Another video from my concert in Coton in July 2011. This is “Duplicity”, my homage to the music of Steve Reich, inspired by his piece “Clapping Music”. The initial violin figure is looped live, and then I play along with it, but every eight repeats I move one quaver out with the loop, resulting in a variety of interesting cross-rhythms. Eventually, by continuing to move out of phase by one quaver at a time, I “catch up” with the original loop, and we end up in unison.
This has been a staple item in my live concerts for many years, and continues to be fascinating and challenging to play, and hopefully to listen to as well!
This video was recorded live as part of a concert in Coton, Cambridgeshire, in July 2011. Many thanks to my friend Phil Toms for the excellent arrangement, and to Nicky Anderson for the lovely venue!
Here’s another video of a track from the “Touchable Dreams” CD. Jeremy and I are planning more of these soon! This one features a poem by Jeremy himself, and the musical accompaniment is from the violin sonata op.27 no.2 by Eugene Ysaÿe: Called “Obsession” this movement from the sonata features recurring motifs from Bach’s solo violin prelude in E minor, interspersed by angry outbursts and quotes of the “Dies Irae”!
For my first post of 2011 here’s a video of the track “Sanza” from the “Touchable Dreams” album.
The piece started life as a looped, semi-improvised violin piece which used lots of pizzicato. However when I came to record it I decided to have a look in my ‘miscellaneous instruments’ cupboard, and “Sanza” (another name for the thumb piano) was the result!!
I’m hoping that this will mark the beginning of a series of videos of original material throughout 2011……
Last week I played again at the excellent New Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth. Situated in rural Suffolk it’s an excellent venue where I’ve previously performed solo, and also with the “Touchable Dreams” show.
Last Sunday I was there with my duo partner Kelly Jones as “Phase 2″: This exciting collaboration has seen us exploring not only the acoustic violin duo repertoire, but also building up an interesting array of arrangements for electric/electric and electric/acoustic combinations.
Sunday’s show included duos by Wieniawski, Miklos Rozsa, Bartok, Judith Weir and Philip Hansell, plus arrangements of Arvo Part, Satie, Nyman and even Massive Attack, using a mixture of violins with, in some cases, some live looping. For two pieces I used my Bridge Octave violin, which is basically one octave lower than a normal instrument, providing some useful bass pitches.
We filmed and recorded the concert, in order to provide some useful clips for the new Phase 2 website, which I’m currently putting together at www.phase2duo.co.uk. Meanwhile here’s a video of the Nyman piece we played – a new one to our repertoire – which went down extremely well with the audience. I hope you enjoy it!
