A very little bit of Anser anser, performed at the Marrakech Biennale last week by Emma Smith, Vince Sipprell and lots of very obliging but slightly out-of-tune reed organs.
Check out Olly Coates in the Observer from yesterday. I just finished a brand new (as of yet untitled) solo cello piece for Olly that he’s going to be busting out on 29 January at the Southbank Centre. I’d say everyone should come, but it seems to be sold out, so if you don’t have tickets, you are out of luck. Although I’m sure he’ll play it again if you ask real nice…
A promo film for next week’s Shorts_Amorpha concert at the BFI featuring my new piece “Smoke”. Get your tickets here.
Cold War Tendencies
I am just putting the finishing touches on a new solo piano piece for Benoît Gagnon. It’s got three movements, each of which is based on audio taken from film and television adaptations of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The first movement is based on the 1975 Soviet adaptation, the second movement is based on the 1954 Disney version (though not Kirk Douglas’ amazing song) and the third movement is based on the 1975 Canadian animation. This is at least the third piece I’ve written based on audio analysis of clips from adaptations of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Maybe now I’ve finally got it out of my system.
Smoke
Programme note for my Shorts_Amorpha piece, Smoke:
All I can do now is pray to God that…
…I can stop this from ever happening again.
I don’t know.
Maybe they just ought to leave it the way it is.
A kind of shrine to all the bullshit in the world.
You know, we were lucky tonight.
Body count’s less than 200.
You know, one of these days, they’re gonna kill 10,000 in one of these firetraps.
And I’m gonna keep eating smoke and bringing out bodies…
…until somebody asks us…
…how to build them.
Okay.
I’m asking.
You know where to reach me.
So long, architect.
Check out the notes for the rest of the pieces at: ensembleamorpha.com
Ensemble Amorpha are playing my new piece “Smoke” for oboe, clarinet, vibraphone, viola and silent film at BFI Southbank, 20:45, 1 December.
Tickets are, as they say, now on sale. Get them (tickets) now.
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
“Haunch”
And because an empty tumblr is a sad sad thing: On a recent trip to Cardiff to see Olly Coates play Mark Bowden’s cello concert, Matt Rogers, undeterred by the fact that I and Charlie Piper got the two beds in the room, fashions himself a bed under a desk. And pronounces the word ‘haunch’ very clearly.
Welcome to the internet, me
After wrangling with font faces and CSS codes and HTML and all sorts of other things that I have absolutely no desire to know anything about, I have finally de-flash-ified my website. But don’t be confused, this isn’t it - I’ve also started a tumblr page to post updates and little bits and pieces and photos and whatnot. This is tumblr. My website is this: http://www.christophermayo.net
Go there and check out all the newly accessible stuff like audio and scores and press. Especially if you’ve got an iDevice - make it worth my effort to have banished Flash from my life forever.
