At last - The Tomb of Spirits

All the rewrites and timing alterations are complete and 'The Tomb of Spirits' opens at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge at 2pm today.  Here are some photos from the last rehearsal I attended, which featured half a dozen or so students coming in to photograph the proceedings.

The three cues are all very long, the third over16 minutes, but I will post an extract or two in the near future.

Teaching and performance commitments in Norfolk make it impossible to attend but I shall be thinking of Sally Brown, Anthony Best and director Steve Tiplady at two o'clock this afternoon.

Playing outdoors

So much to write about. A new piece of kit, a malfunctioning microphone, selecting tin whistles and, in respect of the whistles, the start of the R&D (research and development) week for The Pied Piper tomorrow.

But all that in good time.  Today I drove across to a piece of woodland south-west of Cambridge where I'll playing for a weekend of expressive dance over the first weekend in May.  It takes place in beautiful woodland with a dance floor in the trees, roofed but not walled, and involves the participants camping in clearings.  Most importantly, the site has a spacious and very effective sauna.


Today's meeting was primarily to connect with the space.  Much as I enjoy playing jazz in gardens for weddings, there is nothing quite like improvising in response to the environment and the moving human body. The Romans used to leave offerings to the genii loci, meaning the spirits of the place.  It is curious that the music I play on this site is completely different from that which comes to me at other sites.  Everywhere has a different  vibe.

The Tomb of Spirits

Another show for the Fitzwilliam Museum is coming together nicely. Last Friday I went over to Cambridge to see how The Tomb of Spirits was developing and to discuss the audio requirements. The exhibition which runs alongside the show is of Han dynasty tomb goods from two tombs: a minor king and an emperor's brother.

Since I got back I've been recording dew drops falling into a jade bowl, entombed to make sure the deceased did not go thirsty in the afterlife. Not having a jade bowl to hand I tried a singing bowl and a pyrex dish before settling on an IKEA soup bowl. The challenge is to get the quiet drips recorded above the 'noise floor', the background hiss of the recording gear.

There will be plenty of scope for bamboo flute, dulcimer and Chinese percussion. A search for Chinese music on YouTube yielded some disappointingly cheesy results until I remembered The Guo Brothers who set the bar very high. If I can recreate even a flavour of what they have done I shall be very happy.

Cambridge

It's always a pleasure to visit Cambridge, even on those occasions when, not expecting rain, I get soaked to the skin. I arrived in balmy temperatures and sat outside the rehearsal space with a cup of coffee. But when I left the Fitzwilliam just after lunch it was markedly cooler and the rain was just beginning. And by the time I got back to our rehearsal space I was wet through.

I was in the city to work on a performance project called 'Dreams of Kings and Heroes' that opens at the Fitzwilliam Museum at the end of the month. It is based on, and accompanies, the current Shahnameh exhibition. The Shahnameh tells the Persian story prior to the Arab invasion in the 7th Century AD. It's a heady, and often violent, blend of history, legend and myth is reminiscent of both the Old Testament and One Thousand and One Nights.

Friday was an opportunity to meet the rest of the team, see the exhibition for myself and play with some ideas. Now I'm immersing myself in Persian classical music, quarter tones and all, in the hope that some flavours will find their way into my own compositions. If experience is anything to go by, fifty minutes may not be long enough to accustom Western ears to quarter tones, even if there were to be music throughout the show. But I hope stop short of Disneyfication and strive to do justice to what looks like being a fabulous (literally, for once) son et lumière presentation.