Dyfed Young Composers

I've been down in West Wales for several days taking part in workshops to encourage school age students to compose. The scheme is run by Dyfed Young Composers – a scheme in which young composers in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokshire work with top quality players. This year they will be working with violinist Steve Bingham and percussionist Chris Brannick. Last week was the start of the process with three workshops to some 300 school pupils given in Haverfordwest, Aberaeron and Gwendraith. I was honoured to be their Composer in Residence between 2010-13 and am very happy to be back again this year. 

Young composers are being invited to compose for violin and percussion and to include electric violin as well together with electronics. Here is Steve Bingham playing on an instrument that is over 200 years old ... 

... and a bright blue new electric violin.

Steve Brannick was unable to join us for the first week of workshops, so it was great to have Steffan Ciccotti on hand to take everyone through the inticacies of writing for percussion. Steffan was both a finalist in the Young Music Makers of Dyfed competition and wrote pieces under the Dyfed Young Composers scheme some years back and is now working as a freelance composer and percussionist in London. It's great news that both he and composer Emily Wright will be coming into the schools to help me ...

You can find out more about the scheme at its website. If you were born in any of the counties of Dyfed and are 22 or under you can also take part or submit a composition for the workshops next April. Many thanks to YMMD's administrator Cathy Morris for the photos.

A Century of Piano Music

I was in York at the National Centre for Early Music earlier this week to record a new piano piece I've written for Duncan Honeybourne.

It's part of a CD project set up by composer David Power which features a selection of piano works by British composers written over the last century, culminating in recent pieces by David and myself. The other composers are Morfydd Owen, Evangeline and Leo Livens, Julius Harrison, Constance Warren, Arthur Butterworth, Christopher Headington, John Longmire, Peter Racine Fricker and Howard Skempton. All the pieces are being recorded for the first time. The National Centre for Early Music is based in a church dating back to the eleventh century church near to Fossgate. Here is Duncan in action.

And here is Duncan, David and myself listening to some playbacks along with Jez Wells who is recording and producing the CD.

My piece is based on the same idea as the film I worked on earlier this year, based around the abandoned chapel at Cippyn in Pembrokeshire, developing and carrying over some of the music for it (more details in this blog). I've written a piece which can only be realised as a recording with the piano is overdubbed and asked to do things that are not be possible live. Here I am helping Duncan play some of the internal strings with a drumstick.

Watch out for more details early next year when the CD is released.

Abandoned Chapel at ATRiuM

Last night was the showing of the installation in the theatre at ATRiuM, Cardiff, of the film I've been working on with Aaron J Cooper and Heledd Wyn Hardy. as part of my Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales award. Heledd set up four screens with back projections of the film into which an audience of about 60 visitors wandered, looking at the beautiful texture and images that Aaron has captured and put together. Here they are in the space just before the audience arrived.

Last night double bass player Ashley John Long was positioned high up above the installation, playing the score that I've written to go with the film.

 It was a thrilling experience to hear him emerging in and out of the soundscape drawn from the sounds of birds, wind and rain captured at the location which I put together with the help of Odlion Marcenaro. 

The audience wandered in around the installation itself and as well as sitting in the theatre, quietly listening to the music unfold.  

The film is shows a deserted chapel near Cardigan in the village of Cippyn which was abandoned thirty years ago. Extrodinarily it has never suffered any vandalism, is now just gradually fading away and eventully, I imagine will be reclaimed by the countryside. (you can see more information in previous blogs back last October and January).

The next stage now will be to record Ashley's double bass part in the studio and match it to the film later this month - when it's complete I will be posting it on You Tube. 

A big thank you to to Heledd in particular who's driven the scheme through and kept me on course; to Aaron for his wonderful film; to Ashley for bringing the score to life and Odilon for all his help and guidance with the soundscape. 

  

Filming at Cippyn

In a previous blog post I showed pictures of abandoned chapel in Cippyn near Cardigan. Since then I have started working on a project as part of my Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales project based on the building and its surrounding landscape.

I'm very lucky to be working on a short film of the chapel and its location.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. I'm now writing a piece for solo double bass (for Ashey Long) which is underpinned by an electronically manipulated soundscape of sounds recorded at the site. I've never worked with film before and am coming to grips with the technology of producing the soundscape over the last couple of months with the help of Odilon Marcenaro at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.

Last Sunday I went along to the chapel at Cippyn with Arron and Heledd to watch them working on the film.

It's a long and painstaking process, with lots of tiny shots and different angles that will eventually be stitched together into the final cut. Here's Aaron filming a tiny clump of weeds that have grown up around the internal door to the chapel.

We were lucky with the weather and had the whole range of different types of weather and light during the day - very much a part of the coastal micro-climate in this part of the world. Here  is Aaron with Heledd filming the exterior of the church.

From the porch of the chapel itself, there is a breathtaking view down to one of the bays on the coast.

Most of the film is being made digitally, but we also had ten minutes of real film used for some of the shots. Here's the camera ...

Whilst Aaron and Heledd were working on the filming, I recorded various sounds from around the church: wind, rain dripping from the roof, different birds in the locality, a sudden downpour of rain and the inside of the church itself.

Now I'm working on the music, but won't put the whole thing together until after Monday when I see the first rough cut.

Chapel in the Woods

When I posted my blog about the small chapel at Bayvil back in August, Andrew Wilson-Dickson told me about a ruined chapel he had discovered whilst taking a detour from the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path near St Dogmaels, near Cardigan. The idea of the church suggested many new ideas that I could use as part of the Creative Wales Award I’m currently working on, so I set off to find the church.

I initially I started walking the south along the coastal path from Poppit Sands, encountering some alarming notices …

… and the usual fellow travellers …

As well as other abandoned and discarded artifacts

The chapel belonged to the community of Cippyn, which is so small that it isn’t even signposted. Eventually, after walking along a bridal path for half a mile or so, the roof of a building came in sight.

The chapel is surrounded by woodland and fields

Some of its windows are broken and the entrance is overgrown with brambles, but the building has not been vandalised: 

Inside the original communion table is still in place

Someone has recently left a little plastic bottle with flowers in a little niche in the wall

It’s difficult to know how long the church has been abandoned, but there was still a newspaper scattered around the floor dating back thirty years: 

I left armed with lots of information, ready to move on to the next stage ... watch this space! 

More pictures of the deserted chapel near Cippyn