Cippyn : The Decay

I've recently been working on a film collaboration with Aaron Cooper and his tutor Heledd Wyn Hardy from the Faculty of Creative Industries at ATRiuM (Course Leader, Bilingual Media Production) at the University of South Wales. It's about a deserted chapel near Cardigan in the village of Cippyn; it now sits in a remote spot, a quarter of a mile from the main road, hidden away on a solitary footpath leading towards the sea (you can see more information in previous blogs back last October and January). 

Next Wednesday, 4 March, between 7 and 8pm, you can see the film and photographs of the chapel as part of an installation in the theatre at ATRiuM. You will be able to enter visuals of the chapel in a small space enclosed by four screens through which you can wander. Here's the poster:

Over the last few days I have finished a soundscape that runs through the film, made up of sounds from around the site - gulls, wind, rain, water dripping off the chapel roof and today Odlion Marcenaro at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama has been matched up to the film. Here's a sample of what I've been doing: https://soundcloud.com/peter-reynolds-2/no-1-gulls

When the rest of the music is added to the film, later this month, double bass player Ashley John Long will play the part I am composing for solo double bass. Next Wednesday, he will be playing it live as part of the installation. Here he is, running through it with me recently. 

Heledd at ARTriuM has produced a very elegant little flyer  for the event. If you'd see it, just turn up on the night - you can find details and an invitation here.

Programme Notes

Programme notes are a constant part of my working life and scarcely a week goes by when I don’t produce at least one set. Many of the notes are written for St David’s Hall, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, but there are also many other festivals and concert giving organisations who ask me for notes as well. Here is the programme for last night’s concert at St David’s Hall in Cardiff for which I did the notes.

It was the first concert in their 2014-15 International Concert Series, given by the Russian State Philharmonic orchestra conducted by Valery Polyansky with music by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky. 

After the concert there was a blistering post-concert performance of Shostakovich’s Third String Quartet given by the Mavron Quartet. And here is my desk a few weeks ago, strewn with books and scores for last night’s notes.

Lots of people think that notes can be drafted quite quickly using Wikipedia, but I find that each note usually requires me to look at all the main source books on the composer, as well as consulting other notes and, of course, the score. I’ve just reached 1700 notes on file which helps me to respond quickly to requests for notes for concerts (for a list see my website)