Poetry and music does not mix easily… that is perhaps what is attractive about the union…

The London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper programme nurtures and promotes the next generation of composers and interdisciplinary collaborators by providing the context and space to develop new work. On Wednesday 16 May collaborative works currently being developed by 3 groups of composers and artists on the programme will be showcased in a works-in-progress preview event at Village Underground, Shoreditch.

Composer Philip Venables and poet Steven J Fowler’s work The Revenge of Miguel Cotto, explores the violence, sanctioned by society, that is boxing.  Steven writes…

Tragedy is a subject best approached indirectly, certainly one runs immense risks in writing tragic poetry in 2012. We opened ourselves up to that contingency when we decided to take on the narrative that we did. When first Philip and I agreed, at my gentle urging, to formulate a piece about the boxer Miguel Cotto, he had yet to rematch the man who beaten him into a state of near death using (discovered posthumously) hand bandages loaded with plaster of paris. It is boxing’s own particular brand of madness that such a rematch with this man, Antonio Margarito, was allowed to happen at all. All to our advantage. The point being our work together was born of possibility, of chance, of contingency and we welcomed that into our process and our collaboration. Poetry and music does not mix easily, nor gently, and that is perhaps what is attractive about the union. And beyond that, when first scores were being drawn, staging arranged, poetry mooted we did not even know whether the piece would be a story of tragedy or of revenge.

As Philip has trusted me into the world of boxing (and poetry) so I have trusted him to shape the narrative beyond the narrative, and therein lies the key to our work being successful, that it might utilise notions apparent in the subject to embody something original, and powerful, perhaps even aggressively so. And as I have suggested, it has always been my experience that music doesn’t synthesis easily with poetry – it requires innovation, intention and a fair measure of sacrifice. So I believe our piece, as it nears its beginning (which can feel like an end, strangely, for the preview show) has become defined by its rough edges and at its core, will retain something of the volatility of both our subject and our method. I have been asked already if our piece might allow those who don’t appreciate boxing to enter into my perception, and thus appreciation of the sport … I can only say I feel it’s not for me to say, nor has it become a concern of ours. Boxing is a repository for a palpable sense of being, of alive-ness, whether it is enjoyed or not. And I would venture the same goes for good music and good poetry. If our piece comes close to achieving the same sensation, we will be exceedingly happy.

Steven J Fowler, poet, The Revenge of Miguel Cotto 

From the technicolour fantasies of Disney to the anarchist trenches…

The London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper programme nurtures and promotes the next generation of composers and interdisciplinary collaborators by providing the context and space to develop new work. On Wednesday 16 May collaborative works currently being developed by 3 groups of composers and artists on the programme will be showcased in a works-in-progress preview event at Village Underground, Shoreditch.

Composer Steve Potter and writer/dramaturg Kélina Gotman have been working on 100 Combat Troupes, a music-theatre piece which stages the urgency and ambivalence of dreaming other possible worlds.  In the first of a series of blog posts ahead of the event Kélina gives us an update on the progress of 100 Combat Troupes…

Paul Klee's Angelus Novus, inspiration for 100 Combat Troupes

24 March. 5.18pm: The first thing to say is that it’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting out back in the newly-refurbished Crystal Palace Tavern (CPT, for short- I always want to call it the Camden People’s Theatre, even though it’s not), and Steve is slaving away at home working on the Rivers of the World sequence – Adam’s scene, the most difficult one.

We had a great session this morning, looking back over the script, which I revised – finally – after procrastinating on it for a week or two. Steve had some comments, and we more or less solved (I think) the Messiah sequence, the last scene. It wasn’t really clear what it was about: what the mood was, or what the point, was, really, either. I think we’ve figured out that it’s a coda, silent (no language), but playful. The actors will be doing very little: sitting at a folding card table, which we need to acquire, or find. Pulling out foldable chairs. Talking like old friends, gesticulating. It’s going to be shorter than we had thought. One minute, rather than four. And end in an 8 second burst of Balkan gypsy music, then nothing. It makes sense, after Adam’s wild scene.

I could say more, but I have 100 to 400 words for this blog post, so will move on to the other thing we figured out this morning, lest I try my reader’s patience, and that’s the Disney sequence, which I think Steve has totally nailed.  We had a rehearsal (or a workshop) with the London Sinfonietta on Monday last week, and I was concerned that the soundscape was too disjointed. There were all kinds of things going on, and it was going to be disruptive, and felt random. Kirstin has a huge, intense, monologue – much of it is gibberish (intentionally so), a childish princess-like patter, a grown-up girl’s fetish dreams of infinite girldom, the disaster land of Disney, and the music was going to make the scene too messy. Confusing. But Steve has found the perfect soundscape: we’re still using the sped-up Swan Lake, as per a momentary flash of inspiration from many months ago, but it’s more audible now; it’s also halting. Like a little girl refusing to grow up, not getting anywhere; the tune blasts for a few seconds, then pause, then starts again, a zillion times. Start stop, it’s perfect as a counterpart to Kirstin’s rapid-fire babble about Aibo (the robot dog), Dorothy, and other things, which I won’t get into right now. Let’s just say that she gets suddenly pissed off, swears at the two other actors, who have hit her (accidentally) in the head with a projectile. The trick was to get the music to turn, but without having it be so violent a shift that we would need 100 more rehearsals to get the timing right. Here, our stopwatch structure will allow Kirstin to fire off her scene (in exactly 2’20’’), while the musicians watch her for their cue – Steve was suggesting we ask David Hockings, the London Sinfonietta’s Principal percussionist, to watch for the shift, and then the music turns – subtly, but definitely, darker.

Next on the to-do list for the day: fire off the revised script to Kaite O’Reilly, who has offered ridiculously useful mentoring so far.  See what she says about the changes.

 Kélina Gotman, writer/dramaturg, 100 Combat Troupes

Guest Blogger: RAM Student Chris Petrie attends a rehearsal of Beat Furrer’s Nuun

Beat Furrer – composer, conductor and co-founder of Klangforum Wien – is hugely influential in Europe, yet his work has hardly been heard in the UK. Prior to tonight’s London Sinfonietta’s performance of three of his seminal works, including two UK premieres, we invited some  students from the Royal Academy of Music to attend a rehearsal and tell us what they thought. Here is Chris’s blog …

London Sinfonietta Rehearsal 17/01/11 – Beat Furrer: Nuun

Before last week I was not at all familiar with the music of Beat Furrer, which was also the case for most of my peers. Over this last week I have attended a variety of Furrer events and have come to admire his music and approach to composition on a number of levels. Furrer’s temperament, both on and off the podium, is quiet and thoughtful. These characteristics are apparent in his compositions where he has obviously taken much time to contemplate every detail, of which there are many.

I attended the rehearsal of Nuun which is one of his seminal larger-scaled works. I had previously heard a recording of this work (Klangforum Wien, conducted by Peter Eötvös) and had particularly enjoyed Furrer’s approach to colour and sound through complex textures. These textures are often teeming with extended techniques that are a common feature of his compositions, and are somewhat interrelated with his love of visual art. These dense textures that often cut back and forth between sparser scoring create large soundscapes that ebb and flow between background to foreground music over the course of entire compositions. These textures are then often punctuated by simple, yet effective, compositional ideas such as trumpet calls, clusters and scalic figurations in a composition such as Nuun.

Nuun is dominated by two pianos, one on either side of the stage that create a very effective ‘stereo’ sound. The pianos instigate the general textures and moods of the other two-dozen or so musicians who are placed in between the pianos.

The opening of Nuun starts with a previously mentioned densely complex ensemble before the trumpet calls provide the first feature that the ear can wholly embrace. These darkly urgent trumpet calls echo around the winds before dissipating into scalic gestures that in turn, melt into clusters. These compositional ideas are transformed over time towards a ‘climax’, after which two ‘silent’ pauses are heard. This signals the beginning of the end and from here the piece devolves towards the increasingly sparse ending.

The London Sinfonietta, with students from the Royal Academy of Music, expertly realise Furrer’s intentions in an intensely energetic fashion. Through working with the composer himself, the London Sinfonietta have provided me with a memorable first experience of this work which I will look forward to enjoying in concert with other compositions by Furrer and Naomi Pinnock.

Chris Petrie

Click here to find out more about the In Portrait: Beat Furrer concert at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight.