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

A #CoLabulous Fortnight - Week 2

This week I actually went home for a couple of days so didn't get back to the CoLab craziness until Wednesday. Obviously, cos I wasn't there to check on everyone all the time, there wasn't a whole lot of stuff that got done. As such it was a final mad rush to the end of this years fortnight of mentalness (I mean this in an entirely positive way and is totally a word so hush).

I could put up all the posters and things that I've done but that would be boring. If anyone feels so inclined, here is the website www.colabtl.com that I've been responsible. Other than that I would just like to share some pictures of the last two nights, which were awesome and packed out (pat on the back team comms).

Appalachian Spring

Spoon River

Haydn In Costume

Seven!

Prog Is The New Classical (The Connoisseur)

A #CoLabulous Fortnight - Finale of week 1

Well, it's been a long week that's for sure. I've been working pretty much constantly since Monday morning including when I go home on an evening. This being said, I've been having a great time going to the events that all the groups have been putting on. The pub crawl on Thursday was brilliant, a variety of groups making it a fun night for all. Tbh I think it may be my favourite event.

Tonight's event was awesome as well though, The dance faculty was a hive of activity with a large number of projects performing simultaneously while the audience popped in and out. The highlight for me though was the Bollywood group. They were fantastic and got everybody amped up and in a party mood.

When your set starts like that, there is no way people are gonna be bored. Anyway, that's enough for tonight, nanight internet peeps xx

A #CoLabulous Fortnight - And so, it begins...

It's official, CoLab has begun! The opening night party was a complete success. There had been some concern that there wouldn't be good attendence but between the mass emails, facebook event and word of mouth there was a brilliant audience for what was a highly entertaining performance. The picture quality isn't great but check it out.

As we're now officially in CoLab the work rate of the comms team has gradually increased. Things are starting to get done, people are starting to get to know what is going on and we have a great supply of post it notes! My favourite piece of work so far is the entrance board to KCC. It's only temporary until we get the post-it opinions display up but I think it looks quite arty :)

I need to add some more photos but it's getting there. That's pretty much all to report atm. Facebook events for the week are done, the website is looking good, Facebook and Twitter are full of info and pictures and collaboration is in the air. It seems to be too good to be true so I'll update later in the week. Tatty-bye xx

A #CoLabulous Fortnight - The prequel

Boys and girls, guess who's back. Me! I'm gonna try the blog thing again and this time I will keep it going.... promise.... Anyway, this is beside the point. It is once again that wonderful time of year we Trinity Laban students love, CoLab. This year I'm assigned to the CoLab Comms team which is a lot of work and runs throughout the entire fortnight as we market the entire festival period.

Due to a number of personal issues I was not involved in the first few meetings of the Comms team meaning that we now have one week before we start and, tbqh, I am concerned by the lack of activity and drive. The website has not been updated in a year, the twitter account sits dormant and there a couple of sporadic posts on the facebook page but nothing exciting. At this point there hasn't even been an email to introduce the comms team and no info has gone out. There is a LOT to be done!

My task for the week is to get the website up and running. I've spent the evening yesterday creating a new banner to go across the top which will go with the logo for this years festival. Here, take a look.

Nothing particularly fancy but I had a couple of arguments with my laptop while making it. My laptop won more than I did sadly.

I have also taken the initiative and come up with the hashtags for this year. We are using #CoLab2015 and #CoLabulous (it was late at night when I came up with this, shush).

Anyway, I think there is enough to be going on with, I will update you all soon.

Much Love xx

CoLab - It's A Kind Of Magic - Show Time

So, wow, just done the magic show. It. Was. AWESOME! Butlers bar has never had such a buzzing atmosphere, like, ever. The show went amazingly well and everyone was really impressed with it. The most terrifying thing about it was that we opened the show.

We opened with Quiajing pouring a glass of wine into a newspaper and the wine magically disappearing and the reappearing at the end, after the newspaper had been opened over a poor unsuspecting member of audience who just came out to enjoy the show, poor girl. While this was happening I was accompanying with a cheerful, jazzy tune on bassoon and Quiajing played on the humorous aspect of the music to create a brilliant performance without saying a word. It was brilliantly done. I then put down the bassoon and took to the stage with accompaniment of dramatic piano. My trick involved filing a glass full of water, placing a piece of paper over it and then turning it upside down over the poor audience members head (I do feel a bit bad about that). The water stays in and then I rip the paper off before letting the water fall out into a bowl. The crowd loved it and we pulled it off spectacularly, in my opinion. The whole project has been brilliant fun and working with the group has been brilliant. A big shout out to Max for organising it and, until next year, farewell :)

CoLab - It's A Kind Of Magic - Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

Hey there friends, examiner and any other person who is reading this cos they've got nothing better to do. So, just finished the magical ( I am so funny) week of Colab rehearsals. It's been a blast and working with the other members of the project has been such good fun, we are all really looking forward to performing on Monday and are really hoping for a good audience.
The last few days have been spent preparing for the show. The first two days were more about the actual technical aspect of magic but we have now started collaborating with the musical elements. We have all been working in pairs and trying to work music in with whichever trick we are performing.
I have been working with Quiajing and we are tackling the water based tricks. It's been interesting trying to add a musical element and designing the performance around the music and vice versa. We have a nice juxtaposition of a light hearted trick with a couple of shock moments and an extremely tense second trick which immediately follows. I'd love to go into details but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who is coming to watch on Monday.
We've also all been watching the other groups learn their tricks and been assisting as test subjects and helping with planning. The entire group have been really fun to work with and all the tricks are going to be amazing on Monday. It's been quite interesting how the increased confidence has translated back to instruments as I know I definitely have been playing with a lot more self belief even when it has been going wrong. Sorry about the shortness of this post but hey, don't want to spoil anything so here's a picture of Ben being taught his trick as well as a copy of the plan of action for Monday, Deanna out.

CoLab - It's A Kind Of Magic - Monday and Tuesday

So, it's that time of the year, CoLab is back and this year I've been assigned to the magic music-hall project. I was originally a tad dubious about this but I have never been happier to not get my original choice. The project is being led by magician Max Somerset, who is phenomenal btw, and has so far been amazing fun.

Monday started with Max wowing us all with a mini show that had us all amazed and raring to learn more. The focus for the day was 'creating realities'. In magic, it is sometimes essential to make the audience believe something that is not exactly true and we worked at mastering a few tricks that rely on the concept and discussed how that applies to music. The point of the project is to look at performance skills through a medium other than music so we looked at how having complete outward confidence can mislead the audience into believing you played something correctly when it was actually less than perfect.
This morning began with an interesting occurrence.  4 people singing swing low sweet chariot while their chairs were removed. The rest of us thought it was hilarious, those involved were not so amused, not sure why...

We followed this up by learning a trick involving cutting and putting together a piece of rope which I imagine people will not be able to stop practicing, it's weirdly addictive. The tricks this afternoon were more focused on 'mind reading' and presenting it in such a way that it's believable. We worked in pairs and spent the afternoon perfecting and demonstrating to the rest of the group. Myself and Kathy were working on a trick where I had to choose a random name from a list and somehow, using the help of said person, telepathically send the name to Kathy who was waiting outside and unable to see or hear what was going on. It was really interesting devising a system to do this and we worked well together. It was good fun and the improvement in certain members of the group is amazing, they are a lot more confident. I also feel a lot more confident in the purely performance aspect of the tricks and I am looking forward to translating this into a musical situation.

P.S Here's a link to my youtube video about today

CoLab - Xenakis - Thursday, Friday and the concert

So, wow, just got back in from the concert, wow, right, start at the beginning. So, yesterday, despite being a very busy day, has gone blurry in my mind. The day was a whirlwind of rehearsals, both Xenakis and satellite projects, and was the most tiring day of the ENTIRE project. From what I can remember everyone was working at full pelt and everything started falling into place. We ended the day by running the entire show and it went really well.
Today, everybody was at their battle stations. After viewing the other satellite projects we completely ran the entire show. It was, erm, tiring, but everything went well and their was lots of excitement for the concert. As 7:30 approached the atmosphere got a tad more nervous but, once the audience were all in, which took a while as they were all a little reluctant to sit amongst the orchestra, we began. The Xenakis went off without a hitch. Everyone played brilliantly and most of the percussion sections were even in time. Then, we rushed off to perform the satellite projects which we did 3 times as the groups moved between projects. Here is a a picture of the start of ours.

Then, we all ran back down to play a percussion piece that Nic directed and made up on the spot. It was a brilliant first half to the concert and the atmosphere was electric.

The entire project has been really enjoyable and I know some people didn't like it but hey, the music world is a diverse one, you have to do things you don't like so pipe down, in my most humble opinion. The only thing I would say to improve the project is to use a smaller group for the audio visual project so it can be a little more hands on and "collaborative" but otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed the project and it has been a new and exciting experience. Peace out :)

CoLab - Xenakis - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

Hi there peeps, random readers and the unlucky individual who is examining this. The world of CoLab continues to involve, enthral and slightly scare the trinity students taking part. Bright and early, ok, I know it was 10am but I had to walk for an hour to get there, we assembled at Blackheath to begin the satellite projects. There are three satellite projects: movement, tunnel of sound and an audio visual project. My group, audio visual, started by introducing ourselves and then proceeded to discuss and outline what we were basically going to do with out project. After getting to know the basics we then recorded interviews with each member of the group to be edited together, we're not sure how but they will be, to create the focus of the project. As well as recording video a separate audio recording was made to also be used in the project.
On Monday afternoon we continued working on the Xenakis. We continued to improve and perfect the piece although there was still much to do. Section cohesion was becoming less of a problem as people settled into their roles in the orchestra and the two of us that were playing the "beasty" (technical term, honest) woodwind instruments began to fear the phrase "let's have the contras from..." We were finding it quite difficult to work together while at opposite sides of the room but we began to get better at it as the rehearsal wore on.

Tuesday, again we started the day with the satellite projects, we started putting ideas together such as starting with all the audio playing at the same time or pointing at someone and turning someone else's voice on, it was quite interesting but we were beginning to see a flaw in the project. Although everyone had good ideas there were really too many people to allow everyone a say. The project was very much reliant on the person programming it and it was difficult sometimes to get points across. Despite this we did get quite a bit done before another afternoon of rehearsing. The fine details of the Xenakis were starting to be added but we were still spending quite a bit of time on percussion bits, it's disconcerting how many musicians have no sense of rhythm as soon as they pick up a different, and far easier I might add, instrument. By the end of rehearsal we had progressed enough that it was declared by Lord Nic that the following day shalt be a national day of holiday from the Xenakis. As such, the satellite projects would be receiving full attention.

And finally, we get to today, the national day of satellite projects. Today was a bit stop and start as we perfected and altered the project, there also had to be large breaks as Dominic programmed all the performance so it worked seamlessly. The project is really starting to come together and the group are becoming more comfortable with working with each other which is making the work progress a lot more smoothly. Altogether it was a bit of a dull day but work got done which is the important thing.

CoLab - Xenakis - Thursday and Friday

So, first things first, this my first EVER blog post, exciting much? and the sceptics say CoLab doesn't have it's uses haha. Right, well, I've just got back from the second day of rehearsal for the Xenakis project. Over the last day and a half we have been rehearsing Iannis Xenakis absolutely crazy composition Terretektorh. The piece is composed for 88 musicians and everyone has their own individual part and a collection of percussion instruments (yeah, we didn't act like small children when we saw the percussion, no no, that would be silly...). Also, we are sat in a circle around the conductor, cos that's not weird, which is, erm, an interesting experience. It was quite disconcerting at first tbh and so, to make me feel better, I decided to see if their was a pattern to the circle, yes I am that cool. Everybody is arranged pretty much opposite their matching instrument, eg the trombones are opposite each other, and, where the instruments don't have an match, opposite their corresponding "partner in crime", eg because I was playing Contra bassoon I was sat opposite the Contrabass clarinet. The circle is split into 8 sections and each section contains a double bass, and a various assortment of other instruments.
The piece it self is an experiment with textures and rhythms are passed throughout the orchestra, around the sections. The piece doesn't even change off one note for the first 100 or so bars. The two "solo" instruments, much to my horror I might add, are the contra bassoon and the contrabass clarinet as they have the heaviest going and most interesting parts. In addition to playing their instruments everyone has, as I mentioned earlier, percussion instruments. These are a wood block, maracas, whip and siren whistle. The first thing we did when we started was learn how to play the siren whistle as it is more complicated than one would think.
Despite the fact that if I had been listening to the piece I would have hated it, I've really enjoyed rehearsing it. The way the sounds pass around the orchestra is really interesting. It was also different working with the other instrumentalist around me rather than mainly just working with the bassoon section, it took a while to get used to but we worked together really well.
It took the entirety of yesterday to sight read the piece just because it's so complicated and we did go back and rehearse bits. The bits most people found most difficult though wasn't playing the music, it was playing the percussion. It's amazing how people pick up a percussion instrument and loose all sense of rhythm. Thankfully I didn't have this problem but it was quite amusing to watch the others haha.
So far I'm really enjoying the project and on Monday we start the satellite projects, I'm doing an audio visual one, which I believe is going to be the more "collaborative" part of the project. I'll probably update again on Wednesday but until then, Deanna out.