Kolumba

Peter Zumthor's Kolumba is a museum in the centre of Cologne, built between 1997 and 2007 on the site of the Church of St Kolumba, bombed during World War 2. Unlike so many of the Romanesque and medieval churches in the city that were lovingly reconstructed after the war, St Kolumba was left as a symbolic ruin and a smaller church was built amongst its ruins in the 1950s.

The museum encloses the 1950s church, the medieval ruins and is also a new multi-floor gallery space. The gallery and stairways are reduced to an absolute minimum of internal decoration of "reduced materiality" in which the art-works are given the space to breathe. 

The way in which space is organised and how visitors can move through it is breath-taking. The arts works themselves range from medieval to contemporary installation art.

Rebecca Horn: Berlin Earthbound, 1994

The fabric of the building itself is astonishing in the care and details with which everything is finished along with the attention to details - for instance, the wonderful brickwork or the wooden rails. 

Small openings have been introduced into the brickwork at certain point that allows the sound of the city outside to penetrate into the meditative quality of the space. 

Yet the impression left is quite different to most galleries and is a strangely quiet and meditative experience. 

On the top floor I came across a workshop of pieces by contemporary composers, but such in the nature of the building that it could equally well respond the requirements of medieval polyphony.

But where are the Swans?

I was in Antwerp, Flanders, recently and I thought I’d pay a visit to the city’s castle - the setting for Wagner’s Lohengrin. When Wagner eventually visited Antwerp in 1860, he realised that his ideas about its location were the rather wide of the mark (he imagined it was a fortress on a hill...). Here’s what the castle looks like today.

Its oldest sections date back to around 1200 (though built on an earlier site) and today only a fragment remains. It stands next to the mighty River Schelde and one of Belgium’s great  harbours.

It was presumably on the Schelde that Lohengrin arrived, his boat pulled by a swan.

Alas, there were no swans on the Schelde that day, so I visited the seaside resort of Blankenberge instead...

... to find where the swans had gone. I found them at an exhibition of work by the Flemish artist Roger Raveel at the city’s casino.

The exhibits included these splendid swans...

Raveel was one of the first Belgian artists to build work from everyday objects and the exhibition also included a magnificent painting through which one's own face can be displayed. 

                                                                     Photo © Marc Cauwenbergh

I wonder what Wagner would have made of it all...

Powerhouse at Presteigne

I've been in the sleepy little Welsh bordertown of Presteigne over the bank holiday weekend where conductor George Vass curates one of Britain's best contemporary music festivals.

It's a great festival where composers meet up and get together with discussions going on into the early hours at the various taverns around the town. Most of the concerts are held in St Andrew's Church in the town's centre (see below), as well as in various medieval churches in the surrounding villages. 

Presteigne is one of the most fascinating Welsh bordertowns, with lots of hugely characterful late eighteenth and early nineteenth century houses and cottages.

The concentration this year has been on the composer Matthew Taylor (who gave a fascinating "Desert Island Discs" type interview about his life and work on Monday afternoon) as well as marking the 150th anniversaries of Nielsen and Sibelius's births. I've been reviewing some of the concerts for the Hereford Times and Western Mail. You can read the reivews at the links below.

Western Mail Round-up (not yet online)

Bach to the Future. Fenella Humphreys. Hereford Times

Nararra Quartet in Presteigne. Hereford Times

Sunday Night Choral & Orchestral Concert. Hereford Times

Flights of Angels with Gillian Keith. Hereford Times

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.