|
|
| Welcome | Production | Project | Materials | Media | Links | Thank you | Odyssey Blog | |
the performance on Fair Isle
|
SHETLAND ODYSSEY – PROJECT ONE – FAIR ISLE SCHOOL for photographs, artwork and creative writing from these sessions please click here
Children: Adults: Instrumentalists: Chronicler: Claire Shovelton
DAY ONE (session one): Following a real modern day Odyssey to reach Fair Isle involving a cancelled flight, a missed connection, unscheduled overnight in Aberdeen and gales threatening to ground us on Shetland CHROMA overcame all obstacles and managed to arrive on Fair Isle in time for the end of school on a Friday. Such was the excitement and anticipation of the eight Fair Isle children that they were willing to sacrifice not only their after-school time on a Friday, but the whole of their Saturday to work on their rendition of a local Odyssey story about a Shetland knitter, Betty Mouat, who was left stranded and alone on a ship following a ferocious storm and washed up in Norway after nine days. The first session began with introductions of the visiting musicians and demonstrations of the instruments, which clearly delighted the youngsters, many of whom had never before seen a french horn or a bass clarinet. Two of the musicians had visited the island before so it was a pleasure to see some of the children again. After all questions about the instruments had been answered, the children delighted in recounting all the details of Betty Mouat’s fascinating story, overcoming tremendous odds to survive such a disaster. The musicians learned a great deal of extra detail about Betty’s life from the children, apart from the shipping disaster and it was brilliant to begin a project sharing in this way. Sitting in a circle we all introduced ourselves, any instruments that we each played and our favourite foods before starting with warm-up games, designed to warm-up bodies and voices in preparation for singing. The first task for the children was to teach them a short extract from the Tete-a-Tete Opera of the Odyssey by Julian Grant, which had been workshopped on Fair Isle in October of 2005. The Sailor’s Song, whilst tricky to master was a perfect jumping off point to the story and an important link between this education visit, the previous opera workshops and the forthcoming premiere of the opera in the Autumn of 2006. The children made a very good effort and learning the Sailor’s Song and were given the words to take home with them that night. The children were also introduced to a way of generating notation. This utilizes the German notational nomenclature (A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-S), where B=B flat; H=B natural and S=E flat. In this way notation can be created from words and the children’s names can be turned into musical signatures. The results are always interesting and serve as an very simple and useful tool for teachers and children. Using this process the CHROMA musicians could play their own names and introduce the children to the musical phrase produced from conjoining FAIR ISLE SCHOOL and BETTY MOUAT. This musical phrase is really successful and would be used as the basis for the opening section of the children’s piece. Ex.1 (FAIR ISLE SCHOOL BETTY MOUAT) when conjoined translates into the following musical phrase: (F – A – Eflat – Enatural – Eflat – C – B natural - Bflat – E – A)
DAY TWO (session two): The storm that threatened to prevent us from flying into Fair Isle raged all through the night and the next day dawned with no sign of the storm abating. We couldn’t have wished for a better backdrop for our exploration of Betty’s Odyssey with the wind howling and whistling around the Community Hall. The second session with the children began with the traditional warm-ups, which consisted of rhythm games and vocal warm-ups where the children pretend to be motorbikes and bumble-bees amongst other things. This is all great fun and an excellent preparation for singing through the tricky tune of the Sailor’s Song ‘Splice the Main Brace’ from the Opera. The children got to grips with the words and tune really well this time, so we were able to introduce actions to go with the words of the song. Next we developed the idea of generating notation from the name of the school and our heroine to create a melodic palette from which both melody and harmony can be created. Fair Isle School has a fantastic selection of classroom percussion including a full set of hand chimes. Taking the notes from (Ex.1) we gave each of the eight children and two of the adults a hand chime bar to correspond with the notes in our ‘fair isle tone row’. The first task was to practise ringing the chimes one after the other to form the introduction to our composition – a musical introduction of the school and our heroine Betty. The children quickly mastered this and the sound was terrific. Because the sound produced by the chimes and the particular pitches generated was so successful we decided to develop this section further. Firstly we asked the children to think of a number between one and eight and to only play their hand chime on that number when it was called out. In this way interesting chords and occasional silences are created. The next step was to pick two different numbers from one to eight and repeat the exercise. The result is like a ring of church bells with some wonderful dissonances – a sound the children and adults clearly enjoyed a great deal. This was a perfect way to begin our work. After a quick break it was important for us to share the work the children had been preparing before our arrival. In all the projects we had asked the teachers to prepare an element in advance. In this case the children had studied Betty’s story and firstly produced creative writing about Betty’s time stranded alone on the Columbine with only a quart of milk and two biscuits for nine days and nights. The children’s work was brilliant and we were keen that they should each read out their work as part of the drama of their composition. In addition the children had worked with their music teacher Lise Sinclair on a musical soundscape to represent the terrible storm in which the Columbine’s main boom broke, sails ripped and men were swept overboard. The children had produced an amazingly imaginative and evocative section of music. This involved damp tea-towels to represent the violent flapping of the sails, a multi-faceted wooden barrel and a heavy ships float which when rolled between two children across a wooden floor produced an fantastic rumbling sound. There were also heavy wooden posts, which could be knocked over repeatedly at random to produce terrifying snapping sounds. Added to this were cymbal crashes, a rain-stick and deep drums. We worked on this section a few times, perfecting it, giving it more shape and choosing one of the children to lead the beginning and end of the section. The end result was excellent, starting with faint spatterings of rain on the drums and the rain-stick doing its job before gradually introducing the other elements as above, crescendoing to a deafening and apocalyptic climax and fading away again to leave the rain-stick and the dripping drum rain. The children were now put through their paces reading out their own poems and creative writing each in turn. After the understandable initial trepidation they all soon warmed to the task and with encouragement were becoming clearer in diction and more confident. A good time to take lunch.
(session three): The final element of the composition that needed to be workshopped was the grand finale, which would take the form of a samba band percussion element over a groove and a rap to finish off Betty’s story. The warm-up for the samba session built upon earlier rhythmic warm-ups, which introduced the idea of building up a complex rhythmic polyphony from simple individual rhythm cells where each child plays a different short and simple riff from each other. The result is very satisfying and easily achieved. By putting this over a simple bass line groove taken from the ‘fair isle tone row’ it was a great way of introducing Betty’s Rap, which was a call and response section designed to be audience-participatory in the final performance. Now all the musical elements had been covered and the last thing we needed to work on was the knitting element, an integral part of the opera project and central to the focus of working with the Shetland and Northern Isles communities. Our resident knitting artist Anne Sinclair had already produced a stunning backdrop to our nautical tale – two ships sails; one created from sewing a traditional woollen shawl (similar to the forty shawls Betty was taking to sell on the Shetland Mainland when her vessel was crippled) onto a snooker cue, the other fashioned in big knitting loops using sea-coloured ribbons, which we brought with us, again between two snooker cues. It is important that the children be involved in an element of knitting or weaving as part of the project and Anne came up with the brilliant idea of showing the children how to weave a rope for the ships rigging by hand-looping the wide coloured ribbons (see photographs). This element was introduced into the section where the children take it in turns to read out their creative writing. After each child stands up and reads they move to the knitted ribbon sails and produce a length of woven ribbon rope which on two sides which is then passed on to the next child once they have finished reading. This results in a fantastically lengthy pair of sail ropes created in real time by the children. The rest of the session was spent honing, perfecting and rehearsing the composition to make it ready for the performance in the evening to the rest of the assembled community.
The Fair Isle School Story of Betty Mouat composition was performed as follows: Section 1: Long quiet pedal note F played by very low by French horn and very high by the violin to create a still and calm opening. The children and adults play the ‘Fair Isle School Betty Mouat tone row’ through twice over the pedal using hand chimes. This moves into the section of creating a ‘peal of bells’ by choosing two numbers between one and eight and repeating until directed to move to section two. The end of section one is heralded by the introduction of the first few notes of the ‘Sailor’s Song “Splice the Main Brace”’ taken from the Shetland Odyssey Opera by Julian Grant played by the CHROMA instrumentalists. Section 2: The hand chimes stop and are quietly placed on the floor to enable the children to sing and do the actions to “Splice the Main Brace” (see Appendix for lyrics and actions) with accompaniment by CHROMA musicians. This section sets the scene of getting onboard ship ready for departure. The mode used predominantly in the ‘Sailor’s Song’ is F Lydian (all the white notes on a piano keyboard starting on F), which by chance works perfectly alongside the generated notation from the Fair Isle School Betty Mouat’ tone row. The link from section two to the following storm section is undulating improvisation using F Lydian mode. Section 3: The storm section created in advance by the children is led by Oliver Harrison in charge of the rain stick. This precipitates the storm, beginning with patterings on deep drums before each child introduces his/her element – wet tea-towel sheets, rumbling barrels, crashing beams, thunder-clap cymbals and wild whistling waves on the violin and fog horn calls from the French horn. The section ends when Oliver decides the rains stick should be silenced and so the storm passes. Section 4: The storm instruments are carefully set down and Scott Mitchell begins the children’s creative writing readings, which tell of Betty’s predicament alone on the Columbine, her thoughts and feelings. After each child finished reciting they move to the woven ribbon sail and being hand-looping the ropes using the coloured ribbons, passing the rope to each child as they finish. The link into the final section is the introduction of the samba groove on the French horn using F Lydian mode. Section 5: Once the groove becomes established by the CHROMA players, each child introduces his/her rhythmic cell into the mix lead by Scott Mitchell again. This peaks and one-by-one each cell is removed to make way for Betty’s Rap, leaving just the groove and basic drum. The Rap is a call and response with audience particiation, which neatly finished the story. The final line of the Rap is the children’s cue to come in again with their samba groove rhythms all together for a rousing carnival atmosphere ending to the Betty Mouat Story.
APPENDIX: “SPLICE THE MAIN BRACE” – by Hattie Naylor and Julian Grant Splice the main brace (rolling arms over each other – like winding motion) BETTY’S RAP – by Stuart King For nine whole days
DAY THREE & FOUR Due to fog and high winds the planes to and from Fair Isle were grounded. Attempts to reach the island were made but the plane had to turn back to Tingwall. In addition to this there was a ferry-workers strike (something we were told had never happened before) which meant that Helen our harpist, recently arrived on Shetland by boat from Aberdeen, had to drive immediately up to the second most northerly island of the Shetland archipelago, Yell on the Monday afternoon to ensure that she could undertake the workshops as planned; only she would be taking them alone. Originally the plan had been for us all to meet in Lerwick on the mainland and travel up together to our lodgings on Unst the next day giving a day’s workshops on Yell on the way. Due to the ferry strikes this meant that inter-island travel was impossible. This also meant that the children from Fetlar would also miss the workshops, as they were due to work alongside the children from Cullivoe, Burravoe on Yell and those from Out Skerries who were travelling over by boat before the strike came into effect. Time spent arranging and rearranging travel itineraries, briefing Helen who was delivering workshops in our stead and preparing material for the Mid-Yell & Baltasound workshops.
|
 |
