Davies Hugh 1986 Eye Music the Graphic Art of New Musical Notation Arts Council of Great Britain
We were delighted Jolyon Lacock got in touch with us and kindly shared his recollection of his time at Arnolfini from 1979 as featured in Severnside Composers Brotherhood – Newsletter – Wintertime 2020/21
Conversations with Jolyon Laycock | Function ii: The Arnolfini years interviewed by David Greenhorne
You mentioned that, at the end of seventies, your career took a decisive turn?
Yep, when an advert appeared in the Guardian in 1979 for the post of Music and Trip the light fantastic toe Coordinator at Arnolfini, the temptation to apply was irresistible and influenced by many factors. I already knew of Arnolfini's reputation every bit something more than only an ordinary fine art centre. Its policy, under the visionary leadership of its founding director, Jeremy Rees, of representing gimmicky developments of the highest quality in music and trip the light fantastic toe too as the visual arts chimed precisely with my own professional person commitment to artistic fusions.
The job at Arnolfini seemed tailor made for me, and I for it. In particular I knew of the piece of work of my penultimate predecessor Judith Serota in establishing a new music programme at Arnolfini in clan with the embryonic Gimmicky Music Network (CMN) pioneered by Annette Moreau at the Arts Council of Great Britain. I embraced these opportunities with enthusiasm.
The CMN was a touring scheme of leading international musicians and composers throughout the Great britain. Those ten years from 1980 to 1990 could be seen every bit the heyday of the Network. Names such as Steve Reich, the Percussions de Strasbourg, the John Alldis Choir, the Arditti Cord Quartet, the Nash Ensemble and many others passed through my easily during those years. Among the about aggressive productions I brought to Arnolfini were Opera Factory's product of Birtwistle'due south Punch and Judy, the London Sinfonietta's performance of Messiaen's Et Expecto Resurectionem Mortuorum at Clifton Cathedral, and Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad Male monarch by the Fires of London. The Network also toured jazz and improvised music with names like the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Trevor Watts, and the London Jazz Composers' Orchestra.
Beyond the CMN concerts, were you costless to follow your own musical instincts and ideas?
I greatly admired Jeremy Rees for his vision and dedication, and in a higher place all his adherence to a clear-sighted creative policy. I sometimes recall that his relative lack of specialist knowledge in gimmicky music allowed me to take a much freer hand in my music programming than was possible for my colleagues in the visual arts. Thus, I was very happy to provide a home for the Bristol Musicians Co-operative, a slightly cluttered group of improvising musicians and jazz players led principally by the brothers Will and Ian Menter, post-obit the loss of their regular rehearsal base at the erstwhile Bristol Arts Centre. Their almanac Festival of Improvised Music became a regular feature of the Arnolfini Music programme featuring such names as Andy Sheppard and Keith Tippett.
An important parallel strand was the Regional Arts Association New Music program. The Regional Arts Associations came into existence during the 1970s. Very sadly they were abolished in 2003 when they became
the regional offices of Arts Council England. I served on both the advisory panel of the CMN and the South West Arts music panel during the 1980s and was able to participate in the formation of creative policy of both organisations.
My immediate predecessor at Arnolfini was the composer John Hopkins who, though he had only occupied the mail service for about a year and a half, was able to behave on the work of the Arnolfini Music Workshop. This basis-breaking project, the brain-child of ii former Arnolfini music programmers Judith Serota and Jane Wells, was directed by the composer Peter Wiegold and featured the newly formed Gemini Ensemble in residence, and was financially supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. It was through the workshop programme that I first met and established a long friendship with Peter Wiegold and clarinettist Ian Mitchell. This was one of the country'southward about important pioneering initiatives in the field of artistic music making.
Education has always been an important strand in Arnolfini's ethos, how did that impact you?
Over my ten years every bit Arnolfini Music and Trip the light fantastic Co-ordinator I was able to develop a strand of composing in education and composing in the customs with a succession of visiting composers and workshop leaders. It became for me an of import principle of music promotion that, whenever possible, visiting musicians and composers should be invited to requite talks, lead workshops and visit educational establishments including schools and higher education institutions such the University of Bristol and Bath College of Higher Didactics as it was then
known.
Another gene that attracted me to Arnolfini was Jeremy Rees' commitment to contemporary trip the light fantastic toe. I am no dancer, but collaborative projects with gimmicky dancers and choreographers had been a recurrent feature in my own creative work since my student days and throughout my fourth dimension at the Birmingham Arts Lab. Rees himself was a trustee of the Dance Umbrella Festival, newly formed in London by Val Bourne in partnership with the original highly successful New York-based Trip the light fantastic Umbrella Festival. Each year, we provided a platform in Bristol for dance
companies, mostly from Europe and America, that were appearing as role of the master London Dance Umbrella Festival. Once again, the list of artists reads like a role call of leading artists in the field. Such a broad range of activities!
What stands out for you lot now as you look back at your period at Arnolfini?
I was privileged to be in at the start of the careers of so many composers and musicians, choreographers and dancers who have gone on to be leaders in their fields, some of them now household names. Choreographers like Richard Alston and Siobhan Davies; composers similar Judith Weir (now Master of the Queen's Music) and Colin Matthews; conductors like Mark Elder and Elgar Howarth; electronic composers like Trevor Wishart and Tim Souster – all passed through my hands at early periods in their careers.
1 of the Arnolfini projects of which I am most proud was the international exhibition of audio sculpture I curated in 1985 called A Noise in Your Center. With a catalogue edited past another old friend, Hugh Davies, himself a audio artist and sometime collaborator with Stockhausen, the exhibition featured x sound artists from around the world including Max Eastley, Alvin Lucier of Sonic-Arts- Union fame, and the celebrated French sound artist François Baschet. The exhibition toured all over the UK generating a lot of interest including a mad dash to London in the
dark of dawn with a hired truck full of selected exhibits to appear on Blue Peter. Peter White from the BBC In Touch on programme likewise caught upwardly with me at the Lang Gallery In Newcastle on Tyne. Every bit a blind man, he was fascinated by the thought of an art exhibition that was all about sound and touch.
What about your own development as a composer during this menstruation?
As you lot might imagine, during those years from 1980 to 1990 I could spare very little time for my own compositional work, simply there were notable exceptions. In add-on to two mini music dramas for primary school children, in that location was one more ambitious project. Woden'due south Dyke, written in 1987, was a collaboration with Trevor Iles, director of the Due south Bristol Music Middle Intermediate Orchestra. Based on a story nigh the building of the ancient earthwork known equally Wansdyke derived from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it took the form of an operatic melodrama with actors speaking against a soundtrack of orchestral music. The score for full orchestra was meant to introduce young instrumentalists to techniques of gimmicky music composition. There were passages in all sorts of contemporary styles from the minimalism of Steve Reich to improvisational textures in the way of Stockhausen. There was even a folk band complete with Morris dancers and a sound furnishings group. We performed the slice on four nights in various school halls culminating at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. It attracted a lot of printing coverage, non all of it free. I paper headline published a banner headline: 'Cast at war with the orchestra'!
Bristol Evening Post, February 23, 1988 Schoolhouse's musical marks the edifice of Woden'south Dyke
Your period at Arnolfini somewhen came to an end?
My time there was certainly not without its problems. The arts nether Margaret Thatcher were having a difficult fourth dimension. The 1985 report The Celebrity of the Garden delivered a dose of weed killer in the form of financial cuts to a great many pocket-sized arts organisations. Arts Council support for Arnolfini was beingness channelled through the Visual Arts Panel for
quite a few years but some members of the panel now began to object to Visual Arts money beingness used to support Arnolfini's wider artistic policy which included music, dance and cinema. Jeremy Rees resisted the pressure as long as he could just in 1986, unwilling to compromise, he was finally forced out. It became obvious that his successor had been appointed to carry out a hatchet chore. The redundancies started in 1988. I avoided the showtime round, but in 1989 it was decided to end the music and dance programme and I was served with a redundancy notice. At that place was general outrage amongst many friends and supporters, including South West Arts. At that place are still those in Bristol the who lament the closure of the programme. Arnolfini, they say, has never been the same since.
I took the example to an industrial tribunal and won, but past the time the verdict came through I had already secured a new post.
I of the casualties of the programme closure was, or might have been, the tour of American minimalist legend Terry Riley with the Minneapolis-based group Zeitgeist. Arrangements were already at a very developed planning stage in 1989. Disaster was averted when I decided to take over the tour management on a free-lance basis, driving Terry and the other members of the group to venues all over the Great britain, including the Michael Tippett Middle, with a terminal concert in the Purcell Rooms at the London S Banking concern Centre. Riley was held in great veneration past several staff members at Bathroom College of College Education and information technology was probably my office in bringing him to the Tippett Centre that helped to secure my date every bit joint concert organiser at BCHE and at the University of Bath, but that's a story for next time.
Source: https://arnolfini.org.uk/jolyon-laycock/
Postar um comentário for "Davies Hugh 1986 Eye Music the Graphic Art of New Musical Notation Arts Council of Great Britain"