Demos

Success! I now have all of the musical material I need to begin promoting the project. And on top of that I enjoyed a lovely day with my band, recording two of the tracks that we performed for the showcase.

We decided to record Remembrance and There's A Long Long Trail, as we decided that the live recording of Dulce Et Decorum Est was more effective than a studio recording.

If you would like to listen, here is a link to my soundcloud page:

Jessica's Soundcloud

Watch this space for more musical snippets!

The first performance!

What a wonderful night!

Plenty of fabulous music (as usual, of course) from all of my peers at Trinity. Such an enormous breadth of styles and all performed with total class!

Despite feeling so nervous that I ended up lying on the floor taking lots of deep breaths, my showcase went down a storm! Lovely comments from lots of different people - including Mark, who was assessing, so that's always a bonus..

Here is a clip of the 2nd piece I performed, Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen:

Dulce Et Decorum Est - Jessica Radcliffe

Really excited to see how the project develops - thanks so much to Sam James (pno), Joe Downard (bass) and Corrie Dick (drms) for their fantastic musicianship!

The first rehearsal!

Just had a fantastic rehearsal! Granted... it was very last minute - but that's how we like to do thing's here. The music's really starting to come alive and the guys sound fabulous! I really picked the right musicians for the job.

Still feeling a bit uneasy about Dulce but I have spent lot's of time listening to a couple of free albums, namely Out There In Here and The Refuge Trio, and so I'll hopefully be able to draw some inspiration from them before tomorrow...

On a romantic note...

I managed to re-harmonise a beautiful ballad popular during the war just in time for my singing lesson! I tried a couple of different options and ended up with two totally contrasting versions. One is a spacious ballad with gospelly chords, the second is a Kenny Wheeler style straight 8's feel. The first version was certainly more appropriate to the tune and the second version was quite similar to Remembrance, so I decided to use the first one.

I used the tune There's A Long Long Trail A-Winding, as I really liked the imagery it conjures:

Exploring Wilfred Owen through a graphic score...

After a lot of deliberating, I finally managed to find a way to set Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est to music. Rather than setting a tune to the poem, I firstly annotated it, giving different moods and grooves to each section, and then wrote it out as a kind of "graphic score". This should give the feeling of a kind of structured group improvisation.

To be honest, when we tried to play it through in my composition lecture, it didn't really fall into place. I'm hoping that after some time working with my band I'll start to get a feel for it as I'm quite excited about having the freedom to really explore it.

It does look quite pretty though.. :P

First tune finished successfully!

I showcased the first of my finished tunes at my Composition lecture last Thursday and I was glad to hear it deemed a success by Mark Lockhart and the other students. I have since rehearsed it a couple of times and am starting to get to know it well. I think I shall still redraft bits of it, but overall I am happy with it as a piece.

I used the main parts of a remembrance service to write this first tune, with the intention of it being either the beginning or end of the programme to set the scene or to round it off. It uses an extract from Robert Laurence Binyon's poem, 'For The Fallen':

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them."

I drew on examples of the classical music of the time; particularly those who survived the war and wrote in the aftermath. For example, Vaughan Williams, Ivor Gurney, Holst. I listened in particular to Vaughan Williams' 'Pastoral Symphony', which makes use of pentatonic melodies and plagal cadences, akin to folk music:

http://open.spotify.com/track/3BUCC4vnn39rALO49BJhzT

For the intro to my piece I used excerpts from 'The Last Post' (to which a very sleepy student asked, "what, as in the royal mail?" which made us all giggle) and reharmonised certain chords.

As you can see I still need to add a Coda to accommodate the words "at the going down of the sun...." 

Proposal

This was the proposal I submitted on 24/10/13:

"An exploration into the mentality and experiences of those involved in the Great War through improvisation and original material, using existing sources such as music, poetry, photography and first-hand accounts. With the aim of creating an appropriatly presented and rounded performance, I will source material representing some of the different demographics affected by the war. This has the potential to grow into a broader project which aims to explore the history of warfare itself, looking at the humanity behind those who have been involved in conflict. As the Centenary itself does not take place until July, this project will be focused on research, both of material and finding venues for potential collaboration, proposing the project to them successfully and promotion and marketing for the events. I will have a number of informal 'showcases' of the event to track progress and reflect. I hope to present a series of future performances as the end result for this assignment."

My project (after a slow start) is now well up and running! It has given me the opportunity to develop my writing skills and rehearsal techniques with unfamiliar repertoire. I have also read a lot of literature on the Great War and the poetry and music that came out of it which has all been thoroughly enjoyable.

I am looking forward to the debut showcase of some of my brand new material (3 pieces) on the 25th of March. I will record this to use as promotional material but am also hoping - time and availability depending! - to record a demo in the recording studio... we will see.

I am glad to say that already a few jazz venues have shown interest in my project and I am looking to approach them with a formal proposition over the next few weeks. So far, the feedback I have received has been very encouraging and I am looking forward to see how this project will pan out!