worried

"Worried' was performed at Alma Enterprises, 1 Vyner street, London, on 17th March 2006 by the Alma Adult Community Choir. I was asked by LAND who curate the space to direct and produce a performance using Chris Peck's composition. This composition was a loose score written in text format using lyrics from a blues folk song called "Worried Man's Blues". His instructions were that it should be sung in slow motion individually but simultaneously, to no particular melody, and that it should be like an intervention, beginning and ending out of sight of the audience.

For the process of transforming the text into a performance, I used my years of opera training alongside my Chi Gung training. This got the performers, a mixture of trained and untrained singers, in the right trance-like state to perform with enough focus for such a demanding piece. In the rehearsals I went through standing meditations to get them in the right frame of mind, breathing exercises to find their own rhythm, then graduated to humming the piece with the right lengths of notes. Then I added the words. The main work was building people's confidence as singers, and getting them to listen to each other whilst performing individually. The performance lasted 10 minutes and it took a lot of focus and stamina to keep it going. Chris and I communicated through several e-mails, he left it very open to my interpretation. As soon as I mentioned Chi Gung to him, he was happy! He did a very short example recording of him and one other person, which helped a lot, then I developed my own interpretation. The movement was very important too. The performance had to seem like an intervention, a strange co-incidence of sound. When I saw the Alma gallery space, I knew I wanted to make use of the unusual acoustics because of the unusual octagonal shape. I got the performers to start and stop singing outside to stick with Chris' text score. Then I added the movement of surrounding the audience very slowly and immersing them in the centre of the sound. The singers were a fantastic team to work with, and it was great to see them develop as performers in such a short time.

Click here to listen to a recording of "Worried"

		Installations "Worried" Collaboration with composer Chris Peck, Performed at Alma Enterprises, London, 17th March 2006
	"Worried' was performed at Alma Enterprises, 1 Vyner street, London, on 17th March 2006 by the Alma Adult Community Choir. I was asked by LAND who curate the space to direct and produce a performance using Chris Peck's composition. This composition was a loose score written in text format using lyrics from a blues folk song called "Worried Man's Blues". His instructions were that it should be sung in slow motion individually but simultaneously, to no particular melody, and that it should be like an intervention, beginning and ending out of sight of the audience. For the process of transforming the text into a performance, I used my years of opera training alongside my Chi Gung training. This got the performers, a mixture of trained and untrained singers, in the right trance-like state to perform with enough focus for such a demanding piece. In the rehearsals I went through standing meditations to get them in the right frame of mind, breathing exercises to find their own rhythm, then graduated to humming the piece with the right lengths of notes. Then I added the words. The main work was building people's confidence as singers, and getting them to listen to each other whilst performing individually. The performance lasted 10 minutes and it took a lot of focus and stamina to keep it going. Chris and I communicated through several e-mails, he left it very open to my interpretation. As soon as I mentioned Chi Gung to him, he was happy! He did a very short example recording of him and one other person, which helped a lot, then I developed my own interpretation. The movement was very important too. The performance had to seem like an intervention, a strange co-incidence of sound. When I saw the Alma gallery space, I knew I wanted to make use of the unusual acoustics because of the unusual octagonal shape. I got the performers to start and stop singing outside to stick with Chris' text score. Then I added the movement of surrounding the audience very slowly and immersing them in the centre of the sound. The singers were a fantastic team to work with, and it was great to see them develop as performers in such a short time. Click here to listen to a recording of "Worried"