Chroma: Folk dances

I´m doing research for my final project at Guildhall, for Chroma Ensemble, and to get me started I made a list of things I want to achieve with this piece. One of those things was "successfully utilise something from my musical heritage". Soon the rythm structure of some folk songs/dances came to mind :

 

Lump in throat / kökkur í hálsinum

Text:
Mille regretz de vous abandonner
Et d'eslonger vostre fache amoureuse,
Jay si grand dueil et paine douloureuse,
Quon me verra brief mes jours definer.

English Translation:
A thousand regrets at deserting you
and leaving behind your loving face,
I feel so much sadness and such painful distress,
that it seems to me my days will soon dwindle away.

Gróf íslensk þýðing eftir sjálfan mig:
Þúsund sorgir herja nú á mig
er skil ég við andlit þitt dáleiðandi.
Nýstandi sorg og óhuggandi þjáning,
rétt sem líf mitt fjari út.

Voiceworks blog

Dear All

Here is a direct link my group´s blog (group 2) for the voiceworks project. The piece is almost ready.

http://blogs.voiceworks.org.uk/1112/grouptwo/

"Combined presence" technical rehearsal

Yesterday my dance-music group had it´s 3 hour technical rehearsal at The Place (www.theplace.org.uk/). It went very well to say the least and we are all very excited for our premiere tomorrow. Before that tech-rehearsal we were abit on edge, since we felt we had not been able to rehearse enough, due to some administration difficulties and our performer´s hectic schedule. But it worked out because these are very talented people.

Composer: Helgi R. Ingvarsson
Choreographer: Andrew Bennett
Dancers: Toni Wooff, Monique Davidsson
Musicians: Caoimhe de Paor (Recorders), Chiel Busscher (electronics) &
Yolanda Bruno (violin).


Last week, under some pressure, Andrew Bennett, came up with the title: "Combined Presence" It works quite well since that´s the way we worked. Rather than him setting his dance to my music or vice versa we combined our creations, of course influencing each other and making a few compromises at crusial points in the structure for the piece to speak as a whole. The musicians are also very present and visible on the stage and there´s even a moment when a musician´s and dancer´s presence converge. So, overall a good title.

Here you can read more about the event itself:
http://www.theplace.org.uk/12442/whats-on/music-collaborations.html

Our instrumentation is 5 recorders for 1 player, violin and electronics and the music is based on 2 main elements: Live performance and pre-recorded playbacks. Both instruments are plugged into a laptop, controlled by the 3rd person. That 3rd person then manipulates their LIVE sound by adding various effects like reverb, delays, distortion and more.

Then we have the 4th person (in this case: me) who has a second laptop for triggering the pre-recorded playbacks/loops. So, it´s somewhat of a quartet.

Here are some photos from the process:

Voiceworks 2012 : Titles

Our voiceworks piece has been titled "Ground: a dialogue study".

In what ways is it possible to present a dialogue?

We have the dialogue between two persons, a dialogue between a voice and an instrument (in this case, the trombone), consonants with vowels, duet with duet, melody with melody, different speeds in speech and more...

To elaborate on the title I´ll copy-paste here a conversation (or dialogue if you will) between myself and our poet, Irum Fazal, on the 26th of January on our facebook group page.

Helgi: Maybe its to soon for this, but I just had to share this idea for a title for our piece: "Meeting place" or "no man's land" or both: "Meeting place; no man's land". I took it from one of Irums texts. We could play around with this idea and make it better if you come up with something later on. I just thought i'd throw it out there.

Irum: Thank you for suggesting this Helgi, it has made me think about titles and what they do, picking out those words has made me see they were the most important part of that text, and they weirdly encapsulate much of what we have been discussing -- I think from them 'ground' compacts further while also opening out. Whereas usually I avoid titles until the end and treat them as mini conclusions because I can feel constrained.

It ties in with what else we have been saying about voice from deep inside, obviously place, earth tribal, and the structure of building up/ disintegrating, crumbling down. And its movement, as one half of a pair, there's an immediate springing effect: I've previously performed Simone Weil's 'Gravity and Grace', and it makes me think of Samuel Beckett's interest in the world being understood in terms of 'Figures' that emerge from 'Grounds'...it cements while creating channels for what we've done so far.

this entry and others can also be view at my group´s blog : http://blogs.voiceworks.org.uk/1112/grouptwo/

Best wishes
-Helgi