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Be the Sea

Be The Sea - Louise Mackenzie, Hayley Jenkis & Dorinda Kealoha (The NBP x Slack's 27-29/10/21)

Meditation

Be The Sea Pt. 2 - Louise Mackenzie, Hayley Jenkis & Dorinda Kealoha (The NBP x Slack's 27-29/10/21)

BE THE SEA is a project commissioned by Sea AIR, part of SeaScapes Co/Lab the creative engagement project for SeaScapes: Tyne to Tees Shores to Seas that asks:
 
how we can become more capable of living with and not just on the coast - in ways that are mutually sustainable with fellow human and non-human beings?
 
BE THE SEA is a collaboration between Louise Mackenzie, SeaScapes Co/Lab Artist-in-Residence, Hayley Jenkins, composer and lecturer at Sunderland University and Dorinda Kealoha, Intertidal Interactive Officer at Durham Wildlife Trust. Our extended project team includes field recorder and sound artist, David De La Haye and the Self-Publishing Lab at Sunderland University.
 
The BE THE SEA project centres around three methods to foreground listening:
Attunement field-recording activities that zone in on the non-human sounds of the coastal seascape through listening and recording.
Resonance deep listening activities and voice/instrumental activities that use imaginative and creative strategies to develop an empathic and reflective relationship with the coastal seascape.
Resilience sound collage activities, sharing what the coastal seascape means for local communities and engendering ongoing stewardship of the coast.

BE THE SEA is inspired by theoretical practices of Deep Listening and Acoustic Ecology in the work of Pauline Oliveros, Hildegard Westerkamp, Stephanie Loveless, Barry Truax and Bernie Krause.
 
Sea AIR is part of SeaScapes Co/Lab, a two-year creative engagement project for SeaScapes, which is led by University of Sunderland. Sea AIR brings SeaScape partners together with artists, academics and coastal communities to explore ways we can connect to our natural, cultural and industrial marine heritage through socially engaged artistic and creative practices.

BE THE SEA

Blackwood Breeze Woodwind Orchestra

As part of BBC Radio 3's Light Music Festival in June 2011 amateur orchestras were invited into BBC studiosa to record a piece of British light music. Our performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 22 June. We played James Rae's Three Southern Sketches, a piece written for clarinet choir which depicts the journey of a train. This is the third movement.  

James Rae: Three Southern Sketches - 3rd movement - broadcast on BBC Radio 3

Hayley Jenkins chats to Lithuanian pianist Jelena Makarova about her upcoming concert, which celebrates the centenary of Stravinsky’s Sonata 1924.  The programme includes music by his contemporaries and colleagues Nadia, Lili Boulanger, and Galina Ustvolskaya. The programme also includes world premieres by David Lancaster, Hayley Jenkins and Lithuanian Diana Čemerytė and a piece by composer Colin Riley.

Late Music In Conversations: Jelena Makarova Celebrates Stravinsky's Sonata 1924

Water Of Tyne, arranged Ian Stephenson performed by Voices of Hope

Spectrum of a Peopled Street (WP 2018) Delta Saxophone Quartet

It's watching the world go by music,
Gin and pink lemonade with a view,
Watching the spectrum of a peopled street.
It's spring on fire and autumn on ice,
Footsteps in winter when summers the price.
It's everyone but truly bittersweet.
And eventually they move on by.
(Andrew Buglass, 2017)

Andrew Buglass is a Senior Lecturer of Education at the University of Sunderland and in his spare time, is a writer of prose and poetry. His work tends to focus on people, their everyday habits, thoughts and feelings. When asking Andrew to write some words for me, I gave him a playlist of works by artists that inspire me either due to their mood, tonality, motifs, instrumentation or technique. 

On receiving a number of works by Andrew this particular poem (above) entitled "A kind of red" stood out as I could picture the cinematic imagery that would give way to a spectrum of moods, rhythms and tones. The poem reminded me instantly of the Qatsi trilogy films: Koyaanisqatsi (1982) Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). With music by Glass and directed by Godfrey Reggio, the trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature and technology. In these films the contrast between nature and manmade industry is played out with dramatic changes in imagery and Glass' powerful and dramatic score. In this instance, each line of the poem plays out a difference cinematic scene and thus requiring a different musical 'mood', motif, tonality and pace.

The piece follows the poem's structure as though each line is a different section of the piece, mirroring the 'scene' or 'mood' in a programmatic way. It has a busy feel, as one can imagine the people moving past as the observer sits back with their gin and lets the hustle and bustle wash over them- just as I have done so many a time watching people pass a coffee shop window. The piece is very 'motif' driven with multiple motif's weaving in and out of each other at different points and sometimes recurring across the whole range of the quartet. 

The saxophone is a very versatile instrument and each one brings its own character and timbre to a quartet. The 'moods' and 'scenes' are also depicted through musical style; the saxophone as an instrument transcends genre, as Ingham (1998) rightly says, "although jazz is at times as diametrically opposed to rock as it is to classical music, in terms of the saxophone they share many techniques" (pg. 88). Therefore, the piece picks up elements of jazz, funk and more delicate choral writing at times in order to take the listener down a narrative path. The piece really plays around with this, with moments of crystalline fragility on the soprano contrasting with beefy funk on the baritone- the whole 'Spectrum' is therefore mirroring the breath and colour of society on the street, out of that coffee shop window.

Spectrum Of A Peopled Street

The work ‘Wrong Jacket’ sets the poetry of York poet Carole Bromley. The poem captures the moment of realisation that the persona is wearing someone else’s jacket by mistake. This develops into an exploration of items in pockets followed by an imagined life the true owner of the jacket leads. 

The setting attempts to capture two distinct emotions which arise from the poem; firstly, the unsettled confusion of an unfamiliar coat followed by a slightly nostalgic fantasy of what a life might have been like as the owner of the coat, in this section there is a clear juxtaposition between romanticism and reality. These two distinct sound worlds eventually merge to a conclusion of unapologetic regret that it is indeed too ‘late to return the coat’.  


Wrong Jacket by Carole Bromley

Strange how it felt alien, 
the silk lining colder, 
wool rough to the touch;  

in the pocket a spat-out sweet, 
a bus ticket to Middlesbrough, 
a blood-stained tissue -   

too late to return the coat, 
I wasn't even certain 
where I'd picket it up.  

So I became her, this woman 
with the nose bleed, 
a dislike for Nuttall's Mintoes  

a life supporting Borough, 
job in costume jewellery at Binns, 
fine Saturdays scrambling  

up the scree to reach  
the summit  
of Roseberry Topping.

Wrong Jacket

ANTHEM
for singing string quartet and NASA Moon Landing audio

In his 2018 Guardian article about the biopic ‘First Man’. Steve Rose wrote: 'Neil Armstrong made one concise, very famous proclamation about the moon landing being a giant leap for mankind. Perhaps, in that transcendent moment, he wanted us to be more than a planet of warring tribes, nation states or political factions.’ 

Anthem is an increasingly joyful celebration of mankind, combining fragments of twelve national anthems, focusing on those countries that have successfully landed vehicles on the moon. The human element is heard in superimposed recordings of NASA's Apollo 11 commentary and concludes with the singing voices of the quartet.

Anthem was commissioned for the 3D presentation In the Steps of Apollo by Sound World/New Music in the South West with generous funds from the Ambache Charitable Trust. Anthem received its premiere as part of the 50th Anniversary Moon Landing celebrations at We the Curious (Bristol Planetarium) on 20 July 2019. 

Anthem is dedicated with thanks to Julian Leeks.

https://sound-world.org/apollo/

ANTHEM for singing string quartet and NASA Moon Landing audio

Lecturer of Music and Education at Sunderland University, composer, cunductor and researcher.  

This selection of work spans my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and now my professional endeavors.

My work tends to draw upon literature, history, myth etc. with strong programmatic elements.  These are just examples of instrumental works.

Spectrum Of A Peopled Street

Hayley A Jenkins

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