Cyppin - The Video

Readers of this blog might remember between October last year and last March I reported on a the process of planning a video with a musical soundtrack. During the summer the final edits were finished and I have just uploaded the result to You Tube. Click here to see it.

The video features and is built around the small non-conformist chapel of Bryn Salem Chapel in Cyppin, Pembrokeshire, founded around 1847 and built in 1852. It now lies unused and derelict, about half a mile off the main road on the edge of a field. You won't find an entry for it in the Buildings of Wales architectural guides. 

The project was part of a the Creative Wales project from the Arts Council of Wales which I am currently completing. It is concerned with musical performances of my music in unusual and remote spaces; particularly small Welsh churches and chapels. Whilst the idea of a performance at the chapel was attractive, in this instance I wished to creating a short video around the chapel, for solo double bass and an electronically generated soundscape made of manipulated natural sounds (wind, birdsong and so forth) captured at the church. 

The video is concerned with the idea of the decay of the chapel and, perhaps, other elements, places, ways of life and so forth in the area and community. But this is not necessarily seen in a negative context: nature gradually and gently reclaims the chapel and its structure,re-absorbing it back into the landscape. A similar process is also applied to the musical structure.

This short film of the chapel and its location was made by Aaron J Cooper and directed by Heledd Wyn Hardy (seen below working on the film on a very cold January day earlier this year). 

The music is played here by Ashley John Long and the recording engineer was Odilon Marcenaro.The last sentence however doesn't begin to reveal how much Odilon helped me through the process last winter, mentoring me through the use of electronics and then showing me the process of transferring these to film. Without him it would not have happened.

This is very much a first stab at this way of working and therefore a student effort - it's presented here as a curiosity and more as work in progress than a finished item. I am very much aware of its defects and crudities (at a musical level) but was fortunate to work with several fabulous people - particularly Aaron and Heledd (who constantly pushed me forward and encouraged the project) not to mention the wonder double bass playing of Ashley John Long. 

Hasguard

A day out to do some research for the final part of my Creative Wales project. This is the most difficult part, requiring a conceptual leap that I’m still rather uncertain of how to make. It’s concerned with the relationship of music to architecture and place and, following on from the last part of the project (based around the abandon chapel at Cippyn), I have decided to follow up a similar site of which I have been aware for sometime. This is a ruined medieval church at Hasguard, in Pembrokeshire.

Hasguard is quite remote, about ten miles South-west from Haverfordwest and beyond the more industrialised Milford Haven part of the county. This is the bit that tourists and visitors are not so familiar with and is about four miles from the little coastal village of Dale.

As you will see from the photos, it was a perfect early autumn day and the roads were empty apart from an endless stream of tractors; it’s harvest time after all…

Like Cippyn, Hasguard is one of those villages that no longer seem to exist beyond a handful of dispersed houses, farms and the ruined church itself. Unlike Cippyn though, it’s not too difficult to find.

The church is medieval and of uncertain age, added to and adapted from about the thirteenth century onwards. The roof has gone and the inside rendering has been open to the elements and only two windows remain, but it’s otherwise in surprisingly good condition and there is no vandalism or graffiti. 

It certainly could house a performance of some kind without posing any serious Health and Safety risks. As you’ll see it seems to be well-looked after; a friend who visited it some years ago tells me that it was then overgrown with weeds and creepers, though it does still house a small colony of snails.

It’s difficult to know when it was abandoned. The churchyard has a number of rather ordinary nineteenth century headstones and the burials seem to have persisted through into the 1960s, so its use seems to have ceased sometime in the last forty to fifty years.  

And, to follow, a visit to Dale to write up my notes together with some coffee and cake…

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. 

  

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.

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