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...