March 29th is International Piano Day - for, after all, it is the 88th day of the year! I wonder if it changes on leap year? This is a little refrain I played for the piano day - I played it twice and you can hear it meshing with itself.

Piano Piano

End of Lockdown 3 - and a song from the trio at home. Ellen and Hugh on backing vocals and Caroline on lead. Lovely to have a bit of time together singing this wonderful song written and performed originally by The Fleetwoods (Gretchen Christopher, Barbara Ellis, and Gary Troxel)in 1959. 

Picture at post-swimming session 15/4/21 Torre Abbey Sands.

Come Softly To Me

Soundart Song Commission from Peter Shearn this morning - for the sighting of the basking shark in Torbay. 
7 beats to the bar, a little echo of 'Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside' and memories of canoeing round in circles with Caroline once in Cornwall.
Plankter - the singular of plankton.

Basking Sharks Only Eat Plankton

Soundart News Song from today with Mr Peter Shearn and Ms Katie Whitehouse. Hurrah for SOUNDART
F#, 7/4, harsichord, drummy things, harp thing

THIS IS THE NEWS

This is the Soundart news song - hip hip hooray
This is the Soundart news song - written today
This is the Soundart news song - no delay
I can’t guarantee it won’t be boring or long 

This is the song that gives you - all the news
This is the song that sings you - all the news
This is the song that brings you - all the news
I can’t guarantee that everything is true

When you have the news brought to you - in a song
You sometimes find you are inclined to - sing along
And if this is what you do - well it’s not wrong
Today the news is going to be sung by Hugh

Ooh - this is the news
Ooh - this is the news
Ooh - this is the news
On Soundart Radio

This Is The News

BORIS JOHNSON'S PHONE NUMBER

new instant song from the last day of April 2021. This morning 2 stories presented themselves, the one about the fact that Johnson hasn't changed his personal mobile number since 2006 and the fact that penguin pee makes up 3% of the antarctic, and I managed to combine them in a new song. 

As usual begun at 7.17 and on the radio by 8.42. Commissioned by Peter Shearn from Soundart Radio and shared the programme with the effervescent Katie Whitehouse.

Piano and vocals and korg microstation.

There are many things you can find out
Like the dance steps for the Afro-Cuban Rhumba
Or the age and the height of the Egyptian pyramids
Or Boris Johnson’s direct phone number

Did you that 3% of Antarctica is made of Penguin pee
And you can learn the percentage of swans who live alone
You can find the exact distance between your house and the zoo
And the up-to-date number for Boris Johnson’s telephone

It starts with a zero seven 
It has a four and double three
It’s as easily accessible for you as it is for me
It ends with a double eight
And has a five followed by a one
This is the phone number for Boris Johnson

There are books that you can read to find out stuff
And Wikipedia for nearly all quotations
And Boris Johnson listed his mobile details 
When he was shadow secretary for Education

I know this is hard to believe
And there is more without doubt to emerge
That he hasn’t changed his hairstyle or his shoes
Or his one and only security password

The password has to have numbers and letters
This one starts with a letter 'B'
It also has a 'J' and ends in one two three
You’d think with all his mistresses and children
He might have changed it once or twice
But amazingly it’s managed to survive

How much longer can this go on
Not the not changing numbers but the more important things
Like expensive wallpaper and a horsehair sofa
And who paid originally for those curtains

There are many things that you can find out
Like how many people died of Covid 19 in the last year
And who took the decisions for all the messy mistakes
And then phone him up and tell him what you think he needs to hear

It starts with a zero seven 
It has a four and double three
It’s as easily accessible for you as it is for me
It ends with a double eight
And has a five followed by a one
This is the phone number for Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson's Phone Number

A Soundart Radio News Song featuring an orange vase, 3 verses in Rubai'i form (AABA rhyme-scheme), a bottle of wine, a piano, a Balailaika, the door bell and the central heating.

Written in collaboration with Robin Tebbutt from his home in Grosmont, after an evening of reading from The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayam, PG Wodehouse and more.

News story about a cat jumping from the 5th floor window of an apartment on fire.

A Chicago fire, on the fifth floor
A video made of the exterior
A black cat appeared through thick black smoke
Testing the ledge with its tw front paws.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/14/cat-jumps-from-fifth-floor-of-burning-chicago-building-bounces-once-and-runs-away

One Bounce

Yesterday I visited Kilpeck Chuch.
My friend Robin showed me all the grotesques on the outside walls including this sheelanagig (see pic). 
(He has a theory that perhaps they are not women showing their vulva but men farting - equally vulgar but not a vulva?).
We went inside and I played the organ. It was an electric organ and not in good shape. 
I recorded my playing on it and this is what you hear at the start, then a bit of Kilpeck church organ looped and a few extras added including a Squid tune borrowed from their latest single (Paddling) and in honour of them being number 4 in the album chart, number 5 in the Scottish abum chart and nmber 1 in the vinyl album chart. 
I didn't have a racket to play, but did make a racket on the organ

Sheelanagig Kilpeck Squid

News 
News story
News story song
Instant news story song

the end of May 2021

Levelling Up

The lastest instant Soundart song from 11/6/21, and the story from Devon Live of the Yelland Bollard Issue - I represent both sides here, as I am sure you will agree. Appparently lego-topped bollards are very uncomfortable to sit upon (thanks for the update Ben)
The usual time constraints, but enjoyed adding a little bass guitar as Graham left his.

Bollards (Never Mind The Bollards)

My friend Blake Leyh wrote and produced the soundtrack to 'The Trials of Spring' a very special film made in 2015 about Egypt. The main soloist on the soundtrack is the wonderful trumpeter Jon Hassell, and when I was staying with Blake I added just a smidgen of melodica which was included. So here I am 'playing' with Jon Hassell, with Blake on saz and percussion. What a treat for me and a way to remember Jon Hassell who died recently. I remember seeing him play at the first WOMAD festival with great happiness and all his Fourth World albums, which inspired our first trip to the Edinburgh Festival with 'Coincidental Music - Music for a Fourth World.'

The film 'The Trials Of Spring' is directed by Gini Reticker and you can find more out about it (and a place to see it?) here - https://www.forkfilms.com/the-trials-of-spring/#about

The Trials of Spring Outtakes

The Trials Of Spring - extract

We have many friends and family who cannot go out of their homes and we cannot go and see them. This is a musical hug for them all and this song features a cousin in Wolverhampton, an artist friend in Torquay, an elderly lady in Ashburton and a sister in Ireland, all of whom are on their own. But please sing it with other names of people you know and love.

Thanks so much to son Laurie for adding emotional cornet from Bristol.

Musical Hug

Rick and I saw four Impalas leaping out of the Kings Bowling Club today, the day before the bowling season is due to start.

The Slow Rush

Rick and The Lion is in B major.
Rick and the Lion is mostly in 3/4 time.
Rick and the Lion has 3 viola parts, one piano part, two vocals and a glockenspiel.
Rick and the Lion also features birdsong from my garden, you can hear it at the start especially.
Rick and the Lion is another in the series of Walks With Rick.
Rick is Rick Thorpe.
I am Hugh Nankivell
Rick and I both have a sister called Bridget.

Rick And The Lion

Inspired by Rick Thorpe's picture of Monarch Butterflies at the Clock Tower, as part of our Walking With Rick series of watercolours and songs, I invited  friends to contribute by playing a version of my piece of music and sending me their version. I suggested that they all start at the same tempo (62bpm) and then play the music without listening to a click or a metronome and to finish when they finish. I asked them to think of it a little like a meditation. I then put all the final recordings together.

The piece is played by Billie Bottle, Dean Brodrick, Sarah Collins, Pete Moser, Sam Mason, Mary Keith, Frances Clarke, Patrick Bailey, Emma Welton, Sarah Goldfarb, Nick Hayes, Laurie Nankivell, Eric Clarke, Makoto Nomura and Bob Lockwood.

A big thank you to all performers and to Rick for the new picture of 15 butterflies - one for each performer (they can decide which is who or who is which.)

Just to say that I have done very little in the way of editing and mixing except that I have done 

a) some top and tailing with the aim that all start at approx the same time, 
b) a bit of panning so all are not all in the same space. 
c) some volume adjustment to make all balance approximately. This was interesting - most are on acoustic pianos or piano sounding settings on keyboards, and so sound similar anyhow, but some of the other instruments stick out a bit more - eg the fender Rhodes (Laurie) and the Dulcitone (Eric) and the lovely duet from Belgium of Nick and Sarah on combinations of clarinet, flute, vocal and xylophone, and when Nomura starts singing along towards the end of his version.I have tried to edit these so they don’t stick out, but still blend in. 
d) I have left in the wonderful sounds that also have crept in, like the washing machine at the end of Sam’s, - it s all part of the whole piece. 
e)a very tiny fade in at the start and a very general fade out at the end of the final silence.
f) no reverb or other effects at all.

I hope you enjoy it.

Hugh

Fifteen Monarch Butterflies

Yet again the James Bond film has been put back, but perhaps there never will be no time to die.  It certainly feel like that at the moment. Thanks to John Barry for the little steal.
Melodica, Erhu, Piano, Voice

No Time To Die

For my instant news song on Soundart Radio on 26th February 2021 Peter Shearn sent me the story about the Russian diplomats and families who found the only way they could leave North Korea was (partly) by a hand-powered-rail-trolley. I enjoyed finding music that they might have sung as they hand-powered their way back to their homeland.

hugh - projects

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