Brewery Arts Residency: August - September 2021
After a really fun week of “unleashing the arts” with a brilliantly inventive group of 7 - 14 year olds at the Brewery Arts’ creative summer camp - where the intrepid participants created musical set-pieces to accompany their own dance and drama - I settled into my own camp upstairs in the Brewery’s studio space. Over the last two months I’ve covered a lot of musical ground, recording Propellor, writing new music in Ableton Live, performing at the Brewery Arts open night, collaborating with new Brewery tutor Anna Etherington, being mentored by Vicky Clarke (a musician using machine learning to write new music concrète), researching a solo show and playing lots of music…
This is the score for episode 4 of Propellor’s podcast series, Flight. It’s called Soundscape Ecology and in the episode Dr. Linda O Keeffe (a sound artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland and head of the School of Art at Edinburgh College of Art) explains how this area of science listens to the health of the planet. The music treats Propellor like a field recording with everyone improvising using this graphic score, but without hearing the other players parts until it’s all put together in production.
Everything is recorded reeeeaaaally quietly because when we listen to a field recording we are most often listening to an amplification of the soundscape. I wanted to try and recreate that sense of wonder you can experience when a landscape is made sonic; when you realise that you’re hearing wonderfully small details incredibly clearly and up close in a sound picture, but here we’re using the live band. So it’s recorded quietly but will be played back at a much more comfortable volume and allow the listener to go inside the sounds they wouldn’t normally be close enough to hear from the instruments…
The partner episode for this score is called Melody and is a remix of the same recording by Leafcutter John, taking these improvised sounds and making new melodies from them!
All of the music for Propellor’s podcast series Flight has been finished in these last two months while I’ve been working at the Brewery, and is currently being recorded remotely by the band. I’ve been able to use the theatre space and digital lounge to record all the clarinet and bass clarinet material, as well as Propellor percussionist Delia Stevens, who brought her vibraphone, hang drum and bicycle wheel into the theatre! I’ll share some of where these recordings have got to next month.
Here’s a gallery of photos from our band recording in the Brewery Arts theatre space earlier this year. The whole of Propellor ensemble will be coming to Brewery Arts either late this year or in January 2022 to begin workshopping the live performance of Flight. We’re going to be building a percussion instrument out of recycled materials that can feature as a centrepiece of the performance and be played by the public as well as our percussionists, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for ways to get involved and come along to public sharings of the project as it develops…
Through September I’ve started researching and trying out new ways of playing my instruments for a solo show that is all about air. As a clarinettist, my performance background has spun between the worlds of music, theatre and movement, and so I want the show I’m developing to be a combination of storytelling, movement, music, interactive set design and well, air. The piece will explore the interconnectedness and importance of our breath, the movement of wind, birds and people, our mental and physical health, the quality of the air we breathe and the phycology of air. As a wind player these themes are allowing me to musically explore the very limits of the way I produce sound. I hope to be able to share some initial sketches from this new project with anyone that’s interested towards the end of the year.
In addition to this, and as a mentee with the fantastic creative music charity Brighter Sound, I’ve also been able to learn from the wonderfully curious and award winning musician Vicky Clarke, at both her studio space in Manchester and by bringing Vicky up to spend a day trying things out with live processing in the Brewery - here are some photos from our time playing around with different bits of technology and some of the instruments that Vicky has built herself. In practice, I’m interested in augmenting what I already do (playing clarinets) with live electronics that allow me to go beyond the instrument’s capabilities and traditional sounds.
I tried out some of the things Vicky had been helping me develop at the official Brewery Arts opening night (live clarinet harmonies and lots of low frequency oscillators!), I had a great time playing to people and meeting folks who’ve been involved with Brewery Arts as it gears up for a new exciting chapter. I had a lovely chat with some of the brilliant team behind Deco Publique, an art and culture company based in Morecambe and working across the North - if you don’t already know them, check them out!
Improvising with Anna Etherington
A producer and solo artist, Anna has recently joined the Brewery team of tutors and we’re going to be collaborating on a fresh course together. We thought it would be a great way to get to know each other a little better if we had a play and improvised for a couple hours in the Brewery’s studio.
Anna is a lot of fun to work with and we can’t wait to share the course we’re preparing with you. We’ll also both be part of the Future Creatives events that are coming up where 18 - 30 year olds are invited to come along and hear from industry professionals ahead of building a community and network of creatives based out of Brewery Arts.
The first of these free sessions is coming up in October, keep an eye on the Brewery’s website and socials for more news about the (very) exciting guest artists and ambassadors…
Next up I’m really looking forward to playing an opening set in the theatre at 9pm for the Hayden Thorpe X Aerial event on Saturday October 9th, and I’ll also be giving a Q&A in the Brewery’s digital lounge at 4pm about my piece Rewindwild that I made for Aerial Festival last year.
Hope to see you soon!
Jack
Photo credit: Stuart Walker