Colab - Baroque Music Vs Contemporary Dance - Finale! Friday

Well, while the title says Friday, it is definitely Saturday that I write this. Last night was an absolute success, but maybe I should do a brief recap of the day.

The problem with finale day is that there are so many acts that rehearsal time is extremely brief. Luckily we could use the recital room 10-12 and we made the most of the time. We warmed up, yes that has been going on all week, no none of the musicians can touch their toes or plank yet, and set to work. We split up to do detailed rehearsal before regrouping to top and tail the performance.

Mid-rehearsal disscusion

 We then had a massive gap before our sound check at 3:15 where we focused on ironing out the transitions. All that remained was to wait for the performance. Our slot was 8:15 and boys and girls:

Yeah we did. Everything went really well, couple of minor slip ups but this is what happens when you have 4 and a bit days to pull together a performance of dancers, singers and musicians. I don't have any pictures of the performance but I will update this post with some if I get hold of any. It's been a fun ride and I'm so proud of the entire group. It has been an interesting experience contrasting modern and baroque aspects of performance and I am quite interested in the potential for further development along these lines. Anyway, enough of that for now.

Be back in a bizzle xx


UPDATE: I found some of the professional pictures! (Today is 01/03/16 in case the examiner is wondering if this is before the deadline, it is, promise) Enjoy!

Musicians                                    Dancers

Colab - Baroque Music Vs Contemporary Dance - Thursday? Really? You sure?

I mean, there is one thing about this project, time is vanishing out from under us. Today we have once again been hard at the grindstone scrambling, in a completely organised manner of course, to get the 30min performance finalised. Unfortunately, as we grow closer the stress is starting to seep through in some places. Lyrics that people can't remember, dynamics ignored, a miss step here and there but the frustration comes out of the passion for the project rather than from any other source.

Endless Pleasure, Endless Love

Today was spent jumping around from piece to piece, fixing, altering, perfecting and working through a rough estimate of staging changes. Yesterday was the only time, apart from the sound check tomorrow, that we had in the performance space. It has made some of the planning a bit awkward but hopefully there will only be small adjustments needed tomorrow.

We finished the day with a run which came out at only slightly over 30 mins. With less faffing around everything is pretty solid. The changes are the main things that need practice and they need to be done in the hall tomorrow.

Orchestral Rehearsal

Everybody has been really involved today and the work put in by every single member of the group is of the highest standard. The outcome of the project is a 30min performance we should all be proud of. I am very much looking forward to tomorrow's performance but that's enough for now.

Goodnight world xx

Colab - Baroque Music Vs Contemporary Dance - We're already half way through the week Wednesday

Happy hump day! Today has been a hive of activity in the recital room at Blackheath. After a brief discussion with Lucy and a warm up courtesy of our dancer comrades we moved into a dedicated musical rehearsal. People were a lot more forthcoming with ideas today and the members of the group with experience of playing baroque music helped those who were unsure. We got a lot of things done and towards the end of the morning the music was starting to sound more stylistically accurate as well as having 20% more right notes in!

Orchestral Rehearsal

We all came together to share ideas and run through the ideas thus far. As I wasn't involved in some of the pieces I took a step outside the orchestra for some of it. The choreography provided by the dancers is already shaping up well and perfectly offsets the music. The music sounds a lot more together and balanced and the singers even got to have a go at their choreography as well.

Singers trying out their choreography

The afternoon was spent in the performance space. There change of acoustic and position caused the expected problems with regard to timing and balance but these were overcome rather quickly. A number of small alterations were made but otherwise everything worked as predicted. We finished the afternoon by running through but it was a bit of stopping and starting so it was around 5mins over time.

Rehearsal in situ

A lot of today's process was led by the group rather than requiring hints or direction which is a huge improvement on previous days. The slot is really coming together and the limits of everyone in the project are being pushed by the demands. Everyone is stepping up and the fun light atmosphere is really good to work in. Looking forward to tomorrow

Back soon xx

P.s. Have a bonus gif

Colab - Baroque Music Vs Contemporary Dance - Tuneful Tuesday

The first thing a musician does when arriving at a rehearsal is to set up their instrument right? Wrong. Today, we had a 30 minute physical warm up with all the dancers. Now, I don't know if you know how active a musician's lifestyle actually is but the reaction to this announcement sorta looked a bit like this...

After the early morning shock though everybody started getting into it and having a good laugh. The main focus for today was the dancers choreography. Later in the week we will be working on the musical nuances but today was more about giving the sense of the pieces rather than in depth rehearsal. The dancers have, after various discussions at the beginning of the day, split the three solo arias between them so not everyone is involved in everything. The singers once again spent some time in another room learning their parts. The hope is that as we all become more comfortable with the repertoire we will start working together a lot more. In all honesty we are still quite inside our own worlds and people still seem a little unsure and unwilling to speak up when they have ideas/suggestions. This is especially apparent in the musicians. We are so used to being led and told what to do that it seems almost unnatural to contradict and question in the extent we should really be doing. It is something I need to speak to Lucy about tomorrow before the session.

Post-lunch Discussion

The afternoon was spent in a similar manner. We did a small amount of rehearsal just as musicians but the majority of that is being left for tomorrow. The work we did today was essential for a good foundation and tomorrow we can hopefully play around with it a bit more.

Ttfn xx

Bonus Rep List (click to listen on youtube)

The Dance of the Furies - Gluck

The Dance of the Blessed Spirits - Gluck

'Svegliatevi nel core' from Giulio Cesare - Handel

The Nightingale Chorus from Solomon - Handel

Chaconne - Gluck

'Ciel e terra' from Tamerlano - Handel

'Endless Pleasure, Endless Love' - Handel

CoLab - Baroque Vs Contemporary Dance - Manic Monday

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a land which, once a year, held a glorious festival. All members of the kingdom came together for two weeks of the year, abandoning their usual pursuits, and threw themselves into brand new activities with people whom they hardly knew. Together they created great works of performance art by embracing their differences and throwing off the expectations. Sounds pretty idyllic huh? Well, here at Trinity Laban, that's kinda what we do. It's CoLab times again and we lovely folks on both sides of creek (Deptford creek this is) come together for a fun filled and action packed fortnight of activity.

This year I lucked out. I get to participate in the baroque meets contemporary dance project which will culminate in a performance in the Finale! I've just got back from day one and we've all been getting into the swing of things. Today we started with a session from Peter Knapp, our music mentor for the week, before getting right into the meat of the work.

The main aim of the day was to give everyone a rough idea of the repertoire. Whether this be for musicians seeing the arrangements for the first time or dancers hearing them for the first time. The orchestration we are using is not a "traditional" baroque orchestra and as such all the music had to be re-scored for the instruments available. Also, the time limitations required a number of cuts for us to be able to cover the broad range of repertoire.

We worked our way through all the pieces with the dancers making some recordings and talking through ideas for choreography. We then covered the chorus pieces (the chorus had spent some time in another room working with Peter, who is a baroque specialist). Throughout the process some of us were making notes on bits and pieces to focus on tomorrow in rehearsals as we start to dig into things a little deeper.

Overall it was a very productive and fun day. There are already a lot of promising ideas and I am really looking forward to the rest of the week.

xx

P.s This is the sort of thing we're aiming for. I found it while buzzing around the interwebs :)

 

Scottish Ensemble & Andersson Dance present Goldberg Variations - ternary patterns for insomnia -- Variation 1 from Scottish Ensemble on Vimeo.

BassoonTube - Uptown Funk vs Beethoven

Track number three is here, check it out, I'm very proud of it. It's been a difficult couple of months but working on this project has been an absolute joy. I've fallen back in love with playing the bassoon and it has really opened my eyes to the possibilities for the future of this idea. However I am a little bit sick of looking at screens like this haha.

The only problem today with this track was that I recorded in Trinity Laban. Whoever told me the percussion pods were sound proof definitely lied haha. There were a few problems trying to do takes without excess background noise but dedication and an extra half hour got the job done. Also, wandering college with all the recording stuff has been a drag, when they designed this building people obviously carried less things. This is part of the pile I had with me.

With regards to the future, I plan to carry on arranging and recording so if you've enjoyed the ones so far then make sure to keep an eye out cos there will be more on the way.

See you soon xx

BassoonTube - Begin Again

It's done! Track number two (Begin Again - Taylor Swift) has been recorded, edited and uploaded to SoundCloud. Take a listen here! I've got to be honest and say that I am really proud of the way it has turned out. The arrangement has been done for almost a month now but unfortunately due to my wind quintet going on tour and a number of other activities I haven't had chance to sit down and get it recorded. It was recorded again in The Parnaby Tavern Hunslet after my uncle very kindly allowed me to use the function room for a couple of hours. After that it took a bit of editing and boom, final product. The arrangement for the next track has also been finished and I'm looking forward to recording that in Trinity Laban over the next couple of days, in between competitions and practice of course haha.