how the piece progresses.

Finally on Friday we carried out another sharing, this time for a group of primary 5/6 from a local school. In this sharing we trimmed down our presented material. We also presented stuff that had definite question marks over them:

Would children understand the music stand game (where the musicians set up conflicting rules about some assembled music stands) if this was being carried out as they entered the space? Also would the children be able to settle if something active was going on?

- I was pleased that the children did settle quickly. In fact I think it helped them to get really excited about the upcoming performance. Also, the children (when later questioned) had understood what was happening. One girl said, "it's like they had fallen out and when they started playing the music they had to work together to become friends again."

The musicians then stood stationary without making sound for as long as possible. I had asked the teacher not to interfere with what the children did. This was fascinating. There were the inevitable giggles and chatting. But there were also a few shhhh's and some children looking on intently, eager to see what would happen. A few children moved about a lot, either restlessly or to get in a comfier position - it was as if they knew they were in this for the long haul so had to lie down to see how it would pan out! My favourite quote came from a wee boy as the musicians finally started to move: "I'm glad that's over so I know I'm not going crazy!" I indicated for the musicians to move on from this silence at 5" 08" - a pretty incredible time and one that pails John Cage's paltry 4' 33" into insignificance! Of course, in the performance I want to play with this prolonged silence but I think it will be a lot shorter and there will be suggestions of things to happen - small movements, isolated sounds/notes - just to keep the audience intrigued and inquisitive!

One final task that I wanted to carry out was to see whether children could be brought from the audience to conduct the musicians and whether this would still feel performative.

- This worked really well. The children were quick to learn the taught conducting moves (some children were practising in the audience). It was great as it helped to change the character of the music too. Quick stops and starts, louder and softer dynamics, and staccato (short) and legato (smooth) all helped to shape the slowly-becoming-familiar material into something new and unique each time. The great thing about all of this was that it also felt like part of the performance. I think this could be used as a unique tool to revive the audience in the inevitable period about two thirds of the way through the show when, even if it's the greatest thing they've ever seen, bums start to get a wee bit restless!

A great week and I can't wait to carry on with the composition. Roll on January!!

Autumn Exchange

Well done to all who were involved in the programming, hosting, performing and presenting at this year's Autumn Exchange. This mini festival is a showcase of work for children in Scotland and the quality of work was fantastically high. There were a good number of tour-ready shows plus some discussions and a few works-in-progress. Some personal highlights, and things to look out for in the future were:

The Monster in the Hall by TAG. Brilliant, fast-paced show for teenagers. It was funny, well performed, really slick direction and a great way to kick off the festival.

Cloud Man by Ailie Cohen. A beautiful wee show for young ones that stylishly incorporated performance, visual theatre and puppetry. Plus it had some great music.

Paperbelle by Frozen Charlotte. A wee gem of a show that started off like a blank canvas and ended up being a joyful celebration of colour.

Lots of other things to remember and be inspired by. Well done to all involved!

The Farmer's Cheese in South Africa

I am just back from a wonderful trip to South Africa where I was performing in the fantastic children's show The Farmer's Cheese. This show has music composed by Oliver Searle, especially for children who wear cochlear ear implants. We have been performing the show on/off for over a year around the UK but this was our first excursion overseas. The show is funded by Med-el, a company who produce these implants, and in South Africa we performed the show for children, many of whom were cochlear users.
The show was fantastically popular with the kids. They really responded well to the music and loved the silly antics from the two performers, Clare McGarry and Martin O' Connor. We even had to sign some books at the end of one performance which made me feel a bit like a celebrity!

And some more photos!

Some photos

Hello. I just received some fantastic photos of my show Anmut from its designer Kate Temple.
I've also just completed an application to do the show at the Sound Thought festival in February next year so fingers crossed!

After Anmut

Last week was very busy and successful due to my show at Arches Live. We began to install our technical on the Sunday, Monday was our company get-in and technical rehearsal and then we performed Anmut on the Tuesday and Wednesday.
The show was a huge success! I was quite worried during the first performance as the audience were as still and focused as Katy and I were on the stage. There was therefore no way of being able to judge how well the piece was being received. Interestingly on both nights we received a round of applause - at the end of the show the performers go back to pacing the room (as they did at the beginning of the show), the house lights come up and the door is opened for the audience to exit. In other words, there is no clear end to the show and no bow for the performers. However, I'm secretly quite happy we got applause each night as it showed that the audience really wanted to acknowledge their feelings.
I've also had great comments from colleagues, friends and family. LJ and Jackie from the arches were both really pleased with the piece and we got some great reviews from Mary Brennan in The Herald and Joyce McMillan in The Scotsman. See below:

http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/Theatre-reviews-Coma--Anmut.6548145.jp
http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/colourful-food-for-thought-1.1057152

It's now on to full concentration mode for Ditto for me. However, as I had such a positive response to Anmut, I'm hopeful that it won't be the end of the road for this piece. If you missed it - hopefully it will be on again very soon!

Trips, shows and workshops

Lots going on just now but I thought it would be useful to remember to fill in the blog.

I have two very different trips coming up soon. First up is South Africa! Still can't really believe I'm going somewhere I've always dreamed of going, but indeed I am in mid-October. It's with a children's show The Farmer's Cheese which I have been playing cello in for the last year. So far we have taken the show to Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and Southampton. South Africa therefore feels like a whole other kettle of fish! The show has been written for children with hearing impairments who wear cochlear implants, and it tells the story of a poor farmer who has his cheese stolen by a hungry wee mouse. The music was written by Oliver Searle and the other musicians are from the contemporary music ensemble, Symposia. The actors are Clare McGarry and Martin O' Connor. It's great fun and I can't wait!
The other trip I have coming up is to the Takeoff children's theatre festival in Darlington. I'll be heading there with Tony from Imaginate and I think it's going to be a good opportunity for me to market my upcoming show Ditto, and also myself. As my residency is approaching the latter stages (shhhhhhh!) I am beginning to think about what comes next. So this festival should give me an insight into the world of children's theatre outside Scotland.

All of next week I'm working in Bathgate as part of a local music festival. I have been contracted to provide several nursery/early primary music sessions throughout many schools in the area. I'm really looking forward to it and I always enjoy the challenge of working with such young children. They're such a brutally honest audience and you have to keep changing tempo and direction to keep them entertained. Having said that, it should be great fun. I plan to take my cello and melodica and to do some performances of songs whilst also using stories to enable group music-making.

Anmut is approaching very quickly. This is my show for Arches Live. I have been working really hard on it as there are so many elements to the piece. Although it is relatively short - 30 mins - and will have quite a stark aesthetic it is an extremely complex, technical piece. Myself and Katy (the two performers) will be singing live with pre-recorded singing. There is also live and pre-recorded spoken text, projection, lighting, up to 8 different microphones (standing, carried and hung) plus lots of design elements. However it is all coming together. I have recorded all the singing and text, we have found our costumes (after much searching!), and are rehearsing in our space, the playroom, at the weekend. I hope you can all make it.
http://www.thearches.co.uk/Greg-Sinclair-Anmut.htm

Anmut takes shape

My show for Arches Live, Anmut, is really taking shape and coming together. I had a technical meeting this morning with Will from the arches and it has really helped me to see how it will all come together. My performer Katy and designer Kate came to see the space yesterday and it got us very excited. We will be performing in the playroom space which is great as it is enclosed so it feels very intimate. It also has a black wall at the back which will be great for the projections we plan to use in the performance.

After a very long search I also today found myself a crucial item of costume for the show. Good old Mr Ben's vintage shop in Glasgow for being the only place on Earth (or so it would seem) that stocked this mystery item...!

We are still on the lookout for a few things though:

a large sheet of glass.
a skeleton (like the ones you would see in an anatomy classroom)
a tuning fork

...so if anyone reading this has one of the above please let me know!

I've almost finished the composition and text of the piece too. It's been quite a complicated thing to work on for several reasons:
1. I've had to grapple with gender politics.
2. I've had to compose both live and pre-recorded elements so the timing has been crucial.

As I'm creating a piece where the characters are known only as "the man" and "the woman", and due to the fact the piece is exploring the differences in tonal quality between male and female voices, it's been quite tricky to make sure I don't fall into gender stereotyping. Of course, by and large, male and female voices operate in much the same way. However there are some major differences and its been quite interesting to learn about these. I hope it will be an interesting experience for the audience. I think the mood of the piece will be quite odd, creepy yet beautiful and a little bit sexual!

The arches live information can be found on the arches website. Here's a link to the page about my show:
http://www.thearches.co.uk/Greg-Sinclair-Anmut.htm

D - I -T -T -O

Plans are coming together for my show Ditto. I have now secured two partner venues who will present performances. First up is North Edinburgh Arts Centre where the show will have its world premiere (!) on 18th January 2011. Yes! I plan to do 2 or 3 performances at NEAC before transferring to the Traverse, Edinburgh to do 3 more performances, 1 of which will be a public performance on Saturday 22nd. I'm so excited as both of these venues are really great spaces that will suit what I want to achieve from Ditto and the staff have all been very supportive.
On the creative side I've started shaping out the structure of the composition. I've been reviewing the footage that I shot in the 3 Edinburgh primary schools during the research stage and this has been a really useful reminder of what worked well (and what didn't work so well). I also think that now I know the spaces that Ditto will be in I can start to picture the visual aesthetic of the show.

At the same time I'm working on my show for Arches Live, Anmut. I've been doing a lot of research into the physiology of singing: exploring all the tiny physical and emotional factors involved in the body and the mind as it prepares to sing, as it's singing, and after it has stopped singing. I intend for the show to be an exploration of one tiny moment, spaced out over half an hour so that each tiny thing can be examined. I'm having to think quite poetically to get myself out of textbook language and into something more palatable and beautiful, whilst still having that sense of wonder that we get when you learn something new and fascinating. And of course there's all the notes to compose too....!

Arches Live

I'm really excited to tell you that I have been selected to take part in this year's Arches Live festival in September. My show Anmut actually began life at the Imaginate festival this year as part of the Fringe Event for Families (see post below). In that very short performance I and another performer, Katy Barry, took on the role of collectors. We told our small audiences of young folk that we liked to collect toy animals and favourite words. The piece was then a song comprised of people's favourite words. The design by Kate Temple incorporated brightly painted toy animals.
Katy and Kate will both be working with me again on this new version. It's actually not going to be too similar to the original. For starters, it's a piece for adults. However I am keen to explore some things which I will later employ in the composition and devising of my show Ditto (for 8+).
The festival runs from 16th - 26th September. Our show will be on Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd at 8.15pm. Hope to see you there!

A man and a woman pace the room, unaware of each other’s existence. An intake of breath, a slight opening of the mouth, a propulsion of air; the performers know how to begin. Their sounds coalesce and they move towards their duet. But are they able to sustain their song when the confidence of their actions spills into doubts of how they arrived at this point?

Pre-schoolers and teenagers

I have recently completed a project for BBC Radio Scotland. I was commissioned to create a "soundstory" for pre-school children (3-5 years) as a slight experiment to see whether children in this age range could listen to and understand a story that was told only though sound and music. My first thought was - of course they can! However it wasn't until I started working on the piece that I realised how tricky the task was. If you listen to the sound of something in isolation (i.e. without any visual clues as to the source or nature of the sound) then it can become very abstract. I also found it tricky to fully immerse myself in the understanding of a 3-5 year old - what sounds would I recognise or be relevant to me but wouldn't be identifiable or meaningful to a child?
I therefore set out to make a piece that was, on the surface, quite simple. Nothing too fantastical, just a story that a 3 year old could relate to or understand. I also wanted to create a piece about walking. At 3 it's not that long since you learned to walk; and at 5 I remember personal experiences where walking was so important such as walking to school for the first time. It tells the story of a day in the life of a man. He wakes up in the morning, gets ready to go for a walk in the woods. On his walk he encounters a dog and a horse and he also has to jump across a river. When he gets home he is very tired and heads off to bed.
The piece will be available soon as a podcast on the BBC website so I'll let you know when you can hear it.

During my time with Imaginate I've been focused on creating work for children up to the age of about 12. However I am really interested in work for teenagers and have been very inspired by many companies that create work for them - especially work coming from Belgium and Holland which uses teenagers to speak directly to their target audience. Companies like Ontroerend Goed, Kopergietery, Jan etc are all making really exciting work for and with young people. I've been thinking about this practice recently and was reminded of a beautiful work by the American composer Marina Rosenfeld called Teenage Lontano. Her piece is based on the famous piece Lontano by Gyorgy Ligeti - famously one of the most complex pieces of music from the 20th century due to its overlapping layers of polyphony. The original sounds like a slow-moving mass of sound; at once spiritual, haunting, ethereal, beautiful and sinister. Rosenfeld transcribed by ear all the parts of the piece - thus making a new version. She then assigned individual notes of this to solo performers - teenagers. These teenagers listen to their notes on ipods and sing what they hear. It's therefore possible for them to sing a very complex, layered piece of music withoug getting lost. The use of the ipod was very importnat to Rosenfeld as she sees it as a culturally significant marker of our times, especially for young people. Ipods are a statement to wear but they also highlight the individuality of the listener - every person listening to their own music. I think it's a significant statment about how we can view teenagers - collectively or as individuals. The results of the piece are very beautiful.

I've included video links below of the Marina Ronsefeld piece - Teenage Lontano:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_te6SpKniM
and the Gyorgy Ligeti piece - Lontano:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb6oSNSz35A&feature=related

Meep and Moop

Hi! I've been very busy for the past four weeks doing a tour of my show for 3-5 year olds, Meep and Moop. This show has been devised by myself and Clare McGarry and has been directed by Guy Hollands from TAG. The short tour has been taking in several nurseries throughout the Glasgow area including a couple of venues for public performances.
The show tells the story of two loveable meerkats who wake up in the morning and begin their usual routine of capering about! They play a game of hide and seek, have a picnic and discover their musical instruments (a cello and a flute) which they then use to play music for the young audience. All this is disrupted however by a scary bird flying over head and Meep and Moop run for cover. Eventually, after the bird has appeared several times, they realise that they have to stand up for themselves and they chase the bird away, thus conquering their fears.
The show has been great fun to do and it has been going down really well with the audiences. It's great fun to perform although very tiring as we are wearing full fur outfits and there's a lot of jumping about!
Read this review by Mary Brennan from The herald:
"http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/meep-and-moop-whiteinch-nursery-school-glasgow-1.1033241"
We also just received a great review from Mark Brown in the Sunday Herald who praised our superb performances. Unfortunately it isn't online...

Anmut

As part of this year's Imaginate Festival there was a fringe event for families at the weekend. 6 short artist-led interventions happened in the Traverse bar and I was one of the artists to present a piece. My piece is called Anmut, which is German for "to have grace". The piece was composed for myself and a female singer, Katy Barry, to perform and it was designed by Kate Temple.

It was great to work with Katy and Kate as both will be involved in my show Ditto later in my residency. Activities like this give us opportunity to experiment and try out ideas of presentation for children. After a slightly shaky start where some children were slightly frightened by the stark intimacy of the piece we realised that by softening the performance style slightly the piece soon became a hit for children, families and some big kids- delegates, artists etc!

There are two collectors. One is a man, The other is a woman. They really like to collect different things. Right now they're into collecting post-it notes, toy animals and favourite words.

Imaginate Festival

The Imaginate Festival! Wow it already seems like it was a long time ago! Our 21st annual festival of children's shows was a great success and it was exciting for me to be an active part of it all this year. I was fortunate to see most of the shows and I also had a couple of great opportunities to talk about my work as artist in residence with Imaginate.

All the shows I saw were great but a few really stand out for me. I loved the Dutch dance show Madcap. Three female dancers performed a very original and comic piece of contemporary dance that was, well, madcap! There was dancing with eggs, some quirky choreography and a really fabulous moment where a storm hit the stage and the whole dance mat filled with "wind" which then rippled as the dancers performed on it. The kids in the audience were quite happy to commentate on the show throughout which never fails to amuse me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMHg1nECjwQ

Two shows from Germany at North Edinburgh Arts Centre were brilliant. Rawums and Woodbeat were both for infants and were highly original. Rawums explored gravity in a comic yet poetic way by using floating hats, flying houses, floating feathers and falling beanbags. At one particularly great moment the male performer blows the feather of his hand and then tries to do the same withe beanbag - it of course stubbornly stays put. One wee boy in the audience said out loud, "well that was never going to work, it's too heavy." There is a clip of Rawums here if you start the clip at about 5' 14":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Fdim7nrs4

Woodbeat was a show that did exactly what it said on the tin. It was a rhythmic show where everything was made out of wood. One performer busied himself with lots of exciting wooden percussion instruments while the other man played with lovely wooden puppets or made puppets live on stage out of blocks of wood. I loved at the end of the show when some pathways through the sawdust were created for the infants to enter the performance area and explore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAho3gDrquQ

Of the Scottish shows on offer I had two stand out favourites. The first was a series of half-hour plays called Sense by Frozen Charlotte theatre company. Each of these piece takes one of the senses as a starting point to explore teenage relationships. The two-handers were presented as a 2-part show and a 3-part show and I found them all to be challenging yet thought-provoking theatre. The writing is really beautiful. Even in Skin, one of the performers describes her self-harm in such a beautiful way that the audience become very empathetic to the character and to the issues surrounding this taboo. The acting was exemplary throughout.

My favourite show of the festival was Cinderella by Shona Reppe. It's a quirky take on the familiar story that had the audience crying with laughter. Cinderella is a puppet, the ugly sister a pair of bejewelled gloves, the father simply a series of footsteps and the Fairy Godmother plaed by Shona hersle. It wa this endless inventiveness that had the audience gripped.
http://www.shonareppepuppets.co.uk/shonareppepuppets/Home.html

Denmark

It's been a busy period so I haven't had a chance to update my blog for a while. Hereafter therefore follows a brief and half-forgotten account of my trip to the Danish Children's Theatre Festival in April. This year the festival was held in the port city of Esbjerg on the west coast. And I'm not even going to mention about the ash cloud-induced trek through Germany on trains to get home three days late!

It was my first time attending the legendary festival and nothing can really prepare you for the scale of it all. There are hundreds of shows on and knowing what to go and see is as tricky as trying to figure out how and when to see the things you do want to see. During the week the performances take place throughout schools and nurseries. You make your own way to see these, which involves negotiating timetables and taxis. My favourite show from this period was Mak Vaerk (Botch Up) by Teater Refleksion. This was a really lovely little box (well cart) of tricks where one female performer told short stories accompanied by lots of magical tricks and gizmos from her cart. There was a hat that had some paper figures dancing around the rim and a very funny dance at the end where the performer came out with 4 legs!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q10Ld_8nP2w

We also got to see the fantastic 2-Dimensional Life Of Her by Fleur-Elise Noble. I had wanted to see this show at this year's New Territories festival in Glasgow but missed it so it was great to see it programmed here. Fleur is Australian and was one of only two international companies to present at the festival. The show is an exciting and original blend of live performance, projection, puppetry and animation - quite hard to describe, and quite hard to forget. Have a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46d8WVIPI5c

I also saw two shows by a very exciting company called Secret Hotel. They were very different performances. The first was called In The Field and was a performance lecture about how we live as human beings, how we are drawn to make connections either with people or geography and how varied our existences on Earth are depending on where we live. The show invloved the audience going for a walk holding hands, making a society out of cardboard houses with magical glowing lights, projections, concepts of time, and soup!
The other performance by this comapny was Fall Fall She Fell, a physical theatre piece about death. The male performer told the audienice about the lives of some people and how they were all connected. The people were represented by glass jars of liquid that had effervescent pellets dropped into them to bring their spirit alive as we heard about thier life. The interesting thing about this show (and actually also for In The Field) was that the company present the show for different age groups: 8+, 13+, and adult. I think this is an interesting way to increse your audience just by making some slight alterations. However perhaps it doesn't always work as the 8 year olds in my performance of FFSF seemed utterly baffled as the adult "artist" crowd laughed knowlingly at the abstract movement and complex themes. Definitely one to ponder over throughout the rest of my residency. Here is the companies website which includes some video clips:
http://secret.tekiela.dk/secret-hotel/?lang=en

Soundsuits

Just thought I'd share this video with you. I read about this artist, Nick Cave - no not him!, a few weeks ago and was intrigued by his work. He creates soundsuits - literally suits that make sounds as you move in them. They're a cross between sculpture, costume and composition and I like them very much!
I was just watching some Nick Cave youtube clips with my visual artist friend Kate Temple. Kate will be designing my Imaginate show, Ditto and so we had a look at these to see if there was any interest for us. Kate was also intrigued by the costume design from the Theatergroep Max show Toneel (see url below from the Tweetakt festival post). So it looks like my musicians may all be wearing costumes that are a combination of shellsuits and twigs in Ditto. You have been warned!


I'm also busy working on a short composition to be performed at this year's Imaginate festival. I'm composing a short piece to be sung by myself and Katy Barry (also a Ditto collaborator). The piece is based on people's favourite words. So far I have included "anmut" which is German for to have grace, "textballonetje" which is Dutch for a wee speech bubble and miaow which is, well the noise a cat makes! Kate Temple is also designing this piece for me. It is to be performed in one of the booths in the Traverse bar on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th May. I think it's going to be an exploration of oddness and I'm quite happy about it not necessarily "making sense" to the audience. So there!

Happy Day des Enfants

Last weekend I was lucky to attend a really exciting music festival for children in the very grand opera house in Lille, northern France. The festival, Happy Day des Enfants, was organised by the Belgian company Oorsmeer and it focused on bringing dynamic, interesting music performances and installations to a young audience.
All the events took place in the beautiful opera house and every space was utilised. In fact the first performances I saw were all in dressing rooms. One of these involved a pianist and guitarist who played in time with a model train set. As the train moved round in a circle it hit a piece of paper off the side of some lego buildings. The lego blocks were linked to contact mics so the train produced some controlled feedback which the musicians then responded to melodically and rhythmically. It was really interesting and unique.
There was an ongoing installation throughtout the day called Bambouphones. This huge bamboo instrument was a big hit with the audience, young and old, as it offered a range of squeaks and honks which changed throughout the day.
http://www.hansvankoolwijk.nl/index.html
There were several other really interesting events: a lovely, quiet performance on accordion by Anne Niepold, a rocking performance from the Balaxy Orchestra and a very interesting performance by a group who played some glass instruments created by Charlotte Van Wouwe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KT2mwEHNEw
It was a really great day in a very beautiful setting!

Tweetakt

I'm just back from the Tweetakt international children's theatre festival in Utrecht, Holland. It was a really rewarding experience as the quality of work was very high. I was there for the first two and a half days and managed to fit in twelve performances.

On day one we saw two very contrasting performances by the always-exciting Theatergroep Max. First up was Help, a fantastic play about the formation of the Beatles. It was a really fast-paced story with some superb live music and excellent acting from all the performers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHC5L55hcMg
We then had to rush off to see another performance by TG Max called Toneel. This show, set in a school gym hall, was in stark contrast to Help. It was a thoroughly original and bizarre piece of physical/music theatre in which five performers carry out a boring movement sequence before it all starts to go wrong. Amidst the madness of this show there was a moment of real beauty where all the lights went down and 20-30 mobile phones, stuck on the walls of the hall, all lit up one after the other and played a lovely twinkly tune!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60STE66hGIA

Another great show was Under The Influence by the Belgian company Ontoerend Goed. Again, I'm a fan of their work but I knew how controversial and dangerous they could be so was slightly apprehesive about attending a show set at a flat party where people are 'under the influence' of drugs. It's a high-octane assault on the senses - you're physically there with the performers as they dance, pass round beer and joints (not lit!), stripp off, vomit and, at one particularly harrowing moment, have seizures... At the end of the party the audience are led off to different places by the cast; I ended up in a dressing room listening to a girl chat in Dutch for 20 minutes - very surreal!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AV1nvUBKPs

On the second day we saw two shows which explored gender issues. Gentlemen was a piece performed by two androgynous female performers set in a clothes shop. The perfomers tackled the notion that men/boys don't have to wear only male clothing and that girls/women don't only have to wear female clothing. At the centre of this interesting subject area were two astounding performances. A performance in the evening was You Can Have None, a piece performed by a solo female student. She was dressed as a man and taunted the audience with her drill! It was a funny, clever piece of live art for a teenage/adult audience.

Strange Days, Indeed was my favourite piece of dance from the weekend. The young Basel company performed a piece which explored friendship, independence and unity. The four female dancers and one male dancer performed a highly physical piece involving phones hanging from the ceiling, lots of clothes swapping, and excerpts of real-life stories from a Basel newspaper. It was fun and many moments from the show have really resonated with me. The piece was choreographed by Ives Thuwis who was co-creator of Rennen, the great dance piece I saw in Nuremberg.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBXkao-iej4

I think my favourite show of the festival though was another student piece called Krampig (Crampy). This short little show was a real treat. It was about a very tall man living in a very small house. He struggles to even turn around. Things become even more cramped when his girlfriend comes to visit. It was a very warm and romantic piece that had adults and children laughing out loud.

Silence

And so we come to the final workshop in my schools listening project. I was really sad to see it come to an end as it's been a hugely rewarding process for me and (I like to think) for the pupils as well. The schools have all been really accommodating and the kids have been enthusiastic, interested, interesting, stimulating, inquisitive, questioning, intelligent, surprising, enlightening, creative, responsive and good fun!

The final workshop was something that I was eager to get to right from the start of the project. I always knew I wanted to push the kids to the very edge of musical understanding and the best way to do this is to make them think about silence. As a musician I have always been interested in the thoughts and teachings of John Cage and so it seemed logical for this to be the starting point in the workshop. We discussed his famous 4' 33" which is, of course, 4' 33" of "silence". I told them about the very first performance and that the audience had reacted with curiosity and then anger. It's really surprising that even now, almost 60 years after that performance that it still has the power to confuse and divide opinion and the reactions of the participants highlighted this. Just speaking about the piece caused confusion and a divide of opinions. My favourite very astute comment came from a girl at Preston Street who made the realisation that since the piece is intended to draw the listener's ear to the sounds of the surrounding environment "the silence is the music" - a beautiful statement that I think John Cage would have been proud of. We then sat in silence for a minute (although one group at Dalry hilariously opted to sit in silence for 1' 33" in homage to Cage!). When I asked the kids to do this exercise at the start of the project the kids realised that there were sounds that could not be quieted and that there would always be sound. Watching the kids performing a minute's silence after hearing about 4' 33" seemed to go deeper than this. You could feel their questioning; their search for silence - it was really electrifying.

We then listened to a piece by Cage's friend Morton Feldman - Projection 1. This piece is one of Feldman's graphic score compositions, where choices are to be made by the performer/s with regards to the performance of the piece. I chose this piece to play to the groups as Feldman's use of silence is extraordinary. In much of his music solitary notes or chords are heard in isolation, the surrounding silence/spaces full of the resonance of what has come before and the anticipation of what is coming next. I was honest with the kids and told them that the music is very challenging to listen to but close listening would be fruitful. Having said that the piece did cause some squirming as the kids lost interest. Some children listened patiently but were full of questions by the end. For anyone who listens to this music it is possible to ask "why that sound?" "and why that sound, there?" The answer is, I guess, why not? Silence is used to give sparkling quality to the most simple of sounds. Isolation lends them a ghostly quality that bewilders and amazes in equal measure.

We the listened to two pieces by Kotra and Zavoloka - Diminutive, and A Taste of Live Life. These Ukrainian artists create bristling electronic music that bridges the gap between dance music and experimental noise. I chose these two tracks as they encompass silence in very different ways. In Diminutive familiarity is built up through a repetitive dance beat before a huge gap after about 40 seconds. The beats then continue and grow. Each group reacted to the gap in the same way - a questioning look to me "is that it?". Some children even asked that question out loud. All laughed when the beats resumed. In A Taste Of Live Life silences are fragmented and broken up around eclectic electronic bleeps and squeaks. This piece caused some hilarious robotic dancing from the kids!

We then listened to another piece by Morton Feldman - The Straits of Magellan. As they listened the kids drew. As the music is so abstract I found a huge variety in the drawings produced. Some kids resorted to drawing the instruments they could hear - piano, horns, a guitar. One of my favourite drawings was of a tree with a bird squawking out a scrambled pattern of noise and a man standing on top of the tree with a bag of money! Unfortunately the girl who drew it didn't want to talk about it but in a way it's quite nice for it to remain a curious mystery!

The final piece we listened to was a version of I Loves You Porgy by Gershwin. This version was played on piano by Ran Blake and it doesn't so much use silence as suggest a sense of space through the rubato elongation of chords. It was a lovely jazzy way to finish the workshops.

At the end I explained to the kids that I would see them in a few weeks time as I will be sending out questionnaires for the kids to fill in and will then come to collect them. At the start of the process I asked the kids to fill in questionnaires to give me an overview of their perception and understanding of music. The final questionnaires will help me to see any changes in thought for individual kids over the course of the workshops.

Clarinet Workshop

Hello! So the aim of my seventh workshop in my schools listening project was to introduce the pupils to the sounds of the clarinet. I was working with a friend of mine, the clarinetist Fran Pybus. As always, I delivered a workshop on Tuesday at Dalry Primary and Wednesday at Preston Street Primary.

Fran began by playing a piece on her clarinet to introduce the pupils to the sound. In every group the pupils sat very still and with focused attention. They really fell under the spell of the beautiful tone of the instrument. In contrast to the beautifully melodic Romance that Fran played, I then asked her to play an improvisation exploring some of the stranger sounds that can be produced by a clarinet. We heard trills in various registers, glissandi (slides) in the highest register which sounded like shrieks, overblowing (literally when Fran blows too much air through the instrument and achieves a multiphonic, intense sound), slap tonguing (which produces a percussive sound) and key slapping. These odd sounds were all very intriguing and the pupils enjoyed reacting to each new sound. We then explored some of these sounds in more detail and the pupils used their sound diaries to describe individual sounds.

We then had a discussion about proximity and what effect this can have on the listening experience. Even before exploring it in more detail most kids were able to realise that being in close proximity to an instrument would affect the volume and tone of the sound. We then conducted some experiments to explore this:

1. Fran played a crescendo and diminuendo (got louder and quieter) on a fixed pitch
2. Fran played a fixed pitch, fixed volume and walked past us
3. Fran played a fixed pitch, fixed volume as we walked past her.

It was interesting to note that at Preston Street primary it was easier to hear differences in volume in these last two experiments than at Dalry.

We then tried some of the following (some of which were suggested by pupils):

1. Fran played a fixed pitch, fixed volume whilst turning around on the spot
2. Fran played a fixed pitch, fixed volume whilst turning around on the spot and with one pupil turning around at the same time. (result - a changing volume for most of the audience, a fixed volume for the individual pupil)
3. Fran played a fixed pitch, fixed volume whilst one pupil placed their hand against the bell of her instrument (result - a drop in volume and a slight lowering of pitch when the hand covered the hole)
4. Fran played a fixed pitch, fixed volume whilst standing outside the classroom
5. Fran played a fixed pitch, fixed volume whilst the class stood outside the classroom and Fran was inside.
6. Fran played a fixed pitch, fixed volume whilst spinning the bell of her clarinet in a circle (result - a surprising siren-like effect)
7. Fran standing on the opposite side of the room, playing a fixed pitch. She played a diminuendo as she walked towards us (result - the volume remained fairly constant but the tone changed)

Fran then played us a short improvisation on her bass clarinet. Some pupils thought it was a saxophone due to its shape. They all enjoyed listening to how deep the instrument could go.

The last thing we tried was to create a group composition exploring proximity. The class decided on four "performance situations" where they had to pick where Fran performed, where the class were, and what Fran was to play. This exercise was quite good fun but was slightly chaotic. The groups explored such things as: fanfares (with the pupils marching around the room), angry music with trills and squeaks, pupils walking around Fran in a circle.

Workshop 6 - Percussion

I was really looking forward to the schools workshops this week as I was working with percussionist Adam Clifford. I knew that the children would really enjoy listening to some percussion as there is something very immediate and powerful about the act of hitting a drum that children respond to positively.

Adam brought a range of instruments with him for the children to hear. These included: a snare drum, a suspended cymbal, a tambourine, a guiro (scraper), an old chain, a squeaky dog toy, some bells, two differently sized metal hoops, an old scrubbing brush, and a range of various sticks and beaters.

As an introduction he played the groups a short piece on snare drum called Hugh's Chilled Red by Alan Emslie. This piece covers a full specturm of possible snare drum sounds ranging from very quiet to extremely loud. The kids all really enjoyed the contrasts in the piece and there were some unexpected jumps from some kids at the louder moments - one girl at Dalry actually threw her sound diary into the air with fright at the first really loud roll! The piece was always followed by enthusiastic applause. Adam then explored the different sounds that were involved in the piece.

We then had an opportunity to listen to some more percussion sounds. These were improvised pieces and Adam carefully considered some very interesting sound worlds. There were giggles from the kids when they heard things like the dog toy or the chain being dropped on the floor. At Preston Street there was an audible gasp from the kids when Adam picked up a bass bow - as he drew this against the edge of the suspended cymbal, producing eery shrieks, many kids shivered or covered their ears. The range of sounds that the participants were exposed to in these short pieces was really exciting and they all loved it. We had a discussion about the difference between pitched and unpitched percussion, with Adam demonstrating that a xylophone could be played using four beaters to produce many notes at once.

We then played some short rhythmic games. Firstly, we sat in a circle and passed a clap around the circle. We tried to do this as quickly as possible. We then did the same thing but attempted to clap individually to a steady pulse. The group found this quite tricky. Adam discussed how important it is as a percussionist to be able to hold a steady beat and that this task can seem deceptively simple.

We then moved on to a more abstract idea. I asked the children to tell me a short story. I explained that this was to be quite brief and we would break it into 5 or 6 main parts. These parts would then be translated into percussive sounds by the group and Adam to tell a sound story. The stories for each group were really different:

Dalry, Group 1

I got up out of bed
I went to the toilet to brush my teeth
I heard my sister crying
I go and see her and she stops crying
I fell down the stairs and landed in the swimming pool
So I got the day off school.

Dalry, Group 2

It was a dark and scary night
I heard screaming
I looked round the corner and saw a shadow
It was a zombie and it bit Ross
Then the zombie's mum called the zombie in for dinner
I woke up. It was all a nightmare.

Preston Street, Group 1

The mangoes and the bananas had a fight
A steak and gammon joined in to marry each other
Then the coca cola exploded
Meanwhile the steak accidentally peels the banana
So the mango had revenge by eating the steak.

Preston Street, Group 2

Once upon a time in a great castle there lived a king and a queen called King James and Queen Mary.
Also there is a secret panel
In the secret panel there is a golden dragon
There is a prince called Prince Jaffyburg
The prince opened the secret panel and the dragon attacked him
The prince died.

As you can imagine, these wildly different stories brought out a range of percussive ideas and sounds from the groups. They all had great fun composing these short sound stories.

The final task of the day was to stand in a circle and attempt to clap at exactly the same time as each other. This is often used by arts workshop practictioners to focus attention in groups. I was keen to do this task for this reason (so they went back to class a little less exciteable) but also so that we could discuss how it feels in that mioment before the unison clap. When it worked successfully the group said that they had felt tense, nervous, had sore hands (from the last clap), excited, calm. I'm really interested in these moments between sounds; after we've listened to a piece of music or sound and we are digesting it, and before we listen to the next piece of music or sound and are anticipating it. I will explore music which explores this concept with the groups in the last session.

Workshop 5 - Sampling

In the second block of music listening workshops that I'm doing in schools I started working with a new Edinburgh primary - Dalry. This school has replaced Pirniehall. Preston Street will continue as the school on Wednesdays. The idea behind this structure is for me to guage the level of perception and understanding of the partcipants at Preston Street (who have already had 4 weeks of workshops) against the thoughts of the children at Dalry (who are just starting).

The first workshop back was all about sampling. We listened to music which sampled other pieces of music or sounds to create something new. I knew this would be an interesting way to start off some conversations with the groups as sampling calls into question the issue of identity and authorship in music. I was looking forward to asking questions about originality and what consitutes as a musical sound.

The first piece that we listened to was New Process by the Canadian dj Akufen. This is a short track that is comprised almost entirely out of very short snippets of samples from other pieces of music and sounds. The tiny fragments of found sound are spliced together to form a jumpy, edgy soundworld that is at once very danceable and also slightly unnerving due to the tiny pieces of familiarity. I asked the participants to listen out for how many samples they thought were used in the piece. In truth, I didn't know the answer to this but the children all agreeed that were lots! Overall the piece was very popular and one boy at Preston Street even asked me to write down the name of the artist so he could go and listen to more of his music. A great result!

We then listened to excerpts form two differnet tracks back to back. The first was Jimmy by the British female rapper M.I.A. The second was a Bollywood track called Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy by Parvati Khan. The M.I.A. track samples the whole of the Parvati Khan track whilst adding new vocals and lyrics, and altering the beats. The result is two tracks which sound very similar but are, in my mind at least, entirely different. The kids were all dancing about to the M.I.A. track but when the Parvati Khan track came on there were lots of quizzical looks and mutterings of, "this is the same piece of music". Afterwards I explianed the differences in composition and we discussed what effect this has on the piece. I also explained that the M.I.A. track uses an Indian piece of music to colour lyrics about civil war in Rwanda and that, by so doing, the artist makes a political comment about the world being smaller than we think. This was quite a serious discussion and the children at Preston Street were more equipped to involve themselves in it than the kids at Dalry.

A drawing task was next up and this week I asked them to draw whilst listening to a nine minuite piece of sound art called 57A by Bernhard Gal. This piece is comprised entirely from samples taken from the tram of the title. Slowly patterns begin to emerge out of the field recordings as the artist creates rhythms through layering and juxtaposition. He also uses filters to process some of the sounds and this gave rise to some very interesting results in the children's drawings. The processing turns the voice of the tram's tannoy system into something very robotic or alien. At both schools this resulted in drawings which fused the literal (most children drew trains) with the fantastical (some children added talking robots, UFOs and aliens).

The final piece we listened to this week was the first movement of Cantus Arcticus by Einojuhani Rautavaarra. This orchestral piece is often referred to as the Concerto for Birds and indeed is comprised of beautiful, soporific orchestral writing and samples of various birds calling and in flight. It is a mesmerising, haunting piece. The children at Dalry struggled with it. I think by this point they were quite tired and the piece was too tranquil; they wanted to continue to dance to music similar to the first pieces. The children at Preston Street however all really enjoyed it.

Panoptikum photos

Panoptikum

Just got back from the Panoptikum festival in Nuremberg, Germany. I had the opportunity to attend this children's theatre festival along with Tony and Tessa from Imaginate and Andy Manley, associate artist with Imaginate.
It was a really great experience and so useful to see so much international work for children. Of course, not all of it is going to be everyone's cup of tea but there were enough moments of real magic to make the experience a great success. The festival spans a week and uses the three dedicated children's theatres in Nuremberg plus a couple of other venues. It's fantastic to think of one city having so many venues (each with their own in-house company) dedicated to making work for children. If nothing else, it was great to see such enthusiasm for making work for young people.

We saw about 4 shows each day we were there and there are a few which really stand out for me. First up was Gruppe 38 from Denmark. They presented their absolutely hilarious show A Sonatina, which I'd seen before at the Imaginate festival about 6 years ago, but it was fun to see it again. The show tells the story of Red Riding Hood, with the heroine played by an egg (freshly laid by a real on-stage chicken who steals the show!). The grandmother is played by a potato and the big bad wolf is played by a potato ricer so I'm sure you can imagine what happens to grandma! The show is a really witty, lively take on a familiar story with lovely live music.
I also really loved the new show by Danish company Carte Blanche. It was called Shadow of Time and told the story of a woman who looks at the timeline of her own life. It's not really narrative-driven, rather an exploration of what it is to be born, to age, and to die. It's told in an incredibly beautiful visual style which the children in the audience lapped up. At times you wonder exactly how the visual trickery is being performed but it's lovely just to wallow in the beauty rather than try to unpick the technical mastery.
The Terrific Adventures of Brave Joan Woodsword was great fun. It was presented by Theater Mumpitz, one of the local companies in Nuremberg and it's also coming to our festival in May. It's a really fast-paced story about a young girl who stands up to her school bullies and borrows heavily from the story of Joan of Arc. It's really silly, over-the-top and good fun but has a strong moral message throughout which I think will go down really well with Scottish kids.
The last show we saw was the terrific Run by Kopergietery. This is one of my favourite companies in the world and it was a real pleasure to finally get to see this show as I'd heard so much about it. The piece is performed by 23 males, aged from 7 to late 30s. The simple premise is that these men are all caught up in a game/ritual/torture of endlessly marching up and down the stage. This image goes on for at least 10 minutes before finally individuals begin to break out of ranks, either stopping and staring at the audience questioningly or falling where they stand. The lines slowly dissolve into chaos with scenes of real violence juxtaposed with moments of heart-stopping beauty. In one particularly moving section individuals begin to slowly fall to the floor with exhaustion as one performer runs throughout the crowd to try to prevent them from falling. His efforts are of course more or less wasted as the job consumes him and exhaustion fills the room.

It was absolutely freezing and snowed the entire time we were there. However, it's a really interesting city to explore no matter what the temperature. I was fascinated when we visited the Nazi party rally grounds. The scale of the place is hard to fathom, even when you're standing in the middle of the huge coliseum that was built for the Fuhrer to address the crowds of hundreds of thousands or when standing in the now empty and desolate Zeppelin field. The adjoining museum puts it all into context in a chilling exhibition that stands as a testament to this city's gruesome past.

Repetition workshop

The fourth workshop was to be the last in the first block. This meant that it was the last session for the pupils at Pirniehall (in block 2 I will continue to work with Preston Street, but will begin workshops at Dalry Primary). This workshop was to allow the pupils to explore music that uses repetition as a main feature. We began by discussing examples of repetition in music and sound. Some very clever examples were offered by the pupils such as: a chorus of a song, an echo, a parrot, parents shouting! and the song Shut Up And Drive by Rihanna.

The first piece of music I played was called Bare Cairo by Harrapian Night Recordings. I asked the group to listen out for what it is that repeats in this piece of music, and what else happens musically. This piece of music is built entirely on a short melodic phrase which loops throughout the entire piece. It has a distinctive Middle Eastern or Northern African sound and this was noted by several pupils. Interestingly, some children in both schools responded by dancing with their hands above their heads. Something in the music obviously reminded the pupils of this style of dancing and they enjoyed the freedom of being able to explore the sounds through movement. All the children noticed the repetition of the melodic fragment and one boy at Preston Street was happy so sing it for me. Other examples of repetition in the piece were found to be the drums and the improvised sound on an unidentified instrument. When I fist listened to this piece of music I did not consider this solo to use repetition - it is an odd melodic line that explores sonic qualities often on one note. It is a shrieking, dangerous sounding melody that caused many of the children to cover their ears. The children who considered this to be repetitive did so, I think, because of the consistency of the sound.

The next piece of music that we listened to was called Boat-Woman-Song by Holger Czukay and Rolf Dammers. This piece of music works in a similar way: there is a simple melodic fragment which loops throughout with a wavering melodic line on top sung by a woman. The piece is more complex than the first. It has an introduction of about 30 seconds of the loop before the woman enters, the melodic line of the woman is chopped up and layered, often overlapping and forming dissonances with itself, the piece progresses in this way before a choir of children enter near the end with some final new melodic material on the close that sounds like it is a guitar-like instrument. I asked the children to draw as they listened to this piece (and not to begin until they heard the woman's voice). All pupils began laughing when they heard the woman's voice but, as with the trombone workshop, quickly stopped laughing as they set about their drawings. Some interesting results from this exercise were: a drawing of a bee, a black spider web-like image with the word "woosh" written again and again around it, and lots of images of babies crying (the woman's voice seemed to conjure up this image). Unfortunately at Pirniehall one boy sat without drawing. When I quietly told him that it was ok if he could not think of anything to draw he began to cry. I think he felt a peer pressure to do as his classmates were doing. I told him that it was better for him to simply listen than to force some form of creative response.

The third piece of music was by a Scottish composer called Ross Campbell called Father We Thank You Again. This has been the most fascinating piece of music that we have listened to so far. The piece is constructed from repeated fragments of speech. The text of the title is spoken by an American man at various intervals throughout the piece. There are other fragments of text which appear again and again. The texts are played at highly contrasting dynamics, from quiet whispers to loud blares. It creates an interesting effect of layering. In the background to the text are a processed piano, a woman's voice and some synthesized sounds. However these are played as lesser important components in the piece. I asked the children what they considered to be the repetition of the piece. All stated the text. However, what followed (in both schools) was a fascinating discussion on whether this could be classified as "music". Almost every participant considered this to NOT be music. Some reasons cited for this were that there was no beat, it was only voices, and that the voices were overpowering the actual music i.e. the piano, sung voice and synthesizer. One final observation about this piece was the effect it had on one boy at Pirniehall. He began crying and when I spoke to him out of the classroom he said that this was because it had reminded him of the recent death of his grandfather. I apologised to him for selecting music which had had such an effect and asked if he would like to go back to class, which he did. This incident, while distressing for all, was fascinating to highlight the power of music on the individual. This piece of music which is quite dry, extremely challenging and considered not to be music by most of the participants had an overwhelming emotional effect on one boy.

The final piece of music that we listened to was the 2nd movement of the violin concerto by Philip Glass. The music is typical of Glass - very simple looping melodies, beautiful to listen to and quite familiar in a filmic way. I asked the class to lie down and close their eyes as they listened, hoping that this would enable a meditative quality of listening. The piece is quite long - almost 9 minutes - and, perhaps inevitably, some of the pupils struggled to lie still for such a long period. However the comments from the group at the end seemed to suggest some good listening from those who had persevered - the music was described as sad, tiring, calm, and tiptoeing.

Trombone workshop

The third of my schools listening project workshops focused on the trombone. I was fortunate to be able to bring my trombonist friend, George Murray, into the workshops with me. I think the pupils were impressed simply by George having a trombone, so having the opportunity to listen to one in their own classroom was a real treat!
I wanted to use this workshop to allow the children to consider improvisation. George is an experienced improviser, in both jazz and experimental ways. We began the workshop by listening to George play a short piece by Duke Ellington, In A Sentimental Mood. The kids listened in complete silence and were very still throughout. Afterwards they all clapped enthusiastically. I then asked George if he could play a short excerpt form this piece and the children used their sound diaries to describe the music. They could draw or write, think about colours or images or emotions. Some examples of things that were drawn are: a lonely girl on a street and some green grass. I then asked George if he could play the same excerpt using his mute. Of course, this altered the volume and the tone of the music and the kids were able to describe how the mute works and that it's similar to the mute on a tv. Some children giggled when they heard the sound at first. What is interesting is that if the children hear something which initially makes them laugh, they seem to get over their laughter when they have a task to complete, such as using their sound diaries.

I then asked George if he could play another piece of music. George and I had agreed in advance that this would be an improvised melodic piece but we did not tell the participants that it was improvised. Afterwards I began by asking if the piece was familiar to anyone. Several pupils thought they recognized it. I explained that it was improvised; that George was "making it up as he goes along". I think they were impressed that George could do this so successfully. One pupil at Pirniehall very cleverly pointed out that the improvised piece of music probably sounded familiar because George was borrowing little ideas from other pieces of music and stringing them together to make a new piece - very astute.

George then played a third piece for the group. This was again improvised and utilised various experimental techniques such as overblowing, tremolo, and singing whilst playing to achieve two notes at once. The kids listened well and found some techniques quite amusing. There is growing confidence amongst the pupils to express their opinions through movement and this was a prime example as some pupils responded to the music by gyrating and shaking their heads. Some thoughts on the piece afterwards were that it sounded like a man being chased by bees after stealing their honey, and it sounded like an accordion.

The final task of the workshop was to create a group improvisation piece. This was inspired by the Berio Oboe Sequenza that we listened to in the first week. In that recording the oboist is accompanied by a drone B natural sung by three female vocalists. I explained that I wanted the group to form a B natural drone as George improvised on top. The pupils chose instruments to produce this B natural. We had recorders, guitars, xylophones and glockenspiels, piano and singing. Interestingly, at Pirniehall only one girl wanted to sing while at Preston Street singing was quite a popular choice. We also discovered in the first group at Pirniehall that we could not have too many recorders as it was too loud and also quite tricky to maintain just one tone on that many recorders! In the first session I asked the group to adjust their volume accordingly based on the volume of the trombone. However, we quickly discovered that the pupils required more controls than this so I quickly stepped in to conduct the piece.

Second schools workshop

Hi there! I completed the second of my schools listening workshops this week. It was the first workshop in the project where I'd brought a musician into the session with me. First up was Katy Barry, a friend of mine and a professional singer. Katy and I devised the workshop together and we wanted to allow the children to explore contemporary vocal techniques through listening and by joining in themselves.
We began by listening to Katy singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow. The kids all sat and soaked it up and it was really lovely to see them so engrossed. We then had a chat about the use of vibrato and Katy explained that she had been using this technique in the example. We then listened to Katy singing a line with and without vibrato and we asked the kids to note down how each made them feel. Some kids wrote down colours - with warm colours tending to go with the vibrato and colder colours tending to go without vibrato. Some children drew wavy and straight lines and some kids drew more pictorial drawings.
Katy then taught the group some more vocal techniques: trills, growling, glottal pops, and inhalation whilst singing. Some of these are quite experimental techniques and some participants were surprised that we were asking them to growl! Katy and I then shaped a short vocal piece using these techniques. Interestingly, after this exercise quite a few participants didn't consider what they had done to be musical. They thought that it was just noise. I am keen to listen to all of their thoughts and opinions and when asked, most of them could back up quite clearly why they didn't feel it was music.
The second exercise we did with Katy was to apply some vocal sounds to a short nursery rhyme, Polly Put The Kettle On. We chose this as we thought it would be quick to learn for those who didn't know it and for those children where English is not their first language. The children had fun thinking of what sounds they could create to help "tell the story" of the song.

We then had the chance to listen to a recording of a piece by a real pioneer of experimental vocal techniques, Joan La Barbara. I explained that many of the techniques we had learned were developed by this musician. The piece which I chose to play at Pirniehall on the Tuesday was called Hear What I Feel. I explained to the group that Joan had prepared herself for the performance by sitting with a blindfold on for an hour. She then described vocally six object which were presented to her. It's a very odd piece and extremely challenging to listen to (not least because it actually sounds very disturbing at points). I asked the children to sit with their eyes closed and see if they could mime the touching of the objects as they listened to Joan La Barbara describe them. However, with both groups the children found the piece to be too strange and laughter overcame them.
A change of plan then at Preston Street on Wednesday was to play a different piece by this visionary singer. This time I played Circular Song (a piece which I have heard her sing live recently). This is an extended exploration of the technique that we tried where you sing on both exhalations and inhalations. It was originally used by horn players so that they could play long passages, seemingly without taking breath.
The reactions of the participants to this piece were fascinating. More than half sat and traced the shape of the rising and falling melody without being asked to do so. Some children had more extreme reactions. One boy actually started convulsing in quite an odd way but he was smiling as he did it. An interesting thing I am observing is that there is a fine line between extreme reactions that are quite deliberate, and those that are completely unavoidable for the child. I think in this case it started off as a reaction that might get a few laughs but turned into quite an honest improvised movement piece to the music.

Music listening schools project begins

I have started working on the next stage of my residency with Imaginate. I will be working with 3 Primary 5 classes in Edinburgh schools on a music listening research project. I'm interested in hearing the pupils' thoughts and opinions on lots of differnet pieces of music. All of the music has been chosen to be challenging as I think it will be interesting for the pupils to listen to music that they might not often get the chance to listen to. I want them to be honest and tell me what they think of the music and I will be getting them to respond in various ways. I'm also going to be working with musicians throughout the project: a singer, a trombonist, a percussionist, and a clarinetist.
I am working in Pirniehall on Tuesdays and Preston Street on Wednesdays. In the second block of workshops I will work with Dalry rather than Pirniehall. The workshops have been structured in this way so I can see whether the children at Preston Street show advanced signs of music listening due to receiving double the amount of workshops.

The first workshop was all about listening to pieces fro solo instruments from late 20th century or early 21st century composers. The first piece we listened to was Kaija Saariaho's Sept Papillons (1st movement) for solo cello. I asked the children to try and identify what instrument they thought was playing and also to listen to the texture of the music.
Most of the children thought the instrument was a violin, but with a bit of prompting they guessed cello. Some of the words they used to describe the texture were: "scratchy", "rough" and "squeaky". They were all quite surprised when I told them that the piece was inspired by butterflies!

The next piece of music we listened to was Continuum by Gyorgy Ligeti - probably my favourite 20th century composer. Continuum is written for keyboard instrument and in this recording it is played on a barrel organ. I asked the participants to close their eyes as they listened and listen out for the speed.
This was a very interesting piece and the effect it had on the children was pretty incredible. Most children felt compelled to move in some way or another. Several mimed the playing of the piece by moving their digits furiously over an invisible keyboard. Some children began to shake and convulse or roll about on the floor. I was also really taken back by a young girl at Pirniehall who hovered her hands above her head throughout the piece - she was completely lost in her own world!

The final piece of music that we listened to was from the Sequenza series by Luciano Berio. These are some of the most respected pieces for solo instruments from the last century and are regarded as being incredibly difficult to play (as well as pretty challenging to listen to!). I played them the Sequenza 7 for solo oboe. During this exercise the participants were asked to draw whatever came into their heads. They all had a sheet of A4 paper plus coloured pens and pencils. There were some great drawings created during this task. Obviously some copying occured but on the whole they were very original. Lots of children at Pirniehall drew saxaphones or horns. Their drawings were all very pictorial. At Preston Street there were a more abstract drawings. Many of the participnats in this school drew in rhythm with the music or even with their eyes closed. One young girl at Preston Street drew a picture which contained a duck, a man crying and a very tall building. The day before at Pirniehall three separate children drew a swan, a man crying and a tall building...