Journeys in Film
What began in a moment of necessity - necessity to create without an orchestra, necessity to connect to music lovers, and most of all, a necessity to be proactive in a threatened music world - actually has turned out to have aligned completely with ideals and principals, (tending to morals!), which I have held since being a teenager. It’s our role as musicians to use imagination both in performance and in every single moment of communication, to draw audiences into complex, emotional, nuanced music to show how classical music is relevant and important to us as humans.
To jump straight to see what I have created with Harriet Trust Award click here.
As lockdown hit I was genuinely worried about the music I love so much. Even more so the musicians I work with and who make the live music world so extraordinary.
I immediately (on the first day of lockdown!) began a social project ‘Stand Together Music’ along with my sister (who is very active in the non-classical world) to try and promote conscious streaming of music. As we were all at home streaming music we wanted to direct people’s listening towards artists who had cancellations that day and so divert a little money towards these artists.
We ended up publishing every cancelled classical concert in the UK over the first 100 days of lockdown, and built daily playlists of both classical and non-classical music to support artists, attracting listeners from around the world.
It was through Stand Together Music that I met and connected with other individuals, all striving to help in this moment of lockdown.
Through these conversations and observing the world around it became very clear to me that for some time all classical music would be consumed through the internet. I felt sure though that there were ways to make this experience different and equally worthy to the concert hall, as opposed to a weak representation of the live experience.
Inspired by Leonard Bernstein’s work with television and Leopold Stokowski’s work and philosophy of recordings - they both viewed new technology as a new medium of expression, never as just a means of reproduction - I connected with Emily Ingram, the founder of Greengage, and we began to make films together specifically created for the online audience.
Our collaboration eventually gave birth to 5 films of performances along with a four part documentary series. Each film employing different filmic techniques, attempting to draw the audience further into the music and augment their experience - in a ways that might even be impossible to do in the concert hall.
The Goldberg Variations - Meditations on Solitude
Released 31st May 2020
83 Mins
My first film (ever!) was an immediate reaction to lockdown. A film combining the poetry (19 authors ranging from Wordsworth, Woolf and Keats to Rilke and Hesse) about the joy and necessity of Solitude read by Sir Simon Russell Beale, photographs from Austrian photographer Kristina Feldhammer and the string trio arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, played by the Dutch trio The Ysaÿe Trio. The filming and editing of the musical performance was my first attempt at creating a film where the very technique of cutting, fading and mixing images is connected to, and aids the exploration of, the structures within the music.
“The world wide web has been swarming with filmed online concerts since lockdown began, but none that I’ve seen so far has tried to use the video medium in a creative way - until the preview of The Goldberg Variations: Meditations on Solitude came my way.”
Ivan Hewitt, The Telegraph
Lockdown Editing - with ice blocks to keep computer
and hard driver cool!
Postcards from Vienna
Released 9th November 202o
4 Episodes of 30 mins each
A four part documentary series using art to illuminate, and provide and entrance into music. Again I tried to use the medium of film to present music in a way which would be difficult (or impossible) to do in a concert hall. The series explores music and art in a jargon-free environment looking at the music of Brahms, Mahler, Haydn and Schoenberg with performances by George Fu and Lotte Betts Dean.
In each episode I took one artwork and one piece of music and I tried to show some of the small scale choices the composers had made, and through these choices, try to form a really tangible connection with them and their imaginations.
During the films I often rewrite the music in order to change a certain element so that without the use of technical descriptive language the audience can really hear and listen to the composers choices. These musical examples are also combined with artworks, not to give a vague ‘sense of the time’, but to really visualise the mechanics and the underlying structures in the music.
Each episode finishes with a filmed performance of the work, edited yet again in a way to try and draw the listening into the music.
Episode 1
Brahms Intermezzo op. 117 no. 1 & Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller “Erschöpfte Kraft” “Exhausted Strength”
Episode 2
Mahler ‘Um Mitternacht’ ‘At Midnight’ & Hendrich Kuhn Miss Mary seated on a White Chair
Episode 3
Haydn Piano Sonata in Eb Major & exploration of the architecture of the entrance hall of the Belvedere Palace
Episode 4
Schoenberg Sechs Kleine Klavierwerke & Egon Schiele Herbstbaum in bewegter Luft („Winterbaum“), Autumn Tree in Stirred Air (“Winter Tree”)
Historiae de Divini/Tales of the Divine
Released 25th November 2020
41 Mins
The starting point for this film was two sets of paintings from the 16th Century which we were incredibly lucky to be given access to by the Colnaghi Gallery. We used these paintings, along with some very dynamic camera movements to illustrate (very much as you would illustrate an old manuscript) works by Bach and Messiaen.
For each movement we were able to create distinct spaces and atmospheres in order to amplify the dramatic arch of the music making visible the underlying musical connections, and structures.and even the harmonic architectures.
Throughout this film the music always came first. From the projections of colour and painted details onto a modernistic white spiral for Messiaen, to the intimate and painful Sarabande, where I was able to show the mechanics of playing the violin as part of a edited triptych framing details from the painting of the pain of crucifixion; to the most famous movement, the Chaconne, where I tried to connect back to the very idea of a chaconne being a round or circular dance from South America, filming the violinist and characters from the paintings circling in ever accelerating, dizzying circles.
Stravinsky Septet - 3 Choreographic Canvases
Released 28th November 2020
16 Min
Stravinsky’s Septet was written at a moment when he was changing styles.
The first movement looks backwards to his earlier ‘Ballet Russe’ works. The middle movement takes a step forward, but still within the confines and models of older music. Then the last movement is thoroughly serial and abstract.
In order to visualise this transformation of style we created artworks inspired by artists of the periods. Lyubov Popov, Sonia Delauney and Natalia Goncherova, for the Ballet Russe, then Mark Rothko for the passacaglia middle movement, and finally Lee Krasner splatter-painting, even onto the ensemble! We then projected behind the ensemble in live action on a huge screen, and also used these images in the editing process to draw audience into the technical devises of Stravinsky’s composition.
Again, I was trying to develop on the idea that the very editing of a musical performance can draw people into the the music, and create something which could not be experienced in the concert hall.
Reves des Jeux Mechaniques (Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello)
Released 27th January 2021
26 Mins
I believe it is a myth that musicians must have always loved a composer that they now love - at least it definitely is for me. Many of the composers who are central to my work now grew over time into love.
Ravel was a composer who as a teenage I just couldn’t quite connect with. However I found a key which completely unlocked his music for me and I have been fascinated with it, and loved it, ever since.
That key was that Ravel loved wind up toys. Suddenly his music opened up for me - I could hear that so many of his building blocks, and imaginative colourings came from setting up a quasi-mechanical musical device and letting it run while setting up a completely different one to play against it.
In this film I wanted to see if I could perhaps open up Ravel’s music for other listeners.
Inspired by Ravel’s house just outside of Paris, I used stop animation (which I had to learn from first principals for this film) to animate objects in the truest sense of the word - to give them life- and turn these objects and the players into dancing windup toys, choreographed to the music. I was aiming to create a visual representation of the incredible musical clockworks written by Ravel, whilst also drawing audience into his fantastical, magical, nocturnal, world.
Satie - Sports et Divertissements
Released 29th January 2021
23 Minutes
Responding to an idea from Emily Ingram that we should make something that could be consumed in short segments in any order (as it looked like the general behaviour of viewers at this point was), but without destroying the musical or artistic experience, we created this film of Eric Satie’s ‘Sports et Divertissements’.
These miniatures were originally created by Eric Satie and the artist Charles Martin for a printed magazine, with text, music and words. The result is there is no big dramatic line in the conventional sense going through the movements, allowing them to be watched and listened to as individual pieces, in any order.
Additionally Satie forbids the words to be read during a performance and so by presenting the words as subtitles, or even sometimes incorporated into the film, I was able to draw all the elements together in a way which is very difficult in a concert hall. Using the original images from the first edition created by Charles Martin gave me a visual basis in which to bring to life the different worlds of each movement. I again taught myself (rather on the go!) how to animate, bringing to life the silliness and madness of the paintings and the music, to let people into both the art works and the music, and most of all into Satie’s incredible sense of humour!
The RPS Enterprise Fund
Building on all of these films I am so grateful to the Harriet Foundation and the RPS Enterprise scheme who made it possible for me to buy some equipment of my own which has enabled me over the past year to continue, both my learning about the making of films, but also creating small bits of content by myself.
Having some equipment of my own has allowed me to be flexible and react quickly when opportunities arose, even building other projects into films, or increasing their scope and reach.
Additionally I have used the equipment to experiment and learn, both about the the technical aspects of digital film making, but possibly even more importantly, to improve my presentation when on camera, and hone how best to communicate complex musical ideas as clearly as possible.
Here are the projects which the award from the Harriet Foundation and the RPS Enterprise Scheme has made possible:
The Franz Schmidt Interviews
As part of my project to promote the music of Franz Schmidt, along side recording his complete symphonies I have started a series of interviews with Schmidt lovers and performancer to try and showcase different aspects of his music from those who know it best.
Pre-Concert Interview: Franz Schmidt & Music from Vienna
Before a concert in Cardiff, Lisa Tregale the director of the BBC NOW interviewed me about the program including a performance of Schmidt’s 3rd Symphony which we then went on to record. It was a fabulous opportunity for me to present on camera about Schmidt and try and provide a context and draw connections to inspire the audience about his music.
Remembering Oliver Knussen
I am so thrilled that the New European Ensemble asked for some recollections of my great friend and mentor Oliver Knussen. I knew Olly for 17 years and he was such an important influence on my life that it was an honour to talk about him. It was also another opportunity for me to develop the way I can enthuse audiences about the music I love.
Interview for Onjam: Filming Eric Satie
This was a first for me - being asked to talk less about music and more about the art of film and the process of creating the film on Eric Satie ‘Sports et Divertissements’. Again I was able to use visual images to illuminate ideas and my goal was to try and make this interview accessible to an audience who knew either nothing of music, or nothing of film history, but an awful lot about the other one!
#musicalmicrodosing
I have recently begun a daily series of very short videos on instagram. Each one tries to show a single moment in pieces of music I love, and in a lighthearted way provide a sort of choreography to draw people into these moments. For each post I give easy links to try and listen to more of the recordings.