Graphic Score

I have created my first ever graphic score for WNO. Jessica Curry and I spent time in Brighton discussing how we would like our work to develop with the players and the score we might create. We worked on an improvised piece together and from that a doodled a rough for the score. Since returning home I have developed the score and the above is the result. This I will be presenting on tuesday next week to the players and we will see if they can interpret it. I was very impressed with the way they interpreted Jess's fibonacci score so have confidence in them.

Rosliston Camera Obscura Workshops

These went really well. Held over two days, students, staff and members of the public signed up to have a go at making their own camera obscuras with my help. The camera obscuras are to be left behind and become a resource for the centre and I think it was brilliant that everyone who made one of these gave them over. I know that I would have found it really hard as they created some wonderful designs and really got inventive. The staff of course can now pass on what they have learnt to others. It really is such a simple technology that anyone can make something, and the design take it further.

I would also like to thank everyone at Rosliston Forestry Centre who made me very welcome and gave me a lovely birthday but also put up with my streaming cold and hacking cough.

Music and the like

Work with the music has carried on, a week in Brighton with Jess taking the project further.

Our improvisations proving a total pleasure, the mixture of the laptop and logic plus Jess's minimal piano worked extremely well, a brief excerpt is on the WNO electroclassic site.

Meantime it looked for a moment as if the West Bay carving had got lost in the post and I was going to have to carve them again, a very worried foundry had seen neither hind nor hare of the blessed carvings, after a chat at the post office I discovered they were sitting in a sorting office in Narbeth west wales. They have been collected and the casting process awaits. I thoroughly look forward to receiving the bronze casts as the alchemy of process never ceases to give me huge delight and the buffing and patination process is fun.

The catkins are abundant in the wood, badger tracks pressed into the mud, bird song chirping, buds budding, the skeleton of the wood revealed before the spring bursts onto the scene in that teenage enthusiam.

Off to Rosliston in Derbyshire next week to hold some camera obscura workshops and a birthday.

First Session With WNO Principle Players

That was fairly amazing. Two days, and in that time the players have created a fantastic interpretation of the 'Bees' the electronic score I created last week. Go the the 'electroclassic' site opposite to hear the score and see how Jo has been taking images and creating beautiful graphic images. Jess introduced them to the 'fibonacci graphic score' she had created, which they interpreted in many ways under her instruction. The players also gave us all tremendous delight in bringing in their favourite music and playing it to us and each of the other players. This proved to be one of those special occasions when the hairs on the back of ones neck have a life of there own. I feel very privileged to have been present. As it also was to have them created such a great version of the 'Bees'.

New Audio

I have just posted my latest composition entitled 'bees' on the WNO//3 blog site: http://electroclassic.tumblr.com/ or click the link on 'websites' to the right. As I can't post audio here, please visit if you would like to listen to it. The explanation is on the site so I won't replicate.

Monday and Tuesday next week are our first sessions with the players. Oh boy can hardly wait.

Castle Neroche Bench Detail

Here is a detail of the lettering once burnt, this will be wire brushed back and teaked oiled.

Four strong men will carry to two chunks of oak up to the Motte and Bailey castle and site there.

Neroche Bench

I am carving the words of Gavin Saunders the Neroche Project Manager onto a large piece of oak to create a bench for the top of Castle Neroche on the Blackdown Hills. The above photos have been taken over the last couple of days.