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Monthly Archive: May 2012
Fire in Salisbury
Posted on Sunday, May 27, 2012
My piece Fire was always going to be something of an experiment. Part of the idea was to try to create a non-religious 'spiritual space', a contemplation of fire and our relationship with it. In Choristers' Green next to the great cathedral of Salisbury we posed a ridiculously ambitious question - could we create a non-religious version of that simultaneously awe-inspiring and contemplative atmosphere that visitors to the cathedral take for granted? I think it's part of the English tradition to be wary of overly earnest ambitions, and part of me spent the last few weeks of rehearsals in a quiet terror that the whole thing would be a hideous embarrassment. People praise artists for 'taking risks', but no one actually wants to be there for the failures.
The first full run-through with the Salisbury Community Choir (conducted devotedly by Jeremy Backhouse) and the excellent Horns Aloud a couple of weeks ago was a dispiriting disaster. Having learned the piece in the rehearsal room, it was suddenly rather overwhelming for the choristers to find themselves in a giant circle, struggling to see the two conductors (who themselves were struggling to co-ordinate), not helped by the hideous weather causing the conductors' scores to go flying, and the choristers' umbrellas flailing in all directions. The thought of adding in a rowdy crowd, fire, and darkness...well, the whole thing seemed like it would be just one big mistake. I haven't had such a feeling of dread since my student days!
Such dark days are however often turning points, and it certainly galvanised us all into doing whatever we could to make it work better. A couple of weeks later, with various tweaks to the set up and the score, more concentrated rehearsals, and with somebody very clever organising truly perfect weather conditions, what happened really was a (non-religious) miracle!
Around 9.30pm, a huge expectant crowd gathered, even before the planned post-concert audience emerged from the cathedral. The first unison notes from the horns silenced the crowd and the choir gave it their all (having already spent the entire day rehearsing and recording the piece for a Radio 3 broadcast later in the year). To my delight, the audience did what we hoped they would - they stood focussing their attention on the central mass of flames, while the sound from the encircling choir enveloped them from without. The atmosphere was as silent and contemplative as the Wigmore Hall. Everyone seemed to just get it.
As the piece finished and returned to the quiet unison horn notes, a gust of wind caught the flames and the fire roared and danced as if to say 'look at me'. The timing was so exquisite, I would claim divine approval if that wasn't contrary to the entire non-religious spirit of the piece!
So, it was an eccentric experiment, but I think we pulled it off. I suddenly felt - perhaps for the first time in my life - that I had been a very English composer. What could be more English than choral-eccentric-mysticism performed in the shadow of Salisbury cathedral?!
Setting up
The setting was next to Salisbury Cathedral in Chorister's Green
The crowd gathers
Waiting outside the circle as the flames are lit
And the view from within. Huge credit to The World Famous for their beautiful installation.
Improving on silence
Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2012
As composers we're basically suggesting we're capable of creating things that improve upon silence ("Apprentice Silence-improver" is my twitter self-description). That said, silence is not something you expect to find in a room full of 2500 school kids on a sweltering hot day. So I count it as a success -perhaps a triumph- if a piece of music can keep such a room sitting in attentive quietude for fifteen solid minutes, which we managed not once, but twice yesterday! This was the world premiere of Prince Zal and the Simorgh given by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under David Angus at Royal Festival Hall.
Huge thanks to all involved, including the enthusiatic young violinists from Jessop and Ashmole schools in London (part of London Music Masters Bridge Project), the Daf players from City University, the great talents of Fariborz Kiani and Arash Moradi, the wonderful Sally Pomme Clayton as author, collaborator and narrator, and David Agnus and the LPO. Quite a cast list!
Here with Sally Pomme Clayton, who both wrote the words for the story (based on the Ferdowsi poem) and narrated them with great aplomb!
and the fantastic kids from London Music Masters' Bridge Project:
A double dose of marvelous
Posted on Tuesday, May 8, 2012
I have two huge premieres in a matter of days later this month. First on 23rd May, the London Philharmonic Orchestra will give two world premiere performances of Prince Zal and the Simorgh to a Festival Hall packed with school kids (if you can imagine any more daunting audience). The piece features a narration, written and presented by the wonderful Sally Pomme Clayton and is based on part of the Iranian epic poem The Shahnameh. You could call it a kind of Iranian Peter and the Wolf. But it's quite a dark and dramatic story, so it will be very "interesting" to see how it goes over.
Equally daunting is the second premiere - my '20x12' Cultural Olympiad commission Fire - at the Salisbury Festival on 26th May. This is daunting because of the logistics of handling a fire artist, and a large chorus singing in a circle (even with two conductors we will be struggling to co-ordinate). But with a large dose of positive thinking, and a drier spell of weather than we've been having recently, I'm sure, in the words of the great English conductor David Parry, all will be MARVELOUS!
