www.slacks.world/support
https://thenewbridgeproject.com/

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

Performed on Saturday 4th November by Christopher O’Gorman (TENOR) & David Pipe (PIANO) at Late Music Concerts, York. Programme curated by Professor John Goodby and Associate Professor David Lancaster called 'Singing Dylan Thomas:
I sang in my chains like the sea'.



Ilex or holly is a woody evergreen shrub associated with unconditional love, wise decisions, immortality, tenacity of life, and cycles of growth. Often used as part of Christmas decorations as a symbol of Christ’s crown of thorns and the crimson berries as a symbol of his blood, is used at this time to remind Christians of death and rebirth. In the spring, holly has white four-petaled flowers which could be it’s ‘snowy breast’, a symbol of hope and purity. (HJ)

You hold the ilex by its stem
And touch its petals one by one;
You make them glad and tender them
With lifted fingers to the sun.

The flower will not join the sky;
It was the oracle that told
You how the stem and leaves should lie,
Stem close to white, and leaf to gold.

And now the sun denies it rest,
You will have tears to carry bearer.

The ilex has a snowy breast;
There is not any flower fairer.

Recorded by Jude Clark

You Hold The Ilex By Its Stem (WP)

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

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.

You Hold The Ilex By Its Stem (WP)

Hayley A Jenkins

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