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Recent performances and a new book

24/3/2018

 
​On the 4th March I was the opening item at the Hundred Years Gallery’s Illuminations and Evocations show, reading extracts from in the countries of the mind, the first book in the scattering texts ​series. The vivid, large, humorous and energetic paintings by Ana Pallares framed other performances, including a lively song, wry readings by poets, and a concluding improvisation by KMAT, which ended with mysterious small objects rolling quietly towards the audience.
    Last week we went to an amazing place (the Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill) and saw the highly evocative Quay brothers’ film Street of Crocodiles, and Comet, directed by Teresa and Andrzej Welminski: a magical piece of theatre using sound, music, dance, mime, light, old props of various kinds, mobile scenery, and IMAGINATION.  
     It was performed by a company, some of whom were in Cricot-2, the Tadeusz Kantor theatre group. Years ago I missed Kantor's Dead Class at the Riverside Theatre, so now it was a wonderful opportunity to see his kind of work, in a venue which is very strange, and ideal for it. I was so pleased to catch up on this amazing type of performance – as soon as we saw the buildings move, I knew it was going to be a phantasmagorical evening.
    The Coronet’s bar is set around a baby grand piano, in a space which in itself looks like a surreal theatre set.  Many of the floors in the place lean, as does this space, so you have to watch out in case your drink slides off the low table on which you have carefully placed it. The low lighting is provided by dozens of tea-lights illuminating various alcoves with peculiar arrangements of found objects – for example a strange toy, an ancient book lying open, a small sheep skin. A wall is covered in an array of old handbags, possibly left by accident, and another wall is covered in various small antique mirrors. We sat by a large old bed, covered in a patterned rug with a solitary cushion on it.
     Altogether, with the film and the performance, an unforgettable evening.

Théâtre Volière: Marchland

11/3/2018

 
​Went to an energetic and inspiring multi-lingual and multi-cultural performance at The Bridewell Theatre, London, on the 3rd March last Saturday.
  Presented by the international Théâtre Volière company, as part of their Marchland season, in this performance the audience were invited to sit on the stage with the performers. This enabled you to be in the middle of all the action, including the extraordinary singing of Åkervinda, a Swedish vocal group, whose clear and luminous tones created an evocative and moving polyphony.
   ‘Marchland’ refers to frequently disputed frontiers, which the Théâtre Volière presents very effectively, with all the ambiguities such spaces at the limits display.
    This type of performance is very much needed now, at a time when simplistic thinking and narrow factions are sadly increasing. The Théâtre Volière company challenges the dead weight of received ideas in a lively, stimulating and thought-provoking way.
https://en-gb.facebook.com/theatrevoliere/

BAFTA 70th ANNIVERSARY

22/12/2017

 
On Monday 18th December at 2.30pm we attended the 70th Anniversary of BAFTA, at its headquarters in Piccadilly. I was invited by Mr A.A. Reeves, as the David Lean Foundation had funded my doctoral research on Eisenstein's ideas on the audiovisual.
The celebration included a screening of David Lean's film This Happy Breed, which was shown on the large BAFTA screen, in their own cinema. In the programme was my text about a particularly moving scene from this film, which I'd explored from an audiovisual perspective, in my second book Cinema and the Audiovisual Imagination.  
Mr A.A. Reeves of the David Lean Foundation told the audience the story of how BAFTA began, and the key role of David Lean's financial support in its creation, thanks to his extraordinary films, in particular the great success of Lawrence of Arabia. 
it was wonderful to experience This Happy Breed on a big screen. For David Lean it was really his first film, after his collaboration with Noel Coward on In Which We Serve. This Happy Breed was based on a play by Noel Coward. Anthony Havelock Allan produced both films, and according to the other producer and director Ronald Neame, Havelock Allan heard his mother telling someone that her son had produced a film called In This We Breed. 

Machines: first public screening

22/12/2017

 
​The first live outing for Machines at the Hundred Years Gallery last night went very well - it was warmly received by the audience. This music/film, completed this year, is the first of three movements from Diversions. 
Afterwards the artist Jill Rock performed an evocative incantation to the compass points, followed by a virtuosic performance by Ivor Kallin in his piece for customised violin and interpolated spoken words. A break for drinks followed, after which there was a solo performance involving T-shirts and citrus fruit by Mervyn Diese, then an inspired improvisation on the saxophone by Mr Jensen, followed by another break for panettone and drinks - a most convivial evening. 

River world première at Hundred Years Gallery

19/12/2017

 
Here's news of an early première, tomorrow evening! 
​Mid-Winter Solstice : Rude Mechanicals & Guests
Thursday 21st December 7:30 | entry by donation
Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, London E2
Everyone is welcome to the second night of our Mid-Winter celebrations, featuring the legendary Rude Mechanicals & Guests. Celebrated radio personality and improvising polymath Ivor Kallin will play a solo (or perhaps collaborative) set of wild and furious viola and Glaswegian glossolalia. 
Mervyn Diese performs Badger Kull, and to start things off a world premiere screening of composer, writer and filmmaker Robert Robertson‘s River, scored for large orchestra (on the soundtrack... not in the room). 
Gabriella's festive pannetone and chilli brownies free with drinks.
 

Noi, Persone Speciali - We, Special People

14/12/2017

 
NOI, PERSONE SPECIALI - WE, SPECIAL PEOPLE
by Cristina Marchesan
Illustrated by Dennis Dracup
 
I've read this book, and I have much enjoyed it.
It's a very positive experience to read these texts by the various young contributors.
And the images make a very effective counterpoint to the experiences they describe.
There's a sense of delight there too, a pleasant surprise which makes one think about creativity in a different and stimulating way.
It's important to have a book like this at this time, when all kinds of prejudices are currently increasing with regard to people being falsely perceived as being fundamentally different from oneself.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/cristina-marchesan/noi-persone-speciali-we-special-people/paperback/product-23410769.html
​

Inspiring rehearsal at the Royal College of Music

2/10/2017

 
​Delightful experience yesterday afternoon, at the Royal College of Music.
  We went to an inspiring rehearsal of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major, with not one, but three excellent violinists, one for each movement: Emily Sun, Maria Gîlicel (who played a Stradivarius violin made in 1728), and Line Faber.
  The acoustic in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall is wonderful, and the playing (as often with top student orchestras) was full of passion, energy, vigour, and total commitment.
  The conductor, Mark Messenger, emphasised precision in the rhythmic details, and made intriguing points (as for example how Beethoven’s silences are very different from Mozart’s silences), and generally he strongly emphasised the improvisatory qualities of this concerto.
   (This reminded me how years ago a filmmaker had asked me, as a composer, what I thought of improvisation. I told him that for me, the best notated music should sound like the best improvisation imaginable).
  I particularly enjoy rehearsals like this one, as in them you experience the actual progress of composition of the music, its separate parts, its assemblage. In this rehearsal we were vividly presented with Beethoven’s huge variety of orchestral colours in this concerto, and his melodic vivacity, harmonic daring, rhythmic force: all the inner workings of inspired music, and music-making.
​​www.rcm.ac.uk/masterclasses and www.rcm.ac.uk/events

Tolstoy's confession

16/9/2017

 
​Tolstoy isn’t immediately associated with a sense of humour, and it’s not there very much in his relatively short text A Confession. At one point he makes a wonderfully astute comment on ignorance:
‘when it does not know something it says that the thing it does not know is stupid.’
Due to censorship, A Confession couldn’t be published in Tolstoy’s lifetime, and the same fate was shared by his text What is Art?  In part of this text he writes a hilarious account of a production of Wagner’s opera Siegfried.

Machines (Start) from Diversions

16/8/2017

 
​In one aspect our digital age can be compared to that distant time of my favourite Early Greek philosophers (one of whom I celebrated in my dance opera Empedocles). In those days ideas were transmitted by speeches and discussions, like today. However, for the future, these ideas were set down in rolled parchments (of course publishers didn’t exist at that time), which is probably why only fragments from this wonderful early philosophy have survived. Now we have instant communication and continuous information transferral. And paradoxically this amazing technology often results in fragmentation, hence this extract, which is the start of my music/film Machines, the first movement of Diversions for orchestra and moving/still images:
                                                                        Machines (Start)
​​


Charlottesville, Virginia

14/8/2017

 

Dismayed at the appalling racist violence in Charlottesville, as well as by the feeble initial statement about it from Donald Tweet. This ineptitude and underlying racialist and jingoistic tendencies emanate from someone who apparently is the most powerful person on the planet - how long can this dangerous situation last? And how long are people going to bother propping him up by trying desperately to paper over Tweet's absurd and chauvinistic blunders?

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