Showing posts with label Rivers Movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rivers Movement. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Event: "The River Aire" in Castleford, Fr.,15.April, 18:30
On Friday, 15.April 2011 at 18:30 a preview event will be held for an exhibition at the Bridge Arts Gallery in Castleford (at the Sagar Street). I will be there to present my music "The River Aire" in the context of other art work which is related to this river. This event will be the opening of 8 weeks filled with various events related to the "Free Uni****** of Castleford on Aire".
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Premier performance of "The River Aire - A Symphonic Poem"
On Monday, 10.January 2011, my composition "The River Aire - A Symphonic Poem", has been "performed" for the very first time in front of an audience. Well, it was not a "real" performance by musicians, but "only" a rendition. Just before the travel to India, I had completed this rendition in quite a hurry: I had the recording ready on 5.January 2011 at 23:00, and afterwards I began to pack my suitcase for the travel which would take place next morning.
This composition has been inspired by the poem by David Wilders: "River Aire - From Source to Castleford". This poem had been presented in a 6-week workshop "Free University of Castleford" in October 2010 in the framework of "The Rivers Movement", and I had begun then to put the words of this poem into music. On 15.October I had the first few lines of the poem "converted" into music, and I had played the rendition at one of the events of this workshop as "Birth of the River Aire". In the meantime I had expanded the music to include more lines of the poem. My goal had been to complete the music before the travel, but I did not have the time for this. Therefore I decided to skip a few lines and to go straight to the end of the poem, to produce a shortened version. This is the one which I completed on 5.January, and which I took with us on the travel to India.
The poem by David Wilders describes the river Aire in simple words, nouns to be precise. The sequence of these nouns evokes images of the river, very concrete images. I took this poem literally and tried to translate each of these words into music. The complete composition is in my view a "Symphonic poem", a musical art form which has been popular during the late Romantic period, late 19th century.
The performance, meaning pressing the play button of the Mediaplayer, took place in Vallabh Vidyanagar in Gujarat, India, at the HM Patel Institute for English of the Sardar Patel University. The lecture was moderated by composer Nishant S Joshi and Brian Lewis, and the audience was a class of 95 English teacher students. The performance was in the context of poetry, rivers, climate change. The students were given the task to listen to the music, without knowing the words, and to write down which words came to their mind.
The duration of the composition in its current abbreviated form is about 10 minutes. After the last sound occured, students gave their impressions. It was astonishing that they were able to capture very closely the words of David Wilders, despite that they are Indian and do have a completely different musical heritage and culture: storm, rage, flow, animals, plants, ... I recorded with video the responses of the students and will post this after the return from my travel.
In the second part of this lecture a piece of music by composer Vishal A Joshi was played in a recording with sitar and flute, evoking musical images of a river. Also here the music quite literally described a flowing river, although in an Indian music tradition.
This event quite convincingly showed the power of music across cultures: music is a language without words, a language that is common to all people, and that is shaped in a kind of dialect by its cultural context. It seems that its appeal is universal across human cultures and traditions.
When I am back from my travel, I will try to extend this composition to include the missing words from the poem. Also I will need to do some more revisions of the existing parts: a few compositional intends need to be worked out better, and the recording / rendition needs to be more poignant.
I prepared a video of this recording, with the words of David Wilders matching their musical translation:
This composition has been inspired by the poem by David Wilders: "River Aire - From Source to Castleford". This poem had been presented in a 6-week workshop "Free University of Castleford" in October 2010 in the framework of "The Rivers Movement", and I had begun then to put the words of this poem into music. On 15.October I had the first few lines of the poem "converted" into music, and I had played the rendition at one of the events of this workshop as "Birth of the River Aire". In the meantime I had expanded the music to include more lines of the poem. My goal had been to complete the music before the travel, but I did not have the time for this. Therefore I decided to skip a few lines and to go straight to the end of the poem, to produce a shortened version. This is the one which I completed on 5.January, and which I took with us on the travel to India.
The poem by David Wilders describes the river Aire in simple words, nouns to be precise. The sequence of these nouns evokes images of the river, very concrete images. I took this poem literally and tried to translate each of these words into music. The complete composition is in my view a "Symphonic poem", a musical art form which has been popular during the late Romantic period, late 19th century.
The performance, meaning pressing the play button of the Mediaplayer, took place in Vallabh Vidyanagar in Gujarat, India, at the HM Patel Institute for English of the Sardar Patel University. The lecture was moderated by composer Nishant S Joshi and Brian Lewis, and the audience was a class of 95 English teacher students. The performance was in the context of poetry, rivers, climate change. The students were given the task to listen to the music, without knowing the words, and to write down which words came to their mind.
The duration of the composition in its current abbreviated form is about 10 minutes. After the last sound occured, students gave their impressions. It was astonishing that they were able to capture very closely the words of David Wilders, despite that they are Indian and do have a completely different musical heritage and culture: storm, rage, flow, animals, plants, ... I recorded with video the responses of the students and will post this after the return from my travel.
In the second part of this lecture a piece of music by composer Vishal A Joshi was played in a recording with sitar and flute, evoking musical images of a river. Also here the music quite literally described a flowing river, although in an Indian music tradition.
This event quite convincingly showed the power of music across cultures: music is a language without words, a language that is common to all people, and that is shaped in a kind of dialect by its cultural context. It seems that its appeal is universal across human cultures and traditions.
When I am back from my travel, I will try to extend this composition to include the missing words from the poem. Also I will need to do some more revisions of the existing parts: a few compositional intends need to be worked out better, and the recording / rendition needs to be more poignant.
I prepared a video of this recording, with the words of David Wilders matching their musical translation:
Friday, 15 October 2010
New Composition Draft: "The River Aire"
In the Rivers Movement Project, the overall theme of climate change and environmental protection is related to rivers in Yorkshire. Much of the work of the artists who are involved in this project, relates to the River Aire, which flows from Malham to Castleford.
In the past 6 weeks this Rivers Movement has organised a set of exhibitions and workshops in the Bridge Arts Gallery in Castleford under the theme "70 Reasons why I love the Earth" - that is the context in which I held my music composition workshop two weeks ago. Today, Friday. 15.October, is the final evening.
The River Aire has inspired many artists. One of them, David Wilders, has for this occasion (Rivers Movement workshop series) written a poem about the River Aire. This poem describes in a set of nouns the river, from its source to its merging with the river Calder in Castleford. Officially the river Aire continues until it merges into the river Ouse at Airmyn - I will have to talk to David about this.
The poem by David evokes images of the river in its various stages. I thought that it would be very well suitable to "musify" this (can I claim the copyright on the expression "to musify something"? Apparently not...). So I sat down and tried to translate the words of his poem into orchestral sounds, phrases, themes.
So far I cam only up to the line 5: "The birth, the source, the origin", which describes Malham Cove from where the river begins to flow. The music (following the poem word by word) describes Malham Tarn, storm, might, rain, deluge, sodden, saturation, overspill, energy, flow, movement, partially going down into the Gordale Scar, partially seeping through the earth, until in Malham cove the water is collected, and the river begins.
I plan to continue and "musify" the poem until Castleford, maybe with an extension to Airmyn.
For now I have the "draft" of the first part of this music ready. I was wondering if it is a good idea to put it out now in this unfinished state... it really needs a lot of fine tuning and polishing; also it ends abruptly, as the river would from here on continue to flow.
The final event of this "70 reasons..." workshop series tonight provides an opportunity to play this music to an audience, and so I am thinking that I should put it out there now. The cellist and composer Geoff King from Harrogate will also present a composition about this poem, and he will even play it live on his Cello - I am very much looking forward to this. I will only play my piece as a recorded wave file.
Here is the WMA file of my composition "Birth of the River Aire".
And here is the MP3 file of this music.
These files are currently not yet listed on my official web site, but are only available to readers of this blog.
The event tonight, with the premiere performance of this music piece, will begin at 18:30. Venue: Bridge Arts Gallery, Sagar Street, Castleford, WF10 1AF.
Please let the organiser's know that you saw this note on my web page.
--- Why am I posting this so late? Well, the idea to this composition came to me yesterday night, around 23:00, when I decided that this poem is really nice, and I should do something. So I improvised until around 2:00. The resulting 3 minutes of "music" are the result of 3 hours work. I think that the whole composition would then take about another 10 hours of work to complete, plus another 10 hours to create a well-balanced performance-recording.
In the past 6 weeks this Rivers Movement has organised a set of exhibitions and workshops in the Bridge Arts Gallery in Castleford under the theme "70 Reasons why I love the Earth" - that is the context in which I held my music composition workshop two weeks ago. Today, Friday. 15.October, is the final evening.
The River Aire has inspired many artists. One of them, David Wilders, has for this occasion (Rivers Movement workshop series) written a poem about the River Aire. This poem describes in a set of nouns the river, from its source to its merging with the river Calder in Castleford. Officially the river Aire continues until it merges into the river Ouse at Airmyn - I will have to talk to David about this.
The poem by David evokes images of the river in its various stages. I thought that it would be very well suitable to "musify" this (can I claim the copyright on the expression "to musify something"? Apparently not...). So I sat down and tried to translate the words of his poem into orchestral sounds, phrases, themes.
So far I cam only up to the line 5: "The birth, the source, the origin", which describes Malham Cove from where the river begins to flow. The music (following the poem word by word) describes Malham Tarn, storm, might, rain, deluge, sodden, saturation, overspill, energy, flow, movement, partially going down into the Gordale Scar, partially seeping through the earth, until in Malham cove the water is collected, and the river begins.
I plan to continue and "musify" the poem until Castleford, maybe with an extension to Airmyn.
For now I have the "draft" of the first part of this music ready. I was wondering if it is a good idea to put it out now in this unfinished state... it really needs a lot of fine tuning and polishing; also it ends abruptly, as the river would from here on continue to flow.
The final event of this "70 reasons..." workshop series tonight provides an opportunity to play this music to an audience, and so I am thinking that I should put it out there now. The cellist and composer Geoff King from Harrogate will also present a composition about this poem, and he will even play it live on his Cello - I am very much looking forward to this. I will only play my piece as a recorded wave file.
Here is the WMA file of my composition "Birth of the River Aire".
And here is the MP3 file of this music.
These files are currently not yet listed on my official web site, but are only available to readers of this blog.
The event tonight, with the premiere performance of this music piece, will begin at 18:30. Venue: Bridge Arts Gallery, Sagar Street, Castleford, WF10 1AF.
Please let the organiser's know that you saw this note on my web page.
--- Why am I posting this so late? Well, the idea to this composition came to me yesterday night, around 23:00, when I decided that this poem is really nice, and I should do something. So I improvised until around 2:00. The resulting 3 minutes of "music" are the result of 3 hours work. I think that the whole composition would then take about another 10 hours of work to complete, plus another 10 hours to create a well-balanced performance-recording.
Sunday, 28 February 2010
46 Improvisations on 46 different Instruments
At the event itself there was not a large audience. During the day the press and even TV (BBC Look North) had been here, interviewing Brian Lewis who had pledged to create 73 paintings in 24 hours. But when I came, the media buzz had been over, and there were only two painters, a photographer, and a poet there. I played my improvisations - and I hope that my music had inspired them a little.
Friday, 13 November 2009
Upcoming: first public play of my music: "Nostalgia"
It is late at night, after 4am. I just finished composing and recording a little piece of music. I call it "Nostalgia". The usual slow sentimental lush string orchestral piece, quite tonal, with a few adventurous modulations. Just a bit over 2 minutes long.
Writing it went smooth, although I could have added a few more instruments and worked more on the theme and the structure. But the trouble came with the recording: Sonar 4 and Personal Orchestra did not want to work together well anymore... The audio, apparently in the reverb / ambience processing, got some hickups. I tried to change the audio settings in Sonar, but that made things only worse. In the end I could not even replay anymore, stopped by dropouts.
The only thing that worked was setting Sonra4 to ASIO. But that removed all the audio recording... Solution: I had to take my external digital mini recorder and record the audio on there.
This Saturday will be the Anual General Meeting (AGM) of the Guild of St. George in Sheffield. Brian Lewis and myself will talk about the Rivers Movement. Since this organisation is devoted to linking art with life, Brian asked me if I could write a piece of music, to demonstrate that there was also this link in our project. And so I sat down a few hours ago, around 23:00, and began to improvise on the Yamaha MU-80 soft strings, and then to fill in the other instruments.
And now I am tired and sleepy.
Writing it went smooth, although I could have added a few more instruments and worked more on the theme and the structure. But the trouble came with the recording: Sonar 4 and Personal Orchestra did not want to work together well anymore... The audio, apparently in the reverb / ambience processing, got some hickups. I tried to change the audio settings in Sonar, but that made things only worse. In the end I could not even replay anymore, stopped by dropouts.
The only thing that worked was setting Sonra4 to ASIO. But that removed all the audio recording... Solution: I had to take my external digital mini recorder and record the audio on there.
This Saturday will be the Anual General Meeting (AGM) of the Guild of St. George in Sheffield. Brian Lewis and myself will talk about the Rivers Movement. Since this organisation is devoted to linking art with life, Brian asked me if I could write a piece of music, to demonstrate that there was also this link in our project. And so I sat down a few hours ago, around 23:00, and began to improvise on the Yamaha MU-80 soft strings, and then to fill in the other instruments.
And now I am tired and sleepy.
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