In a completely spontaneous, unpremeditated and not-at-all contrived moment earlier, lots of students were found to have completely independently flocked to the Summer Music Week banner in order to share their excitement at all the events, which kick off next weekend. Fancy that…
You too can share in their excitement; see all that’s coming up between Sunday 7 – Saturday 13 June online here. Who knows, next time we might find YOU spontaneously mobbing the banner…(tweet @UKCSummerMusic if you do…).
Some of the University Music Scholars will be taking a trip to the Studio 3 Gallery in Jarman next week, as the #EarBox series returns on Wednesday 27 May.
Set amidst the backdrop of Studio 3’s current exhibition, ‘Beautifully Obscene,’ the musical programme presents some heady and expressive arias from several operatic heroines, including Delilah’s epic, aching aria ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix‘ from Samson & Delilah by Saint-Saens, Eurydice’s lament for her lost love, Orpheus, from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the ‘Song for the Moon’ from Dvorak’s Rusalka, and pieces by Mozart and Purcell.
The programme starts at 1.10pm, admission is free. Please note that some of the works in this exhibition contain explicit content – and some of the music is pretty sensual too…
To get you in the mood, here’s the aria by Saint-Saens performed live.
Part of the ancillary events accompany the Tokaido Road performance coming to the Gulbenkian, Beach Creative in Herne Bay is currently hosting an exhibition of photos by Wynn White.
Wynn White: Pier, New Year’s Morning
Wynn White is an American fine art black and white photographer and printer living in Japan. A selection of his beautiful images are projected alongside the historic Hiroshige woodblock prints during the chamber opera. A particularly ‘hands on’ photographer, Wynn does all of his own gelatin-silver processing and printing, getting involved in every step of the process. He also uses various historic techniques of printing, including salt, cyanotype, Vandyke, argyrotype and platinum/palladium.
Nihonbashi: Wynn White
The exhibition at Beach Creative runs from Tues 12 – Sun 24 May; admission is free, more details can be found here. Tokaido Road is performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre on Saturday May 23: details online here. Our first Lunchtime Concert this term explores themes of East-meets-West in music for two pianos by Debussy and Ravel with poems read by Nancy Gaffield from her cycle on Friday 22 May at 1.10pm in Colyer-Fergusson Hall performed by Your Loyal Correspondent and Matthew King – details online here.
Our annual Summer Music Week festival to celebrate the end of another musical year at the University is now published online, with all the details of what’s coming up.
Running from Sunday 7 to Saturday 13 June, the week kicks off with a seaside visit to the Deal Bandstand with the Big Band; some of the singing Music Scholars will present a programme of Operatic Heroines in Love on Monday 8; the Lunchtime Concert on Tuesday 9 from some of this year’s Music Scholars, followed by the Music Awards ceremony; Wednesday sees the Concert and Big Bands coming together in the evening; Thursday features an informal lunchtime performance from the String Sinfonia; on Friday the Music Theatre Society performs on the foyer-stage at lunchtime, whilst in the evening we present our choral commission from composer Matthew King, poet Patricia Debney with projected photos by Phil Ward, performed by the Chamber and Cecilian Choirs; and the week comes to a festive conclusion with the Chorus, Orchestra and Chamber Choir on the Saturday afternoon, followed by cream teas on the lawn and many fond farewells.
Relive the memories of last year’s festival on our Pinterest board here: full details of all the events are published online here, or you can collect a brochure for the week’s events from Colyer-Fergusson soon.
Don’t forget to follow @UKCSummerMusicon Twitter in the build-up to and throughout the festival. Bring me sunshine…
Currently touring the UK after a successful premiere at the Cheltenham Festival last year and its recent London premiere at Milton Court Theatre, we are very pleased to be bringing the chamber opera, Tokaido Road: a journey after Hiroshige, to Kent on Saturday 23 May.
Nancy Gaffield
The chamber opera, an evocative fusion of music, poetry, art, mime and photography comes to the University in a few weeks as part of the University’s fiftieth anniversary celebrating the work of members of the University community; the libretto is written by Nancy Gaffield, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing in the School of English, and is based on her own award-winning cycle of poems of the same name. Commissioned by frontier-challenging Okeanos Ensemble, and composed by Nicola LeFanu, the work is inspired by Hiroshige’s 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road, a series of woodblock prints evoking the Japanese landscape and its people along the ancient route linking Edo and Kyoto. The chamber opera sees Hiroshige reflecting on life, love and loss on his journey along the Tokaido Road, unfolding against a backdrop of projected images of both Hiroshige prints as well as photos of modern-day Tokyo.
The score combines Western instruments with Japanese sho and koto, and the first half of the performance sees members of Okeanos perform traditional Japanese music.
Come along The Road when it arrives at the Gulbenkian Theatre on Saturday 23 May; details and tickets here. You can find out more about the chamber opera, including image galleries and audio extracts, here.
As a curtain-raiser to the performance of Tokaido Road, which comes to the Gulbenkian Theatre on 23 May, the lunchtime concert the day before is an exploration of the meeting-point between poetry and music for two pianos, set against a backdrop of some of the Hiroshige prints which inspired both poetry and opera.
Pianists Matthew King and myself, together with poet Nancy Gaffield, part of the Creative Writing team in the School of English and author of the original Tokaido Road cycle of poems, spent yesterday exploring the programme which we have put together, which intersperses music by Debussy, Ravel and Matthew himself with poems from the cycle, which Nancy will be reading. There is some wonderful connectedness between the words and the music – a phrase in a poem is echoed by a rising melodic shape; the opening arc of a poem emerges out of a slowly-dying piano chord; a cluster-sonority echoes the tone of one of the Hiroshige prints which is projected above the performers. We spent several hours immersed in floating words and chords in the darkened concert-hall, playing with moving between music and poem.
The concert will take place on Friday 22 May at 1.10pm, admission is free, more details here: come and immerse yourself in time-out-of-place with music, poetry and print.
Contemporary opera makes the first of several appearances at the Gulbenkian next month; before Tokaido Road comes on May 23, Jonathan Dove’s Swanhunter swoops into the theatre on May 1 and 2.
An Opera North production composed to a libretto by Alasdair Middleton, the opera draws on the Finnish folkore epic, the Kalevala, in which Lemminkäinen travel to the icy north to face the Devil’s Elk and the Swan on Death’s River.
Told using puppetry in collaboration with The Wrong Crowd, the opera (written in 2009 with young audiences in mind) is billed as being ‘as much for adults as it is for children.’ Dove is the accessible end of contemporary music, as his beguiling choral anthems and rumbustious The Passing of the Year attest, and his prolific output includes music written for community music-making as much as for professionals.
”We’re really thrilled to be bringing contemporary opera for family audiences to the Gulbenkian,” enthuses the theatre’s creative producer, Mairi Coyle. ”Both Opera North and the Wrong Crowd have impressive international reputations in the fields of music theatre and the fact that they’ve come together with a top British composer to create such an inventive fusion of opera, puppetry and live action is really exciting and we’re proud to be part of it.”
Performances at the Gulbenkian are Friday 1 May at 7.00pm, and Saturday 2 May at 2pm; tickets and details here, or flick through the interactive resource pack for teachers and families here.
As part of the Tokaido Road project coming to the new Colyer-Fergusson Gallery later this month, Faversham-based photographer Hope Fitzgerald will be bringing her #walkSwaleMedway series. In advance of the show opening on Friday 17 April, I caught up with Hope and asked her about the ideas behind her various walking projects, and what to look forward to in her forthcoming exhibition.
Hope Fitzgerald
Tell us about the #walkSwaleMedway project
Walk Swale Medway began with a continuous walk of nearly three weeks through Swale and Medway starting on 22 June, 2014. Using a mobile phone, I took pictures as I walked and posted them to Instagram using #walkSwaleMedway. Links were also shared on Twitter and Facebook. As part of the original Walk Swale Medway three-week walk, I relied on the kindness and hospitality of my neighbours in Swale and Medway. I took a few photos, heard stories and shared them on Walk Swale Medway. Sometimes a friend recommended someone who could help.
The website includes a selection of writing and photographs featuring the places seen, the people met, and the stories heard along the way. Walk Swale Medway continues to be an open ended invitation to take notice of and share where we live, connect with and contribute to our community
What was it about the Tokaido Road project in particular that interested you in taking part ?
It was completely unfamiliar to me at first, so that was appealing. I was interested in the fact that a connection had been made between #walkSwaleMedway and the paintings Hiroshige made from views sketched while walking the Tokaido Road. Once I’d read up on it, I was really struck by the fact that Hiroshige’s paintings included details of date, location, and anecdotes of his fellow travellers, just like I had with WSM by adding text on my Instagram images before posting. There’s this lovely timeless parallel – of movement and looking around, and taking notice. It was also his job, really, and not that well paid, but the success of the Tokaido Road series increased awareness of his work.
#walkSwaleMedway explores similar themes of travel, landscape and people to Hiroshige’s ‘Tokaido Road:’ do you see WSM as a Kent-ish version ?
The more I look, the more parallels I see. I’m also really pleased to be on the fringe of a project that has inspired a lot of people working collaboratively to make something new – the librettist Nancy Gaffield, composer Nicola LeFanu, and musician Kate Romano, among others. Not the first time Hiroshige has inspired others, I like this about it, too.
You’ve done similar projects walking in Faversham, and to Folkestone last year for the Triennial: what is it that makes you want to explore like this ?
Walking in Faversham is where it all began, almost by accident. I gave myself a two-week target of walking every day, with a new pair of trainers as my incentive. By about day 10, I was hooked, and walking was a reward in itself. I didn’t mean to do it – it sort of just kept going! I did that every day (barring a couple of sick days) for a year before #walkSwaleMedway. WSM was much more profound an experience than I’d anticipated – I thought I’d just go for a wander, but it was challenging and exhilarating in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I heard a radio programme later about long distance walking and how intimidating it can be, but I didn’t really think it through – I just thought ‘Hey, I know, I’ll walk across Swale and Medway.’
I walked to Folkestone to take part in Alex Hartley’s brilliant work called Vigil, in which a set of mountain climbing ledges hanging off the outside of the Grand Burstin Hotel was occupied by volunteers. It seemed like as good a reason to walk somewhere as any, so I went for it. It took three days, and the countryside that way is beautiful and walking for a long time is a great way to see things. There’s a wonderful metaphor for life built into walking for me – it’s just one step at a time – sometimes they are heavy, sometimes light, but always just the one step keeps you going. I’ve been so busy lately that I have been skipping steps here and there, but I’ll find my stride again. I’m looking for an excuse to walk somewhere most of the time.
What can we expect when #WalkSwaleMedway opens in Colyer-Fergusson later this month ?
The plan is to mirror, in number at least, the 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road along the eighteen panels of the new Colyer-Fergusson gallery. The photographs are small, so on an intimate scale and framed in hand-finished black shadow boxes. They are printed on aluminium, so some are jewel-like, while others glow with the feel of watercolour. They are pictures of my home.
Hope’s #walkSwaleMedway exhibition opens in Colyer-Fergusson on Friday 17 April and runs until Friday 1 May; admission is free.
Running from Sunday 7 to Saturday 13 June, the week kicks off with a seaside visit to the Deal Bandstand with the Big Band; some of the singing Music Scholars will present a programme of Operatic Heroines in Love on Monday 8; the Lunchtime Concert on Tuesday 9 from some of this year’s Music Scholars, followed by the Music Awards ceremony; Wednesday sees the Concert and Big Bands coming together in the evening; Thursday features an informal lunchtime performance from the String Sinfonia; on Friday the Music Theatre Society performs on the foyer-stage at lunchtime, whilst in the evening we present our choral commission from composer Matthew King, poet Patricia Debney with projected photos by Phil Ward, performed by the Chamber and Cecilian Choirs; and the week comes to a festive conclusion with the Chorus, Orchestra and Chamber Choir on the Saturday afternoon, followed by cream teas on the lawn and many fond farewells.
Relive the memories of last year’s festival on our 
An Opera North production composed to a libretto by Alasdair Middleton, the opera draws on the Finnish folkore epic, the Kalevala, in which Lemminkäinen travel to the icy north to face the Devil’s Elk and the Swan on Death’s River.
All images: © Hope Fitzgerald. #WalkSwaleMedway is supported by Arts Council Funding through