As part of the bursary I recently made the first of two visits to ‘Lunatraktors’ studio in Margate to begin working further on the ‘Song of the Shirt’ with Clair Le Couteur.
Clair has taken Thomas Hood’s very long original poem and edited it into a shorter composition. They’ve devised a new version of Lindsay Cooper’s melody from 1980 and it now is quite a haunting and beautiful song. While I was in Margate Clair made a sketch recording of a solo rendition of the song. You can listen to it here on the project blogsite
https://n-scale.org/2018/05/16/may-2018/
Our plan is to meet again soon and for Clair and Carli – the other half of Lunatraktors – to develop harmonies for the song and to explore some clogging and percussion for it too.
As a visual artist I’ve always been a bit envious of musicians and singers – something about the immediacy and sociality of their craft – so it’s really exciting to work again with musicians on one of my projects.
Also while in Margate Clair and I put together a proposal to the recent English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) bursary awards to be able to explore this collaboration further. It would be so exciting to take this simple but moving song and gradually expand it in the context of the ‘N scale’ performances; into something multivocal, as well as to see how it might be divided into shorter motifs that could be situated differently across the space and time of the performance.
Well, fingers crossed. We’ll see!
For now it is great to be able to take it this far.
