Composed features

Music for BBC Radio 4 Outsiders cello performed by Danny Keane. Music composed by Nina Perry

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tcc6

BBC Radio 4 Outsiders Opening Theme

Music composed for BBC Outsiders https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tcc6
Cello Performed by Danny Keane
Composed by Nina Perry

BBC Radio 4 Outsiders End Theme (Long version)

Lewisham gives Little Amal a warm welcome - wish I'd had my recording equipment with me, just recorded on an iPhone - but the sound of the crowd was so heart warming..

"A little girl on a BIG journey

Little Amal is the giant puppet at the heart of The Walk, travelling 8,000km in support of refugees.

In 2021, the 3.5 metre-tall living artwork of a young Syrian refugee child will walk across Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and the UK to focus attention on the urgent needs of young refugees.

‘Little Amal’ is not so little at 3.5m high. Find out more about how she operates from her creators Handspring Puppet Company." https://www.walkwithamal.org/about-us/little-amal/

Little Amal visits Deptford 22 10 21

Spirit Of The Beehive

Nina Perry's BBC Radio 3 composed feature A Song of Bricks and Mortar explores composition, the creative process and the art of making. It takes its inspiration from this quote by Benjamin Britten:

"Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house - the colour of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house."

Via a compositional road trip, artists in the process of creating and making give insight into their own personal creative process, and what drives them to create. Like a play within a play or a documentary that documents itself - this feature dips its toe into the infinite and timeless nature of artistic creativity as an integral part of being human.

The fear of new beginnings, the pleasure of being in flow, moments of illumination, and of being lost; the artists' relationship with the environment and their own interior landscapes are revealed by Sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld, Art Student Imran Perretta, Composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Choreographer and Artistic Director of Rambert Dance Company, Mark Baldwin; and a group of people with Dementia and memory problems at a Creative Arts Session run by the Arts development company Verd de gris.

Their insights are woven together with a metaphorical motorbike journey performed by violinist Oli Langford and a soundscape of specially composed music.

First broadcast 06/07/2013.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036hzcw

A Song Of Bricks And Mortar

A Guardian Radio Highlight of 2011

Nina Perry's composed feature 'Supermarket Symphony' reveals the beauty, musicality and personal stories found in supermarkets over a day. Specially composed music and the sounds of the supermarket are interwoven with some of the human encounters to be discovered along with the weekly shop.

Amongst stories and rituals of shoppers and supermarket workers, we hear from Michael, a theatrical cheese counter assistant, who now in his 70's reveals his many past lives, and the happiness he finds serving people with cheese; Father Pat, a priest who enjoys the chance to connect with his local community whilst wheeling his trolley down the aisles and Julie who works on the tills, and has a gift for turning a frown into laughter.

Composed and Produced by Nina Perry
Violin and Viola - Oli Langford, Cello - Danny Keane

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, subsequent broadcasts on Re:Sound USA and Radio National in Australia.

Supermarket Symphony

Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and supported in part by National Lottery Arts Council England grants for the arts.

Winner of the Phonurgia Nova Award 

Melting Point explores both the human experience and musicality of ice as it melts.

This "composed feature" by Nina Perry explores the icy landscapes of Greenland, Iceland and the Highlands of Scotland through recordings of environmental sounds, interviews with people going about their day to day lives and gathered music that expresses cultural and emotional connections to the weather.

The winter thaw into spring is a time most often associated with renewal and hope, yet paradoxically in light of climate change melting ice has taken on the more ominous connotation of disappearing ice mass and rising sea levels.

Among the voices heard are an Icelandic writer, a Greenlandic fisherman, a drama therapist for whom an ice cube provides a telling metaphor and an ice-climbing fiddle-playing mountain rescuer from the Cairngorms. Their words are interwoven with spectacular recordings of the Greenland ice sheet as it calves and destroys and a specially composed musical soundscape to reveal the dichotomy and emotional resonance of the thaw.

Produced and composed by Nina Perry
Violin performed by Pete Cooper, Voice Julia Traustadottir

Melting Point

What keeps you awake at night? Money worries? Your conscience? Traffic? Dogs barking? Or the shrill sound of a stressed robin forced to sing at night to find a mate?

This composed feature for BBC Radio 4 by Nina Perry explores the problem of sleeplessness and the crucial relationship between sound and sleep, all set within a soundscape of noises heard during a sleepless night interwoven with specially composed music.

Tinnitus sufferer Helen takes us on a journey through a sleepless night of thought and sounds of ticking clocks, snoring, a restless child, mysterious footsteps and a neighbour's late night party. How are these sounds perceived in a state of sleeplessness? How do we respond to sound emotionally, physiologically and hormonally. Are the sounds of the night changing? Are silent nights a thing of the past?

Answering these questions and elucidating the relationship between sound and sleep are: Professor of Acoustics and Dynamics Andy Moorhouse and Senior Lecturer in Acoustics Bill Davies, from Salford University; David Baguley, Head of Audiology at Cambridge University Hospitals, who discusses sound perception, the meaning of sound and the reaction to sound as elements within Tinnitus treatment; Dr Ken Hume, a sleep researcher specializing in sound and sleep, discussing the physiology and psychology of sleep and sound disturbance; and Rupert Marshall, Lecturer in Animal Behaviour at Aberystwyth University, describing how urban wildlife is changing its behaviour to cope with modern life (for example, robins nesting in urban areas who struggle to be heard during the day are more likely to sing at night than their country cousins).

Produced and Composed by Nina Perry 
Musicians: Roland Sutherland - Flute

Sleepless Night

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2010/02/100209_message_in_a_bottle.shtml

Originally broadcast on BBC World Service in 2010

Nina Perry pulls together stories of communication against the odds, using the most unreliable of methods by sending a message in bottle.

One man, Donald Wylie of Orkney in Scotland, received a response to a long-forgotten message he had sent in a bottle 23 years previously. For isolated communities, such as the islanders who once lived on the now uninhabited St Kilda - one of the islands off the coast of Scotland - sending messages in bottles was a vital means of connection with the outside world.

But even now, tales of messages from the sea continue to intrigue and inspire in an age when we are, as Shetland poet Laureen Johnson describes, "trackable, traceable always contactable".

Message in a bottle

Radio Production

Mirror Mirror

First broadcast on BBC World Service in 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010z9yc

Around the world lullabies pave the road to sleep and dreams, and in every culture the 'signature' melodies and inflections of a mother tongue are carried in lullabies. This prepares a child's voice, brain and ear for language.

In this programme we visit a lullaby project in the neo-natal ward of the Royal London Hospital; Neuro-Psychologist Sally Blythe discusses the importance of the mother's voice in child development and Emeritus Professor of Child Psychology and Psychobiology at the University of Edinburgh, Colwyn Trevarthen, discusses how lullabies are a 'cultivated enjoyment' of the innate musicality of babies.

The music and narratives of a vivid selection of lullabies are explored and we discover why so many lullabies from around the world often contain dark or threatening imagery.

THE LANGUAGE OF LULLABIES

Music composed for BBC Radio 4 feature 'Spirit of the Beehive'. Composed by Nina Perry, Violin - Oli Langford

Spirit of the Beehive Opening Theme - BBC Radio 4

Aisle Tango Supermarket Symphony BBC Radio 4. Composed by Nina Perry, the loop of supermarket sounds is by Oliver Harrison. Performers Oli Langford (Violin) Danny Keane (Cello)

Aisle Tango from Supermarket Symphony BBC Radio 4

Composed by Nina Perry -  Lying Undiscovered (compilation of cues)  radio play by Richard Monks Directed by Sally Avens
BBC Radio Drama
Nina Perry singing and Rachel Nicholson on butterfly vocalisation.

Lying Undiscovered compilation of cues - BBC Drama

Composed by Nina Perry, Opening theme for BBC Radio Drama adaptation of 'Hard Times' by Charles Dickens

Hard Times Opening Theme BBC Drama

The Music Tree (2009/10 -  Ireland’s Newstalk, CBC – Canada, ABC – Australia.)
 
As a young man Martin Doyle traveled from Bray in County Wicklow to Africa.  He was employed as a ships engineer, a job he took to raise funds to set up his flute making business. Now an established musical craftsman based in County Clare he dreams of returning to Africa, where the rare wood he uses to make his flutes – the mpingo - comes from.  There he hopes to visit the forest where the mpingo grows, meet those whose livelihoods depend on it and to make an Irish flute with the help of local craftsmen in a Tanzanian workshop.   
The Mpingo or African Blackwood tree (The National Tree of Tanzania) is under threat from exploitation, because its dark, lustrous heartwood is one of the most valuable timbers in the world.  It’s used for making clarinets, oboes, bagpipes and Irish flutes.   The Mpingo Conservation Project is working with community groups to conserve these endangered forests by promoting sustainable and socially equitable harvesting of Mpingo.  Martin's journey from County Clare to Tanzania, documented in The Music Tree, charts a musical and environmental challenge. (a falling tree production)
 
Read my blog of the recording trip:
http://soundslike-ninaperry2.blogspot.com/

Music Tree Part 1

Music Tree Part 2

Music composed for the BBC Radio 4 series Tommies. 
Composed by Nina Perry, Violin Oli Langford, Cello Danny Keane.

BBC Radio 4 Tommies Opening Theme

Music composed for the BBC Radio 4 series Tommies
Composed by Nina Perry, Violin Oli Langford, Cello Danny Keane

BBC Radio 4 Tommies End Music

This is what happened when I sang into my new akai sampler circa 1998

Caramella

Music composed for animation film 'All you can Eat' by Kate Anderson

Cooking - Film Music

Deck To Trek - Film Music

State Of Wonder - Film music

Recorded during the making of BBC World Service Documentary 'Language of Lullabies'.
More lullabies for December here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Lullaby-A-Day-for-December/452188884829617?ref=tn_tnmn


Somali Lullaby Hoobeey, hoobey

I recorded this lullaby in Greenland in 2009. The singer Tom, sings it to his six children. He told me that his children go alternate boy girl, boy girl etc.. 'threading each side of the bead', according to Tom that's an Greenlandic expression for such a family unit. I have neither translation nor title - but it's just beautiful.

Greenlandic Lullaby

I recorded this lullaby at a school in Morocco during the making of the BBC World Service documentary 'Your World, Lullabies of the Arab World' 

a translation:

sleep baby sleep so I can prepare dinner
otherwise our neighbours dinner will be prepared before ours


Amazigh Lullaby - Morocco

BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00019bv

Poet Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch and composer Nina Perry create a radiophonic poem that explores the sounds and stories surrounding the flow of milk out of west Wales while the Welsh landscape flows into the sea.

We hear the voice of the path itself “The Milk Walk” (Y Wac Laeth in Welsh) the route that both the milk and the Cardiganshire dairy workers took to London during the last century. We meet Mae, a young girl who took the milk train to work in a dairy in London in the 1960’s, and Jac Alun, a sailor from a local farming family who moved to the city to sell milk during the Depression.

These three monologues are interwoven with personal testimony from those who currently live and work on the edge of the land: Jon Meirion Jones (son of Jac Alun); local farmer Steffan Rees; artist Lilwen Lewis; marine biology student Tom Malpas and Nia Wyn Jones from the North Wales Wildlife Trust.

Stories of migration and milk both past and present are woven into a musical soundscape that paints a picture of humming dairy farms, strange underwater worlds where dolphins echo-locate, coral ticks, and where houses are ‘tippling’ into the sea.

The Path is performed by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
Mae the girl by Sara Gregory
Jac Alun the sailor by Matthew Gravelle

Written by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch 
Composed and Produced by Nina Perry

An Open Audio Production for BBC Radio 3

The Milk Way

The Fight or Flight section from the composed feature 'Sleepless Night' that I composed and produced for BBC Radio 4 in 2013 - listen to the whole programme here: https://soundcloud.com/nina-perry/sleepless-night

Fight or Flight

Rub Clean Rhumba from A Spring Clean Symphony, commissioned by BBC Radio 4 - First aired April 2013. 

Featuring interviews with Professor Sally Bloomfield and Dr Bob Aunger from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 
With Oli Langford violin, Danny Keane cello. 
Composed and Produced by Nina Perry

Nina Perry

Pinned to spotlight

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