I’m in the middle of composing the music for a small section of the concert that will commemorate the First World War Battle of the Somme in Heaton Park, Manchester, in the evening of 1st July.
The concert will feature a children’s choir, the Halle Orchestra, Lemn Sissay reading a new poem commissioned for the evening. The part I’m working on is a new dance piece that explores hope, idealism, fear, excitement leading into the horror and brutality of war. A tall order!
The music is currently in its second draft and it’s been an interesting challenge to bring all of these emotions and ideas into one coherent piece that lasts for 14 minutes. It’s certainly one of the longer single pieces I’ve written for a theatrical event that isn’t an ambient underscore (in Slung Low’s shows these kinds of underscores are commonplace, usually to accompany large groups of audience members from one location to another). It’s way more front and centre – hopefully more a partner with the dancers and other elements than an accompaniment; and, because of this, it’s a more involved, more intricate and more crafted piece of work.
Ultimately the piece is in service of something way greater than itself – a commemoration of the largest battle of World War I on the Western Front, which killed or wounded more than one million men – one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
Image: Manchester Regiment Heaton Park Camp (Manchester Libraries, Information and Archive, Manchester City Council)