Music for Film & Theatre
On set or on site, composing music for film, theatre and everything else involves travel, rehearsals, recording sessions, performance preview evenings alongside cosy days in the studio.
Here's what I've been up to during the first three months of the year 2018. Theatre with The Dept of Distractions, scoring Red Star's CG animation, being flexible with planning, reading lots of books, and preparing to start a new, big, challenging and exciting project.
Update 6th March 2018: ‘The Key’ raised a grand total of £61 for Crisis and Emmaus charities for homeless people. The track is still available to download, but if you want to donate directly to these or any other homelessness charities, please do!
The Department of Distractions was joyous fun to work on; the walks between digs and the theatre were quite saddening.
There’s a man sleeping rough in an underpass on the way, so for a week I passed him twice a day. He sleeps on concrete slabs, next to a busy dual carriageway, sandwiched between two concrete pillars and surrounded by pigeon droppings.
Inspired by Emma Bright's article about her experiences of sexism - Girl On The Platform Smile - and in the spirit of solidarity, here are a few of my experiences with sexism that some may consider easily walked away from, ignored; as unimportant. Not worth making a fuss about. Sometimes I did make a fuss; sometimes I didn't.
15 Minutes Live by Slung Low, which played this year at The Holbeck (previously Holbeck Working Men’s Club), Leeds, was an awful lot of fun. More than I was expecting! I’m trying to pick apart why, and here are my thoughts. Is it just that I’m older and wiser, I’m working with friends, I’m far less caffeinated than I used to be? Maybe all these reasons and more…
The first 15 Minutes Live was performed in 2011 and since then (5 years ago) it’s become a streamlined operation. Originally we took a week to rehearse; now we’re at two days, including time for rehearsing the band and the dress rehearsal.
I decluttered from April to July, following Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying (which IS effing life-changing, though I won’t go into that so much here).
I liked her approach perhaps as I’ve already been sort of doing it in other areas of life, with interesting effects on work. If I’m completely honest, that’s why I do most things – this work-life synergy or symbiosis fascinates me, how one feeds the other and back again, and how to improve the experience and balance of both – because it just makes life more worth living (it’s completely selfish!).
The symbol of procrastination. Not that I procrastinate ever.
Finished work at 4.30pm, did a decent bit of yoga til 5.30, cleaned the flat til just after 6, made dinner with John (stir fry with Sweet Mandarin Chilli Sauce SO SCRUMMY) then finished writing this by 7pm.
At the moment I've got rather an easy-going carry on. I'm loving it. But there's this little niggling part of me that's feeling awfully guilty about it and keeps trying to justify this rather easy going schedule.
This is Day 5 for me at the Sundance Theatre Lab at White Oak Plantation, Florida. I'm here as composer with a great bunch of artists from Punchdrunk Theatre developing ideas for their epic, immersive, experiential, theatre adaptation of Woyzeck.