Throw Them Up and Let Them Sing

I’ve been in Cumbria for 3 weeks now and I still don’t feel I have got started with the editing. There have been meetings at the Hatton Gallery and phone calls and my Mum’s 80th birthday.  It was freezing at first and lots of snow. Then I thought the dog was pregnant (turned out to be a phantom one - poor girl), and lots needed sorting out in the house. Then I got a cold which made the M.E. worse and I don’t edit when I feel bad as I make mistakes - like deleting files by accident.  And which bright spark at Youtube decided the whole site needed to be redesigned?  I’ve just spent all afternoon sorting out my Youtube site just as an article about it is about to come out.  Its was fine as it was boys!  (…I am sure they are boys).  

So now - hopefully - I can get the editing done. But after lots of logging - I do know how I am going to edit it, so I am not so worried. We have finally sorted out the concert and the line-up, the billing, the accommodation etc. Its been a job in itself. Thank God Paul Bream at Jazz North East is helping on that. But we are now having the Bohman Brothers and my friend pianist Steve Beresford doing a funny piece with a prepared grand piano, text and amplified found objects about Stefan Wolpe’s piano music for Schwitter’s poem An Anna Blume. Its really, really hard to play apparently. So they are going to do a piece about that. They are brilliant, funny, creative musicians and performance artists who between them have performed at the Barbican, The Royal Festival Hall, Tate Modern, The Louvre, and our gig Mopomoso at the Vortex. Then Phil Minton will do a more musical version of the Ursonate with German vocal artist and sound poet Ute Wassermann who is coming from Berlin. She has a major commission for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival this year. Sylvia Hallett will do a solo on bicycle wheel and hardanger fiddle. The wheel sounds just like empty Norwegian fjords. Phil Minton (who has just performed at Aldeburgh in an opera about Dracula) and Roger Turner will also do a voice and found objects improvisation and anything else that we think of on the night… Its the 30th June in Hall 2 at the Sage Gateshead. I also had a visit from Lorna at the Cultural Olympiad last week and Ann my Arts Council officer. I think they are happy with everything. It must be hard for them to know. I was hoping to make it to the Sage next week for the John Cage evening, part of the AV Festival in Tyneside. But I think I have too much work to do.

Where is all the time going to?  I have to get the film edited in the next few weeks as the sound edit will be quite complex I imagine. 

I got a bit distracted in January.  I had a new bathroom installed which is great.  I spent ages doing an online interview with music writer Stuart Broomer for Point of Departure magazine, an international music magazine devoted to serious study of free improvisation and free jazz.  He is doing a feature about me and the films I make - including the Schwitters project.  It will be in the March issue.  It actually took me a long time to complete as I put quite a lot of thought into what I wanted to say about myself.  It was a lot of work but really useful to think about what I am doing and great to be taken seriously. On the same front,  I went to Switzerland to show 3 films I made with Phil Minton at a music festival in Zurich.  Tzwei Tage Zeit.  Because they were being screened in a big theatre with a very good sound system I decided to re-master the sound on all of the films with Dave Hunt.  It was really worth it - especially with Sea Shanties.  The stereo separation is much more enhanced in the tiny sounds, the quiet stuff. I’m very happy with it.  And it will now be included in the Hatton Gallery exhibition.  The other two films I screened are The Cutty Wren  (Phil singing a traditional English folk song, but in his own way, with gorgeous piano accompaniment by Veryan Weston) and Two Figures in a Vortex  (Phil and John Russell live at the Vortex Jazz Club but filmed very blurred and abstract, on a slow shutter speed).  

I really enjoyed being at the Swiss arts centre - the Theater Rigiblick - in Zurich, but I found it hard to imagine Dada being born in such a nice, neat, tidy respectable city and there was very little acknowledgement of this legacy in the city itself.  The Cabaret Voltaire “Museum” in the original venue was nothing much but the cafe was nice on a horrible, cold, wet day.  The best thing was meeting the musicians playing at the festival and the people at the Theatre.  I love the free improvised music scene in mainland Europe as there are always visual artists there as well, who know the music and who understand what I am doing.  I always have an interesting dialogue about my work and you get the impression that the musicians do also go to art galleries and art house cinemas.  Like the musicians I work with - my films are taken far more seriously and I am given far more respect - outside the UK. 

I filmed two percussionists on the first night as I liked the lines of the sticks and reflections as they were playing.  Sylwia Zytynska and Fritz Hauser.

But the best thing about the whole weekend for me, was seeing my films on a big screen with fantastic sound.  For anyone who has only seen them on a computer  - they look and sound great.  Its a massive thrill for me. 

Then I delayed my trip to Cumbria and editing for a week in order to go to a Cultural Olympiad drinks party at Tate Britain.  This is the arts festival for the London 2012 Olympics and they funded my project.  Here is my link on the website.  I met Lorna Fulton who is the Cultural Programmer for the North East part of the festival. She’s great.  Everyone was laughing about the BBC4 sitcom “2012” and pretending to think it is really accurate!  Lots and lots of jargon and pointless bureaucracy.  But Lorna isn’t remotely like that. And her boss Nigel Hinds is brilliant.  He knows all about the music I am working with and used to promote such concerts.

I’m finally in Cumbria and really need to just concentrate on editing the film now.  But tomorrow I am driving to Newcastle for a meeting about the workshops that the gallery are running with Newcastle University Music Department.  And I need to sort out somewhere to stay while I am there in June.