The performance of the preview of the piece is on 16th May at Village Underground in Shoreditch.

Here are some pictures of sketches for the work as it progresses.

There are two pieces that I’d really love a film-maker to make a short film to one of them or both.

The first is 3 minutes long and is called ‘Fuck Forever’ and you can see it here.

(NB: this is a poor audio recording.  we will re-record the soundtrack for the video in a studio in London)

The words for the video performance will be changed from James Young to ‘George Miles’ – referencing the Dennis Cooper pentology of books about George Miles.

The second is ‘numbers 91-95′ based on poetry by Simon Howard, and performed in this video by Ensemble Adapter in Berlin.  The poem is all about memory, nostalgia, dreaming and forgetting.  The text is here and the music is on this video.

More information about my work and audio samples and press reviews are all on this site.  I hope you are inspired!

This is an unpaid, voluntary, collaborative work, and the idea would be to make the film and music freely available as a promotional tool for both artists, ideally distributing round all of our networks.  Ongoing collaborations may transpire too, and may lead to paid collaborations with various multimedia projects I’m working on relating to poetry, violence and sexuality.

The bolder, more edgy and more direct the work, the better!

Please send samples of work, ideas, CVs and any other relevant info to me by email above.  I’d be hoping to have the films finished by the Summer.

I met Theatre Director Nick Blackburn over a coffee in a very cute little knitting shop / café in Nantwich on Christmas Eve.  We had long conversations about music, text, violence and theatre, and he filmed a little bit of the conversation, a bit of which is shown here.

This video seems quite relevant to most of my projects this year, as so many of them are connected with violence:

• the revenge of the honourable Miguel Cotto against the despicable cur Antonio Margarito (working title) with poet Steven J Fowler and the London Sinfonietta – preview on May 16th 2012
• Unleashed with writer & director Jorge Balça, and baritone Omar Ebrahim.  Preview at Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival in August – a separate blogsite for this here: www.unleashedopera.wordpress.com
• A project with Nick Blackburn and someone very, very special, TBA…!

I’m delighted to have been selected with poet Steven J Fowler for the London Sinfonietta’s new Blue Touch Paper scheme.

We were selected in October for our project that is an immersive, 45-minute-long  semi-staged piece for ensemble, electronics and vocalists, about Boxing.  Steve is a really wonderful, critically-acclaimed and very prolific young British poet who also used to be a professional boxer.   Steve’s work has so much in common with my own, with its predilection for violence, and its clear, no-nonsense communication with the reader/listener.  We’re hoping to bring all these qualities into our work, and we’re both really excited about producing something that is really fresh, adrenalin-fuelled and original.

The Sinfonietta are backing the project with lots of resources, advice and support, under their Blue Touch Paper scheme for emerging composers and collaborators.  We’re currently working on the project, having lots of workshop sessions with Sinfonietta players, poets, other composers and vocalists/performers.

We will preview 20 minutes of our project in May 2012 with the London Sinfonietta, and we are also on the look out for production partners who may be interested in taking the complete project, once finished.    Watch this space!

Contrasts in Space is a black and white film by Sebastian Schmidt.  Here’s a video of the synced live sound recording from the performance with the film.
 

Wonderful playing, and I’m very grateful to Kings Place for making the video of the performance.  The piece, as you can hear, knits neatly into Mozart’s own Clarinet Quintet, making it a thoughtful, contemplative concert opener for that work.  Endymion are performing this again, with the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets, at Surrey University Concert Series on Sunday 29th January at 3pm. Click here for more info.

I’m really happy with the piece and the performance, and so were the Ensemble.  They performed it again the following week at the wonderful Borusan Müsik Evi venue as part of the new music series.

This will be performed by Ensemble Amorpha at the British Film Institute on 1st December in London, at an event called Shorts Amorpha.

Here’s more info about it.  Do go along if you can!  There’s lots of new scores to silent short films, by some very good composers including Luke Styles, Chris Mayo and Naomi Pinnock.

Here’s the trailer, too….