Edit of the last four and a half minutes: composition, improvisation and on the hoof conducting all working together...

Sacred Sites Reh.4Sacred Sites Edit (online - Audio - Converter.com)

Commissioned by and performed at the 2006 Bath International festival with BSU Contemporary Music Ensemble with Roger Heaton, Rob Smith.

03 The Idea Of North

Managed to get my old mate Wahda in to add some Caribbean spice to this track. Enjoy!

Silver Sea

This track from 2007 is a collaboration between Wonderbrasss and Amampondo. I listened to some set routines or improvised pieces that Amampondo had in their repertoire and built material for Wonderbrass around them. It was an exciting challenge for me as a composer. The process was fascinating and both bands had to shift what they normally do to be able to play the piece together - hence the title. Previously we had just taught each other our band's music.

UBUNTU

The Meeting Place

Its quite low res and out of date but still an interesting take on Tesla, and a great interview with Jon Thorne runs through it. I was figuring out what I wanted to do with Radio/Podcasting (podcasting still felt like a new thing at this time)and what I could do with the form as a composer. It's a bit of a prototype for 'The Idea of North'.

Radio Tesla

This piece was performed a few times in the 'noughties' but this recording is the rehearsal and performance of 'Sacred Sites' and its a piece I wrote for the Improvisation Continuums Conference in Cardiff 2007. The performers are Cardiff Improvisers' Orchestra - a short lived project that grew out of the then healthy Cardiff improv scene and Keith Tippetts' amazing and encouraging improvisation teaching at RWCMD.
Its getting good again in Cardiff - a lot due to Joe Northwood's 'Banshee Therapy Sessions' at the Flute and Tankard. Time for a full-on renaissance, methinks.

Sacred Sites reh

Sacred Sites (rehearsal)

Sacred Sites perf

Sacred Sites(performance)

This piece was written for, and first performed at, a concert at University of East Anglia (when they had a music department)in November 1990. Jess Phillips and I were given the whole second half of the concert to improvise but in this first half piece I wrote a piece for the two of us and string quartet, combining written instructions, graphic and conventional notation. After this it was subsequently performed in Edinburgh's Demarco Gallery and this version at the Bath International Music Festival in 2006. It very much functions as a musical amplification of the way Jess and I communicated in improvisation, and this is the only version that he doesn't play on. It still works though. It would be interesting to try it without me. (The image is from an improvised music and drawing session at University of South Wales.)

Behind These Pages

Big Band Ska celebrating Derek Walcott's island of birth.

Saint Lucia CF mix

Santes Dwynwen is our St Valentine here in Wales.

Santes Dwynwen Shuffle CF mix

as a child I used to lie in bed listening to the coal wagons moving past in the night. In Railway Street i listened to the frieght trains grinding the track past the back of the house.

Rob Smith Cardiff

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