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Unst primary children
Fetlar primary children
fascinated by Stuart's bass clarinet
the composers!
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SHETLAND ODYSSEY – PROJECTS FOUR (primary age) & FIVE (juniors) For photos of these sessions please click here
Glorious blue skies and warm spring sunshine sped the CHROMA team northwards to Baltasound Junior High School, where we were to conduct our final day of workshops. We had already briefly met the fantastically organised and dynamic music teacher of Baltasound, Alice Mullay, on the ferry the previous evening on our hasty run south to fulfil our postponed concert engagement at the Garrison Theatre in Lerwick on the mainland. Alice and her partner Jonathan’s work with the children is an inspiration to all music teachers. A production of the Odyssey had been staged, filmed, composed and performed by the children under their guiding hand for the Christmas Production. The DVD of the project so far is brilliant and thrilling to see how all the children have embraced the Odyssey story and had great fun recounting it in their own words – all this from the initial spark ignited by the Tête-à-Tête Opera project coming to Shetland.
Alice had created a blistering schedule, which would make it possible for all the children in school and the visitors from Uyeasound and Fetlar to see us at least once. In addition to our own plans for some of the children, we had discussed, in the weeks before the project, the possibility of recording some of the children’s compositions that they hadn’t been able to perform, for inclusion in the final cut of the Baltasound Odyssey. This would be a fantastic opportunity for the children studying sound recording to mike-up and record the harp, horn and clarinet – all technically tricky. So roll up those sleeves and get down to it. The morning was taken up with three 45 minute long performance/demonstrations to all the children in school that day. This obviously varied according to what age range was present, but there’s so much to learn about such a fascinating group of instruments – let alone their owners! Undoubtedly the harp was the winner – it’s really very difficult to compete with so much gold and fancy footwork! The children were mesmerized by Helen’s South American ‘Fire Dance’ and the waterfalls in ‘La Source’. There was also some Saraste, a duo for bass clarinet and violin by John Woolrich, Rhapsody in Blue, Saint-Saens and Strauss and oh, Star Wars, the Simpsons and ET thrown in for good measure. Being in the land of sea and boats, it was perhaps not surprising that some of the older boys became more attentive when we began discussing the age of Marcus’ violin and the different woods used to make it back in 1774 or the fact that my clarinets are made of African Blackwood; a wood that doesn’t float!
During the session with the older children we had the opportunity to have a brief composition masterclass with the two young composers who’s works for the ‘Archery Contest’ and ‘The Battle of the Suitors’ parts of the DVD we were to record later. Marcus had made great use of our extended stay on Fair Isle by working on their compositions to allow us to demonstrate ways in which they might take their compositions forward in future. The girls had scored their pieces for instruments not available in school and not strictly available to us either on this trip, so we took a part each and played their pieces as written first of all. Both compositions had lots of character and were effective. We showed them ways to increase the sense of drama and offered advice about generally bringing more depth to their work. It is always difficult to have an aural image of one’s composition so this was a really useful way in which all the young composers present could hear how different techniques work, whether that be simple things like being more daring with dynamics or by thickening musical textures with octaves or using imitation for example. A very satisfying session! Next came the fun bit – recording time! Safely ensconced in the recording suite (with arguably the most mesmerizingly beautiful views of any studio any of us had ever worked in!) it was over to the sound engineer students to cut their teeth on miking up our motley crew of instruments. I, for one, was very impressed at how they managed this. Meanwhile some of the older primary children and our Fetlar friends were assembling to watch their first session. The atmosphere was electric – their teacher was thunder-struck at how quietly they sat throughout the whole experience, set-up, sound checks, rehearsals and takes! 40 minutes later everything was in the bag and everyone was happy with the outcome – we can’t wait to see the finished DVD!
As if by magic it was lunchtime and we were not sure whether Jamie Oliver had made a trip to Unst, but the food was really very good – many thanks to all those who allowed us to push in – blame the one with the timetable. It was at this point too that Helen and Marcus had to say goodbye, as they had to make the journey south again in order to make connections with flights and ferries back home to London or in Marcus’ case on to Nice first thing the next morning. We were sorry to seem them go as it meant our own private odyssey was coming to an end. With them safely on their way we three remaining headed back to the lavish music department to start on our final session. An old singer friend of CHROMA’s Andy Ross, who lives on Yell, was just finishing a vocal workshop with two colleagues Claire and Johanna and we were delighted they were able to stay and join our workshop after lunch. With students from the neighbouring school in Uyeasound and the Fetlar children we were bursting at the seams – some 30 children and 10 adults in a fairly ‘peerie’ (that’s shetland for 'little' by the way) hut! Warm-ups were not really necessary so we crashed on with making music. The format was much the same as some of the earlier workshops; creating a soundscape with chimes and other percussion using notes derived from the name of the school. In this case: Baltasound & Uyeasound (Bb – A – A – Eb – D – E natural – A – Eb – D) We again experimented with following directions to bring dynamic contrast to our composition. There was also a samba-band section with some fantastic lead drumming by our young harpist student Shona. The Baltasound rap was based on two of the excellent poems that had been written by some of the primary school children about the giant whirlpool Charybdis. These poems and super pictures were hanging above our heads and so they were the perfect materials to use for our rap. We had a wonderful afternoon and once our composition was at an end we finished with another song ‘The Bells of Westminster’ in a round lead by our colleagues who had gamely got stuck in with us. They got their own back, of course, having Evgeny, Andy, myself and Mr Roger (one of the primary teachers) pretend we were the bells swinging in the belfry! There were lots of questions about my bass clarinet and the horn from the Uyeasound pupils, who hadn’t made it to one of our intro concerts, so Evgeny and I spent some time talking about them and playing them before finally packing everything away and heading off to pack for home.
THE BALTASOUND RAP Disgusting smells of slimy, mouldy fish Salty Water, help!
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