Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Clameur: The Words
After some humming and hawing Matt and I decided not to include the words as part of the CD packaging. However the booklet is available as a free download on the Pollard & Kenny site.
It contains all the words for This Concert Will Fall In Love With You, Clameur and Minotaur.
It contains all the words for This Concert Will Fall In Love With You, Clameur and Minotaur.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Thursday, 12 January 2012
Clameur Launch 11 February 2012
The Clameur album launch will be on 11th February 2012 at the Unitarian Church in New Road Brighton. For those that know Brighton this couldn't be more central, and is the big church with classical columns a few doors up from Brighton's Theatre Royal and opposite the Dome Box Office and Mash Tun pub.
The concert will feature all the musicians on the recording, (Glen Capra, Cem Muharrem, Tom Norell and Adam Bushell) and due to the highly emotional and love-lorn nature of "This Concert Will Fall In Love With You" (which dominates the album) we have timed the album launch to be just before Valentine's day.
We have also asked The Shakespeare Trio who feature Shakespeare's sonnets and great guitar as our support.
Personally I am excited by the whole thing, and also nerve wracked. Will have my hands on the actual CD within two weeks. We are making personal invitations to the launch, but if you'd like me reserve a seat for you, simply email.
The concert will feature all the musicians on the recording, (Glen Capra, Cem Muharrem, Tom Norell and Adam Bushell) and due to the highly emotional and love-lorn nature of "This Concert Will Fall In Love With You" (which dominates the album) we have timed the album launch to be just before Valentine's day.
We have also asked The Shakespeare Trio who feature Shakespeare's sonnets and great guitar as our support.
Personally I am excited by the whole thing, and also nerve wracked. Will have my hands on the actual CD within two weeks. We are making personal invitations to the launch, but if you'd like me reserve a seat for you, simply email.
Monday, 10 October 2011
Coleridge and Dejection
Re-reading T.S.Eliot's the Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, specifically his essay about Wordsworth and Coleridge. Here Eliot makes a memorable assessment of Coleridge.
Although Eliot distances himself from the idea of a Muse, by calling it a hackneyed metaphor, it's easy to understand intuitively what he means. Having a more pedestrian approach, I think it more likely that he was not abandoned by a Muse, but instead possessed by exhaustion and the burnout caused by drug addiction, persistent poverty and illness.
Eliot says Dejection: an Ode is "one piece of his formal verse which in its passionate self-revelation rises almost to the level of great poetry." This is slightly damning it with faint praise. But as I'd not read for many years, I discovered it to be heartbreakingly lovely in parts.
It is the 'not my own' which is the pin in the balloon here. I am also drawn to a passage about the wind, which shows another glimpse of Coleridge's trademark opiatically Gothic imagination. This is a hellish vision that would not be out of place in Dante. The poem is dated 4th April 1802 but this is a nightmare Spring in which hope is absent.
The poem ends with him picturing the woman he loves, and wishing gentle sleep on her, after a vision of a lost girl "Upon a lonesome wild". All rather traumatic stuff, written long after the Muse was supposed to have packed its bags.
...for a few years he (Coleridge) had been visited by the Muse (I know of no poet to whom this hackneyed metaphor is better applicable) and thenceforth was a haunted man; for anyone who has ever been visited by the Muse is thenceforth haunted.
Although Eliot distances himself from the idea of a Muse, by calling it a hackneyed metaphor, it's easy to understand intuitively what he means. Having a more pedestrian approach, I think it more likely that he was not abandoned by a Muse, but instead possessed by exhaustion and the burnout caused by drug addiction, persistent poverty and illness.
Eliot says Dejection: an Ode is "one piece of his formal verse which in its passionate self-revelation rises almost to the level of great poetry." This is slightly damning it with faint praise. But as I'd not read for many years, I discovered it to be heartbreakingly lovely in parts.
There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
It is the 'not my own' which is the pin in the balloon here. I am also drawn to a passage about the wind, which shows another glimpse of Coleridge's trademark opiatically Gothic imagination. This is a hellish vision that would not be out of place in Dante. The poem is dated 4th April 1802 but this is a nightmare Spring in which hope is absent.
Hence Viper thoughts, that could around my mind
Reality's dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without
...
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Make'st Devil's yule, with worse than wintry song...
...
'Tis of the rushing of a host in rout,
With groans, of trampled men with smarting wounds-
At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold!
But hush! There is a pause of deepest silence!
And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,
With groans and tremulous shudderings--all is over--
The poem ends with him picturing the woman he loves, and wishing gentle sleep on her, after a vision of a lost girl "Upon a lonesome wild". All rather traumatic stuff, written long after the Muse was supposed to have packed its bags.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Minotaur
Here is a video I shot for the short track Minotaur on my forthcoming CD with Matthew Pollard called Clameur. Whipped quickly around Brighton with my flip camera. Rather pleased with the result...
Thursday, 6 October 2011
The Shakespeare Trio
Well my pals The Shakespeare Trio have just released their first CD. The band is made up of Dipak Chanda and Richard Gibson, as well as the ghost of Shakespeare of course who provides all their lyrics. Like all brilliant ideas, Richard's notion of setting all the sonnets of Shakespeare seems to be rather a mad one at first. But with Dipak Chanda lending wonderful guitar work and with Shakespeare as their muse the project has grown from strength to strength.
I have another connection to The Shakespeare Trio, as they are labelmates of mine, or rather the Matthew Pollard & Peter Kenny collaboration of which readers of this blog are familiar on AnotherSun Recordings.
You can buy The Shakespeare Trio's album on CDBaby. Meanwhile why not have a listen to a couple of their tracks for free here...
I have another connection to The Shakespeare Trio, as they are labelmates of mine, or rather the Matthew Pollard & Peter Kenny collaboration of which readers of this blog are familiar on AnotherSun Recordings.
You can buy The Shakespeare Trio's album on CDBaby. Meanwhile why not have a listen to a couple of their tracks for free here...
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Laughing at hypochondriacs
I've always been interested in taboo subjects. One of the challenges I most enjoy in marketing is to work out how to talk to people about the thing they least want to talk about. And what do we normally do when we don’t want to discuss things? Stay silent, or laugh about it.
Here’s an example. A man visits his doctor, and tells her that he’s suffering from a long list of illnesses. ‘The trouble with you,’ says the doctor. ‘Is that you’re a hypochondriac.’ ‘Oh God,’ says the man, ‘don’t tell me I've got that as well.’
Everyone has a hypochondriac moment once in a while: that disturbing palpitation, the stabbing chest pain that mysteriously disappears after a burp. But imagine being imprisoned for years by the certainty that you had a life-threatening condition. However much reassurance you received—or how many times you saw the doctor—once you returned from the surgery you’d already be convinced that you were still ill.
Laughing at hypochondriacs is a comedy staple. In the classic Edwardian novel, Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, one of the characters finds a medical dictionary in the British Library and begins thumbing through it:
And today there is a whole new generation of hypochondriacs, the so-called ‘cyberchondriacs’ who spend their time trawling the outer reaches of the Internet for information to support their privately-hatched dire diagnoses.
The real problem with hypochondriacs is that they are almost always treated as a joke. The reality is that hypochondria appears to be a manifestation of severe anxiety. Just because something is all in the mind doesn't mean the symptoms are not experienced as real things for anxiety can cause dizziness, palpitations, tingling arms and legs and so on. But the psychological components of hypochondria can create anxiety and lives only half-lived in the shadow of persistent fear.
Once erectile dysfunction was considered taboo, at best joked about. But times as we know have changed. But not enough it seems for something as common as hypochondria to still be seen as a joke; and the hypochondriac someone to be ridiculed. Only rarely is it acknowledged as the life-warping anxiety it really is.
Below: detail from The hypochondriac by Thomas Rowlandson
Here’s an example. A man visits his doctor, and tells her that he’s suffering from a long list of illnesses. ‘The trouble with you,’ says the doctor. ‘Is that you’re a hypochondriac.’ ‘Oh God,’ says the man, ‘don’t tell me I've got that as well.’
Everyone has a hypochondriac moment once in a while: that disturbing palpitation, the stabbing chest pain that mysteriously disappears after a burp. But imagine being imprisoned for years by the certainty that you had a life-threatening condition. However much reassurance you received—or how many times you saw the doctor—once you returned from the surgery you’d already be convinced that you were still ill.
Laughing at hypochondriacs is a comedy staple. In the classic Edwardian novel, Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, one of the characters finds a medical dictionary in the British Library and begins thumbing through it:
“I sat for a while, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.” (Three men in a boat, Chapter 1 by Jerome K. Jerome)
And today there is a whole new generation of hypochondriacs, the so-called ‘cyberchondriacs’ who spend their time trawling the outer reaches of the Internet for information to support their privately-hatched dire diagnoses.
The real problem with hypochondriacs is that they are almost always treated as a joke. The reality is that hypochondria appears to be a manifestation of severe anxiety. Just because something is all in the mind doesn't mean the symptoms are not experienced as real things for anxiety can cause dizziness, palpitations, tingling arms and legs and so on. But the psychological components of hypochondria can create anxiety and lives only half-lived in the shadow of persistent fear.
Once erectile dysfunction was considered taboo, at best joked about. But times as we know have changed. But not enough it seems for something as common as hypochondria to still be seen as a joke; and the hypochondriac someone to be ridiculed. Only rarely is it acknowledged as the life-warping anxiety it really is.
Below: detail from The hypochondriac by Thomas Rowlandson
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Unpacking the Pack of 3
The Pack of 3 nights at the Marlborough at the end of August were well-attended and well-received. In fact Tarik, one of the Theatre managers, has asked for something for the fringe next year.
The second night of Pack of 3 evening was better than the first. The fact that there was so much going on in everyone's life: me moving house, the actors all off to study: Beth and Callum acting and Mark writing plus holidays, work commitments and so on meant that rehearsal time was very compressed. Also our sound and lighting person was only able to give us an hour or so before the opening made for a nervy first night.
The evenings featured three short plays, Wrong, our strongest piece from the March shows. We ended the March shows with Wrong, and where it was recieved as a pure comedy. This time, as an opener, the darker existential side of the play seemed to come to the fore. The characters of two young people deciding to become actors, who then find a corpse under the table became less comic and more darkly absurd. The audiences were absorbed.
Mark wrote the second piece Pirates Anonymous, and I am full of admiration for him. A fine piece to have written at any age, let alone 19, was about a dysfunctional family whose son takes on a Pirate persona to express his filial rage is a wonderfully theatrical device. The second scene was a self-help group for Pirate obsessives, with the boy attending and reaffirming his vow to be a pirate. Mark used a good deal of pirate language to spice up the text and this gave a really good flavour to the piece. This combined with Mark, Beth and Callum's huge piratical roaring enlivened the audience somewhat (and made the endless piratical roars of rehearsal well worth it).
The last piece Betty the Spacegirl drew some lovely physical performances from the actors. I had written it in a hurry, but it worked. The actors brought some excellent physical comedy to it too, and the costumes were fantastic. Essentially the story is that Betty the Spacegirl lands on a plant containing only male, somewhat rubbish looking aliens, with antennae. After a while the action is stopped and you see the characters bickering in the guise as actors. The piece is about communication failing, and slightly mocking the idea of Men are from Mars etc. It also had Callum as a transvestite alien, which was good value in itself.
I am working on another play for Christmas, called Sophie and the Angel, which has a strong concept. Next time I am going to more hands on about managing the play and its marketing, as the theatre did next to nothing to promote it until the last few days. My key learning: try not to do everything at the same time.
The great redeemer in all of this were Beth Symons, Mark Gandey and Callum McIntyre. The cast brought enormous energy, enthusiasm and managed to pull the show out of the hat brilliantly. I am fairly certian that when I am in my dotage, I will be croaking to anyone who will listen from my bath chair that I once had a couple of plays performed with these three stars in it. And nobody will believe me.
The second night of Pack of 3 evening was better than the first. The fact that there was so much going on in everyone's life: me moving house, the actors all off to study: Beth and Callum acting and Mark writing plus holidays, work commitments and so on meant that rehearsal time was very compressed. Also our sound and lighting person was only able to give us an hour or so before the opening made for a nervy first night.
The evenings featured three short plays, Wrong, our strongest piece from the March shows. We ended the March shows with Wrong, and where it was recieved as a pure comedy. This time, as an opener, the darker existential side of the play seemed to come to the fore. The characters of two young people deciding to become actors, who then find a corpse under the table became less comic and more darkly absurd. The audiences were absorbed.
Mark wrote the second piece Pirates Anonymous, and I am full of admiration for him. A fine piece to have written at any age, let alone 19, was about a dysfunctional family whose son takes on a Pirate persona to express his filial rage is a wonderfully theatrical device. The second scene was a self-help group for Pirate obsessives, with the boy attending and reaffirming his vow to be a pirate. Mark used a good deal of pirate language to spice up the text and this gave a really good flavour to the piece. This combined with Mark, Beth and Callum's huge piratical roaring enlivened the audience somewhat (and made the endless piratical roars of rehearsal well worth it).
The last piece Betty the Spacegirl drew some lovely physical performances from the actors. I had written it in a hurry, but it worked. The actors brought some excellent physical comedy to it too, and the costumes were fantastic. Essentially the story is that Betty the Spacegirl lands on a plant containing only male, somewhat rubbish looking aliens, with antennae. After a while the action is stopped and you see the characters bickering in the guise as actors. The piece is about communication failing, and slightly mocking the idea of Men are from Mars etc. It also had Callum as a transvestite alien, which was good value in itself.
I am working on another play for Christmas, called Sophie and the Angel, which has a strong concept. Next time I am going to more hands on about managing the play and its marketing, as the theatre did next to nothing to promote it until the last few days. My key learning: try not to do everything at the same time.
The great redeemer in all of this were Beth Symons, Mark Gandey and Callum McIntyre. The cast brought enormous energy, enthusiasm and managed to pull the show out of the hat brilliantly. I am fairly certian that when I am in my dotage, I will be croaking to anyone who will listen from my bath chair that I once had a couple of plays performed with these three stars in it. And nobody will believe me.
Monday, 11 July 2011
Recording Clameur
Writing this a week after the recording sessions for the CD Matt and I are putting together. We recorded the tracks in St Michael and All Angel's church in Brighton, which was the same venue that we premiered the main piece This Concert Will Fall In Love With You in the Brighton Festival Fringe in May 2010. Matt was in love with the acoustics there, and our recording engineer Simon Scardanelli loved the sound there too, and made a point of recording the silence which for all kinds of philosophical reasons I loved. I remember when we first performed the piece marvelling at how the sound from Adam's vibraphone being bowed hung in the air for seconds, like a giant wineglass being rung with a wet finger.
Musicians were Cem Muhurram, on violin, Glem Capra on piano, Tom Norrell on marimba, and Adam Bushell on vibraphone (and marimba on Clameur track). I noticed that Adam had brought a patch of carpet to stand on. Matt and I had socked feet to prevent floor squeaks. This could not prevent the odd car going past or, this being Brighton, the yarps of stray seagulls.
The recording went smoothly, and the playing was splendid on This Concert. We doubled back at took various takes, but this was very different to how I'd read about how rock bands record. As everyone knew what we were peforming and knew our pieces we sailed through it. The choir, present in the last few variations, were sounding confident too. I had naturally been rather anxious about my own part, but I was pleased with how my performance went. Simon gave me some kind of vintage microphone which made my voice sound better, and I had a slight sore throat too, which may have worked in my favour. However we'll have to hear what we have when Matt and I start the editing process with Simon in a couple of weeks.
The two choral pieces Found, and Clameur were then recorded, while I ran through Minotaur with Glen. This was literally a last minute piece, Matt had finished the score for the morning of the rehearsal, after we'd talked about it a couple of weeks ago. By 9:00pm everyone was a bit shattered, and all of us were all quite keen to get to the pub. Full of a slightly crazed energy, Glen and I did Minotaur in one take, which for a novice like me was exhilarating. And what we recorded was the first time the piece had ever been played right through.
Next steps are to work with Simon and start to create a definitive sound for the CD. I have also been working on designing the cover, employing some photos that were taken by the excellent Adrian Turner at our final pre-recording rehearsal.
Musicians were Cem Muhurram, on violin, Glem Capra on piano, Tom Norrell on marimba, and Adam Bushell on vibraphone (and marimba on Clameur track). I noticed that Adam had brought a patch of carpet to stand on. Matt and I had socked feet to prevent floor squeaks. This could not prevent the odd car going past or, this being Brighton, the yarps of stray seagulls.
The recording went smoothly, and the playing was splendid on This Concert. We doubled back at took various takes, but this was very different to how I'd read about how rock bands record. As everyone knew what we were peforming and knew our pieces we sailed through it. The choir, present in the last few variations, were sounding confident too. I had naturally been rather anxious about my own part, but I was pleased with how my performance went. Simon gave me some kind of vintage microphone which made my voice sound better, and I had a slight sore throat too, which may have worked in my favour. However we'll have to hear what we have when Matt and I start the editing process with Simon in a couple of weeks.
The two choral pieces Found, and Clameur were then recorded, while I ran through Minotaur with Glen. This was literally a last minute piece, Matt had finished the score for the morning of the rehearsal, after we'd talked about it a couple of weeks ago. By 9:00pm everyone was a bit shattered, and all of us were all quite keen to get to the pub. Full of a slightly crazed energy, Glen and I did Minotaur in one take, which for a novice like me was exhilarating. And what we recorded was the first time the piece had ever been played right through.
Next steps are to work with Simon and start to create a definitive sound for the CD. I have also been working on designing the cover, employing some photos that were taken by the excellent Adrian Turner at our final pre-recording rehearsal.
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