Flight

the end of a residency, the start of a new story

In my time as Brewery Arts Musician in Residence, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities to lay down early groundwork for the Future Creatives scheme and meeting some of the emerging musical voices in Cumbria. I’ve had fun workshopping with some young local makers, and have used the space to write, record, film and learn new skills from my own mentors. My solo project is slowly unfurling and I’ve enjoyed performing at re-opening events and one of the areas most exciting new projects, Aerial.

A lot has also had to be done behind the scenes. Venues around the country have reeled and staggered back to life after the depths of the pandemic gutted them. I’ve been lucky enough to be supported during that time, to work away in the belly of Kendal’s arts centre, making a new project called Flight with my ensemble Propellor, and stretching my wings in some new creative directions. It’s exciting finally to spread those wings, to be sharing the premiere of my newest work here in my hometown Kendal, and to have grown so many wonderful new creative relationships along the way.

I look forward to working with the Future Creatives at Brewery Arts, and to bringing Propellor to Kendal for our premiere of Flight on October 1st. It’s the start of a journey towards forming a production company, as associate artists of BA, that can be an engine of inclusive, skilled collaborators for the north and its map of makers.

(photo: Juliet Klottrup for Aerial)

what is flight?

Flight is a project that exists in three formats.

It’s an 8-part podcast series tracing the connections between music, birds, humans and the science in between. This is a collaboration with one of the UK’s leading authors on nature Mark Cocker, electronic pioneer Leafcutter John, and a host of incredible writers, artists and musicians - imagine a 12-piece band underscoring an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage talking with musicians, writers and ecologist and you’ll be close…

The first live version of the project came into being as part of the Reimagining Landscape Conference (Future Places Centre, Lancaster University) in partnership with Lancaster Arts. It’s called Flight // In Conversation and is a kind of live version of the podcast, where interviewees engage with the audience in real-time… Myself, Leafcutter John (live electronics), Robin Beatty (guitars) and Delia Stevens (percussion) from Propellor, were joined “in conversation” by nature writer Mark Cocker, and sound artist/soundscape ecologist, Linda O Keeffe. It was a magic evening with a wonderfully inquisitive audience, and the following day was full of talks at the conference, sharing ideas about how art and science can be powerful companions for change and communication. Plans are now afoot to action some of the ideas we discussed, and I’ll be back talking with Lancaster Arts about what Propellor and myself can bring to the table very soon.

Finally, Flight is a live show with Propellor - a 12-piece ensemble of soaring strings, ambient guitar, double percussion and otherworldly winds. You can expect music that tells the stories of astounding bird migrations, how we listen and why it matters, electronic collaborations with artist Leafcutter John, live reactive visuals and spoken word alongside powerful contemporary dance, stunning paper lanterns and recycled instrument bird frames! Come and see it for yourself in Kendal on October 1st…

(photo: Mark Battista)

collaboration is a key part of making anything

Collaboration is at the heart of making. The pandemic made lots of things hard and painful, and the loss of a felt connection with people in our creative networks was one of them. I have felt it keenly, and so am optimistic with the shifting in awareness and activity over recent months. The images below are all collaborative working in progress for Flight: dance, costume, lighting, filming and visual design. Brewery Arts have allowed me to use their spaces in-kind to produce the different elements of the live performance, the team there have been great and very encouraging throughout, with a classic helping of dour northern humour!

Flight has been a very new experience for me and the way that Propellor work. The project began just as a podcast, recorded remotely during lockdowns, and has grown into something involving lots of other people in the same space - after the years we’ve all had, that feels like a very special and precious thing. It’s a thrill to be thinking so ambitiously with the group, and has led to imagining a kind of nurturing network of freelance creatives and performers that can forge a new production company in the north. Propellor (formed in 2017) create audio-visual performances mapping our collective experience of the natural world, and I want us to be using best practice environmental guidance to shape the way we make things in the future, and where we make it.

Below are some of the collaborators who are helping us find the visual look and feel for Flight, many of them local to me. The sense is of a beginning, something very honest and real to build and be part of a network in this way. Learning all the time, contributing the best of what I do, to the place and community I am a part of.

audiovisibility: the deaf perspective

An exciting part of working on the live version of Flight is developing the visual elements of the project. Ruth Montgomery, director of the charity Audiovisibility for deaf musicians, is consulting on how Propellor can integrate ideas about making sound visual with Flight, so as to be more accessible to a deaf audience. I contacted Ruth as an interviewee for the original podcast series, and getting to know her a little while discovering a world of accessible music making for those who can’t hear has been a very rich experience. Ruth’s passion for music and changing awareness is infectious, it’s great to be working with her in this way.

We’re working on a hand-drawn zine (my own sketches drawn from composing the music) that acts as a visual score for the sounds and ensemble you’ll experience in the performance. The way the text, moves through the visuals is also being thought about very carefully, as well as the colour palette we use. Flight is about listening differently, but talking about sound can be challenging for all of us. So much of what Ruth has contributed to the project so far isn’t about being deaf at all, it’s about how we pay attention to one another. My hope is that anyone will experience the ways we’ve added to Flight as an enhancement of their connection to it, and that the care we take will quietly signal to those who are deaf, that we’re listening.

Movement

I’ve always loved working with dancers. One of my first touring experiences was with a Berlin-based dance company, playing re-imagined Baroque recorder music! The way the dancers worked in rehearsal together and before performances completely got under my skin. There can be an electric focus to the way physical performers prepare, but as a musician a lot of this happens below the surface. And so to see the care that dancers take to warm up and find a focus was very helpful, and I try to apply it in my own discipline all the time. Since that early work I’ve continued to seek out new collaborations with dance, still fascinated by the stories contained within a human frame.

Jenny Reeves (About Time Dance Company) and her long time collaborator the costume maker Katie Duxbury, are such wonderful people to make with. Our shared interests in the environment, birds and music have been coming together very organically, and we’ve been working to create the two dance sections for Flight. I was introduced to Jenny nearly two years ago now by the lovely folks at Deco Publique, Jenny had been working on landscape ecology and wading birds, and after a cuppa, lots of laughs and ideas, it was clear that there was something brewing…

Jenny grew up in Lancashire, and having always danced, pursued her professional training at The London Contemporary Dance School and Trinity Laban Conservatoire, specialising in contemporary dance performance. She has worked in a range of dance, street theatre and opera companies worldwide as a performer. In the last 6 years, Jenny has developed her own Company, creating her own choreographic work to share often forgotten stories of local women, through powerful performance and participatory projects.

(photo: Rebecca Richards)

Material

Katie Duxbury (Duxbury Designs) is a Morecambe based costume designer who takes inspiration from the colours and textures of the natural world. She has a love for recycling materials, both for the creativity this challenge inspires, but also for the sake of lessening the environmental impact of her work.

Katie and Jenny have worked together for a long time on different dance projects, and she has produced two stunning costumes from recycled materials for Flight. The first is a Rook spirit - wild, wise and ragged, the dance forming a gathering to roost while a shronky bass clarinet grunge cuts loose with percussion, trombone and double bass… This costume is also being used as a field recording in the performance, we’ll be taking recordings of Jenny activating the sounds within it and transforming them into a new audio environment with the help of Leafcutter John.

The second costume is a Swift, made from recycled tent material that hangs in the air and reveals new forms in the light. Jenny is dancing here to the sound of strings in the stratosphere and brass clouds that transform around her. The recycled material on the ground then becomes a sound map, seen from above. It’s been a privilege to play around ideas with Katie and Jenny in the rehearsal room, allowing each others ways of working to gently influence the other. I’ll be moving around with my clarinets, ducking out of the way of a dancing tailwind, or recording Jenny’s shifts while she explores the way the material moves with the sound, and Katie will be sketching new ideas for her next stitches!

Paper

Bethan Maddocks is a wonderful visual artist making a set of beautiful paper lanterns for Flight. They will contain the three birds that we focus on in the project for their particular qualities, environments and stories - the Bar-tailed Godwit, Willow warbler and Swift, lighting up the dark corners of the theatre and transforming our sense of that shared space.

Bethan is an artist who works with archives, communities and organisations to collect stories and make socially engaged, site-specific artwork. Often working with light, paper, fabric and found objects she creates interactive, tactile sculpture and installations. Narratives gathered through conversation and collaborative making are constructed into playful, transformative artwork.

We’d chatted a lot on the phone but meeting in person was when those good gut feelings clicked. Bethan, like Jenny, works a lot with text as jumping off points, and so I’ve been able to share the paragraphs of my own writing from the series as a way into the emotional content of the piece. Watching Bethan play with paper in the dark theatre was a lot like the early process of playing with my clarinet lines, placing them against and inside other sounds to see how opaque or luminous they might be. The lanterns are a nod to the bells that appear in Mark Cocker’s descriptions of Godwits arriving in New Zealand and David Hendy’s description of how we have decoded sounds through history. These paper bells don’t ring, but hopefully they’ll resonate.

Wood

Local craftsman Ted Carefoot is creating four stunning 2m bird frames from steam-bent ash (locally and sustainably sourced), which the two percussionists in Propellor will play during the performance. The frames will contain recycled materials, close-mic’d and intricately hung, a sort of visual field recording and a reference to the shocking harm we have seen inflicted on these animals in the wild by our own waste.

Ted actually started out making film and theatre sets after his art degree, so when I heard we had a craftsmen with theatrical tendencies in our midst I got in touch! The recycled element of the frames will be created and designed by local young musicians in a workshop with the musicians before the performance. We’ll be learning about soundscape ecology and making lots of fun music at the same time. These frames will then be available for anyone to play in the Brewery Arts foyer for a week or so after the performance, before the participants are invited to help me recycle the materials again!

Working from a wood yard in the South Lakes, Ted has always been influenced by tradition and nature which continue to inspire his designs and craftsmanship. His impressive attention to detail and knowledge of nature is all feeding into the project. His dry humour has also been helpful when it comes to reigning in some of my more wayward stage ideas…

Light

Propellor are also thrilled to be collaborating with visual design company Vent to produce the projection material for Flight. With a long track record working with musicians and dance (Fat Boy Slim, Tom Dale Dance Company and Full Tilt Aerial to name a few) they’ve got a really professional eye on the way we tell the Flight story with visuals.

Director Barret Hodgson has filmed in the Brewery Arts theatre with myself and Jenny Reeves to capture a range of movement and texture that will be woven into the visual language of Flight. With the help of the Brewery tech team we were able to experiment in situ with different lighting states and moods, going with the energy shifts in the music and melodic narratives, to create a look and feel for the live show.

Because a lot of the music was written with images early on, it’s been fun to talk about the way sound can communicate in different forms. The projections in Flight will also feature animated text, projection mapped birds and a live spectogram (sound picture) of the music you’ll hear Propellor playing!