The secret’s out! Keri Sparkes our Company Manager has been moonlighting… Since 2017, Keri has been developing Ultimate Agent, a game that follows the principles of online gaming in real time, bringing communities together for an adrenaline fuelled mission.

We had to ask her a few questions about why she’s been cackling like a super villain and what’s with the white cat?

Keri, Can you explain Ultimate Agent to someone who might receive an invitation to play?

K- If you receive an invitation to the game, it means you have been recruited as a secret agent.  So, in order to be successful as an agent, you are given a series of tasks and targets via your phone on a daily basis for the duration of the game.  What you need to do is carry the water pistol provided with you at all times.

What is different about Ultimate Agent, is that it is played alongside your everyday life, from anything from 6 to 20 days depending on the number of participants.  So, you carry on with your everyday routine but with this game underlying everything you do. You may choose to break off from your normal everyday routine or the game might just come and find you.

How has the game been received by the participants that have already played it?

K- The people that have already played the game were all surprised at their own level of commitment,what they were willing to do in order to play the game successfully and the depth that they got involved. They all talked about how much fun it was and how much excitement it brought to their everyday routine; leaving the house, leaving work, shopping at Morrison’s- the game came to them and layered excitement over all those mundane tasks.  They all laughed a lot. 

As the mastermind behind the game, what are you hoping to achieve?

K- It’s my hope that when agents finish the game, that they have really stepped out of their comfort zone and created some really positive, unusual, exciting moments and memories in places that they go to on regular basis.  That potentially they created some new communities or connections and what would be really nice I guess is that those patterns of mundane behaviour are broken, by confidently stepping out of routines that we might not otherwise question.

Creative England have supported the development of the game by funding a demonstration app, the promotional film and a website. The relationship is on going, enabling Keri to showcase Ultimate Agent at events and helping her to broker relationships with new partners so that the game can continue to develop and be played by all sorts of communities.

Return to the Labyrinth has received funding from Arts Council England.  A party spectacle for Durham Brass 2019, Mr Wilsons will be supported to artistically develop this new commissioned outdoor show and are delighted to be working alongside our favourite freelance producer, Kate Reynolds.

Collaborating with experimental performance artist and musician Nwando Ebizie and award winning lighting designer Laura Bayliss, Mr. Wilson’s Second Liners invite audiences on a brassy, nostalgic trip to revisit the rush of old school raving and to pay homage to those diehard days of dance. Return to the Labyrinth is an adrenalin-fuelled dusk expedition, audaciously disruptive and exhilaratingly secretive. Like the authority-evading ravers of the 90s, ticket holders will only receive confirmation of the party location in the hours running up to the show. Interacting with social media, they must then navigate to their way through the urban landscape to an unlikely, secret site for an exclusive party experience. With live music, visceral dance and atmospheric lighting, Return to the Labyrinth is a rose-tinted flashback to a lost euphoric era, empowering audiences to make new connections to dance anthems and to share them with the next generation.

Artistic Director Sonya Moorhead comments, “The 90’s were seminal for dance and electronic music across Europe and inspired a generation of would-be DJ’s, musicians and ravers. The disused warehouses and open fields were a hot bed of communal dance experiences, fuelled by a hungry, dynamic and radical youth culture. In a time before iPhones, trending and whatsapp, young people mobilized in their thousands, spontaneously congregating to dance and make memories. With this show, Mr Wilson’s celebrate the truly joyful intention of those early free parties and we can’t wait to share something really special and unique with Durham Brass audiences.”

Festival Director Paul Gudgin adds, “Mr Wilson’s have been one of the most consistently popular and dynamic bands at the BRASS Festival.  This commission gives us an opportunity to take their relationship with our audience to a whole new level!“

The band has played Durham Brass for 3 years  and consider it to be one of the highlights of their annual calendar. They are programmed as part of ‘The Big Brass Bash’ and ‘Streets Of Brass’. We are also looking forward to touring ‘Return to the Labyrinth’ to other festivals across Europe, bringing this amazing collaboration to wider international audiences.

Howard Jacobs on drums is undoubtedly a spectacle to behold. On first sight, audiences often ping-pong between shock, bemusement and outright hysterics. There is something gloriously discombobulating about a turbined, techno-viking letting rip on a wheely, mobile drum kit.

Well, in case you didn’t know, there is so much more to the man than his plaited beard and lethal percussion skills.

Howard is a classically trained musician and has studied with some of Cuba’s greatest percussionists and singers. He’s performed and toured internationally with cult legends Toolshed, Lotus Pedals and Homelife to name a few.

His most recent project is Architects of Rosslyn, working in collaboration with the amazingly multi-talented, musician and composer Mandy Wigby. Mandy is a long-standing corner stone of Manchesters music scene.  She’s paid her dues as a producer and instrumentalists, notably as one of the legendary Sisters of Transistors.

What was the first project you worked on together?

H- We first met when I was in a wonderful band run by Paddy Steer called Homelife. The keyboard/synth player Graham Massey sometimes had to fly off to exotic places to play with one of his other bands, 808STATE and Mandy was his substitute.  So from the moment we met in the Homelife rehearsal rooms we were playing together. Mandy joined us on tour around 2001/2002.

How do you approach new projects as creative collaborators? 

H- Every collaborative project has to be approached differently as the personnel, the parameters, the workspace, performance space and brief will likely all be different… so…most of all we approach new collaborations with an open mind. Often the team will have only a description of a finished piece of work but no clear pathway to reach that goal. It’s important not to panic and to remember that as everybody channels their input to the same end, the once blurred vision gradually comes into focus.

Which project has been the most fun? 

H- The best-received piece to date would have to be the Sensory Soundpitwhich was the brainchild of Artist Di Mainstone. It was extremely popular at our Salford University installation during Manchester’s time as European City of Science 2016 and also at Bradford Museum of Science and Media’s recent exhibition.

People loved the way the sounds we created and the visuals projected onto the sand reflected their play and manipulation in the sand pits. We have some potentially exciting news regarding this project which will have to stay secret for now. 

But the most fun project to date would probably be creating soundtracks to some of Di’s surreal films. We recorded around the house with scrap metal pipes and ball bearings with gongs at the bottom amongst other things.

Who would be your dream collaborator if you were able to invite one more artist into the Architects of Rosslyn mix?

H- I would say that working with Di and being based in Manchester and already collaborating with amazing musicians and artists, it might seem a little fickle to want for much more! I do particularly like Biophilia by Bjork because of the amazing instruments that were invented to write and record it though.

M- Like Howie, I feel spoilt having already worked with such talented, like minded artists.  If the chance arose though I’d love to work with Laurie Anderson, Brian Reitzell & Tom Waits. They’re all great artists who constantly evolve and use great sound palettes. 

This autumn, Howard and Mandy, as the Architects of Rosslyn continue their creative odyssey as two thirds of Phil France’s band, as he tours his eagerly awaited 2nd album, ‘Circles’.

We’ve made the papers in Germany! Well, not exactly the headlines but the whole Lenton/Moorhead family were included in a double-page, centre-fold spread in a local newspaper.  That’s a first!  Thank you Celine McKillian from Imagine Luton for the sending the pics.

Last week Mr. Wilson’s had an inspiring, full family outing to Tête à Tête , Rastatt’s biannual International Street Theatre Festival.

Wow, this is how all festivals should be! Amazing weather, terrific hospitality, a jammed packed programme of shows of all scales and disciplines and let’s not forget to mention – an artists bar to dream of.  The whole Tête à Tête team, headed up by Kathrin Bahr & Julia von Wild, were incredibly helpful and attentive which made delivering the shows a total please and so straight forward.

If that wasn’t enough, the organisers and artists were so lovely and friendly to our kids, who travelled with us for the first time to an international festival.  They are 8 and 5 years old but they grew so much in confidence over the weekend, just watching acrobats and clowns and musicians enthrall thousands of people, they were blown away and by the end of our visit they were escorting themselves to the front row at shows and charmed more free merch out of artists than you could imagine.  Their absolute favourite was Murmyo, the Chilean clown.  His show, Fisura, was a highly skilled, traditional piece of street clown, and it was just so great to see families really laughing out loud and getting into it.

Sonya was also able to attend the professionals meeting, catch up with old UK outdoor arts comrades and learn a bit more about the emerging street sector in Germany.

And finally, some valuable learning points for future international touring drawn from our team’s  Tête à Tête experience :

• You can never have too many road snacks, you never know who might join you as a travelling companion along the way.
• Check all children’s bags before passing through airport security in case they have packed a full water pistol. (because that shows up in an X-ray machine as both liquids and a gun shaped object…) 
• Do not pack your passport into your hold luggage, especially if your hold luggage is stowed in a car that is travelling home via two other European countries, whilst you and the rest of your colleagues are due to fly.
• If you have a poor sense of direction and happen to sleep in the nude, turn the light on before trying to visit an ensuite bathroom. Otherwise you might find yourself locked out of your hotel room, in an empty corridor in the small hours of the morning with nothing to draw upon but your winning smile.
• If you are not an acrobat do not try to spontaneously audition as an acrobat for non-english speaking circus company.  It’s very disorientating for all involved.

This month the spotlight falls on our band leader, Will Lenton.  As well as being a composer, player and teacher, Will is also a Finzi Scholar.

A what, I hear you cry? Founded in 1969, the Gerald Finzi Trust seeks to promote the music of Gerald Finzi and to further his ideals.   Finzi Scholarships are awarded annually to support exceptional, international learning experiences for artists.  Will’s scholarship enabled him to visit New Orleans during the French Quarter Festival in April 2015.  There he experienced NOLA’s world renowned second-lining tradition and parades first-hand.

I asked Will, “What parts of the New Orleans experience really stayed with you?”  and his reply is immediate; “The quality of the musicianship.  The kids in the school bands all the way up… they’re all really amazing.”

“The other thing that is interesting is the canon.  There are tunes that everyone plays, really old tunes and new stuff, but all the bands play them and no one gets sick of hearing them again and again.  New Orleans has a very specific canon, it’s like the gumbo, everything is mixed up together but everyone knows all the tunes because they’re played over and over. That’s different to here, because even at Jam Nights in England, people don’t really want to repeat the same old standards, or they’re always trying to play new tunes or do something different with them.”

“What’s Second Lining like?”

“I learnt when I was there that Second Lining is totally different to Parades.  People line the streets and watch a parade. But with Second Lining, it sets off and everyone walks with it and everyone is dancing, some people film a bit on their phones but literally everyone is involved, they’re all really in it, everyone is moving and it really takes over the whole street.”

So when Mr Wilson’s came back from performing at Hastings Fat Tuesday  last month, I was surprised to discover how authentic Will had found it. “What was is about Mardi Gras in Hastings that made you think of New Orleans.”

“For one weekend, the whole town was about music. Every pub had live music, and the bands went from venue to venue.  It wasn’t just street bands like us, BBC Introducing were there and there were loads of young bands with big synths and loads of acoustic folk. Everything really.   The programme felt really busy and exciting and varied. Unplugged Saturday in Hastings was very similar to the French Quarter Festival where there’s loads of free outdoor gigs on the streets and in bars and theres fringe stuff like films and ticketed venue gigs with bigger acts.”

On viewing the Fat Tuesday’s website, he’s not joking, there were over 200 bands playing across 20-30 venues.

“The Umbrella Parade along the seafront on the Sunday turned into a second line.  The road is a big promenade and it was closed so people just joined in with the parade and walked with us and danced.  The costumes in the parade looked like they were really influenced by New Orleans’ Mardi Gras and the whole tow has a similar seaside, faded grandeur.  Then we arrived at St Mary’s in the Castle and there was a big party.  It was cold cause it was February, but I’m glad they did it on the right dates.”

(Mardi Gras is supposed to begin on or after the Christian feasts of the Epiphany (Three Kings Day) and culminating on Shrove Tuesday, or “Fat Tuesday”.)

“They did it properly, from Friday Night all the way through to the Tuesday, and didn’t just cut it short just because everyone’s supposed to be at work on Monday morning.”

Fat Tuesday is defintiely playing a role in Hastings cultural and economic renaissance, maybe we need to get the word out to similar seaside towns like Morecambe, Scarborough and Skegness and tell them to look to their long lost cousin NOLA for inspiration.

It’s not a very well kept secret that Mr. Wilson’s is made up of a mighty team of independent artists.   Musicians, composers, arrangers, outdoor artists, theatre makers, painters, teachers and at least one joiner; we’ve got so many skills in-house it almost sounds like we’re making it up.

So with that in mind we thought we’d share with you some of the other projects the crew are working on, when they aren’t raving it up in the streets.

First up, we’ve cornered Chris Davies (aka Mr Pink/Papa Cheese) to tell us about his labour of love, ‘The Adventures of Prince Achmed’.

Chris was first commissioned by the National Media Museum to compose an original new score for the groundbreaking animated film, ‘The Adventures of Prince Achmed’ for the opening night of the Bradford Animation Festival 2014. With Grants for the Arts funding from Arts Council England, Chris has gone on to develop the work into a successful international touring production.

Lotte Reiniger’s beautiful 1926 silhouette animation brings to life magical tales from the ‘Arabian Nights’. The earliest surviving animated feature film – preserved in the BFI National Archive – it has been hailed as one of the world’s most innovative and influential animations. Three years in production and made in card cut entirely by hand, Reiniger’s exquisite shadow characters move intricately through colourful worlds of demons, witches, beautiful princesses and flying castles. It is truly stunning and Chris’s music has been described by audience’s as “…the soul of the film.”

We asked him a few questions about making and performing the work…

Chris, how were you first introduced to the film and what were your first impressions of it?

“I was asked by Jen Skinner who was then the Film Education Officer at the National Media Museum in Bradford, if I would be interested in re-scoring the music for ‘The Adventures of Prince Achmed’ for the opening night of the Bradford Animation Festival 2014. I was overwhelmed by the original orchestration and at 65 minutes running time it seemed a mammoth task for a one-off event. Then I started watching it with the sound off and musical ideas started to flow. What sounds take you to the Caliph’s Palace? Are conjured up by encounter with an African Sorcerer? Carry you to adventures in China and the mystical Spirit Island of WAK WAK..?(The film’s) so rich in atmosphere and I’d fallen completely in love with the beautiful animation skills of Lotte Reiniger and knew there were possibilities of touring with the film in the future.”

How long did it take to compose all the music and is this the first time you’ve scored accompaniment for film?

“It took 4 months to compose. The performance is a mixture of live and recorded music. I recorded tracks which I trigger using a software program called QLab, so sometimes the sound is very full with lots of layers then it fades to just a single instrument, so the sound world is expanding and contracting throughout the film. 26 instruments are played live. My music has been used for short video’s but this was my first full length film. I’ve been working for over 30 years writing and performing music for visual theatre and dance, creating atmosphere with sound. This experience was really useful in following the journey of Prince Achmed.”

Where have you taken the project so far and where would you like to go next?

“It feels like interest is growing!! Most performances have been in the UK but at the end of last year I went to Madrid and Barcelona and this year started with a performance for the Pharos Arts Foundation in Nicosia, Cyprus. Up coming performances are in Liverpool, Blackpool, Tiree, Mull, Lancaster, Hereford, and London. My dream is to perform with the film being projected onto the Alhambra Palace in Granada! It’s a warm evening, the sun has just set and a crescent moon is rising in the darkening sky…..roll the film.”

If you haven’t already seen Chris’s performance, you can see the trailer here. If you want to catch the film this year, keep an eye on The Prince Achmed website for dates and The Prince Achmed Facebook Page. 

Who doesn’t need a good blowout after Christmas?…

Just when you’ve had your annual fill of roast potatoes, sherry and family politics, along comes the dreaded self-assessment tax return deadline.  To top it all off there’s at least another month of dark mornings and scrapping ice off your windscreen with sacrificial CDs at an ungodly hour.

So, MWSL decided to alleviate the pain with a good ol’ party.  It appears we read the signs correctly because tickets for BLOWOUT! at Hebden Bridge Trades Club in January sold out within a few days.

This is the first club night we’ve promoted ourselves and we are delighted to say it was a massive success.  Thank you so much to everyone who made it out on a cold winter night to dance and sing and cheer up what can otherwise be a miserable month. It was a good night for the heart and soul and a great opportunity for us to try out some cracking new tunes.

Particular thanks must go to DJ Mick Fuzz, our support act, who introduced Hebden Bridge and the greater Calder Valley to the glory of Rave-e-oke. Think 90’s Top of the Pops videos of club classic tunes, projected with sing along lyrics, mixed with DJ precision.  Totally genius!  At one point, there was a wall of women of a certain age roaring at the top of their lungs, “This is the rythmn of my life, my life, oh yeah...”

If you missed it, you haven’t missed out. Hot news of the press,  we’ll all be back at the Trades in Autumn, for another BLOWOUT!  Keep an eye on our FB and twitter for details.

(photography credit: bigsoundpictures)

As many of you know, Mr. Wilson’s started life as a strolling street theatre performance, with a very clear ambition of inciting mini raves in public spaces for everyone and anyone who would listen and dance to us. It’s definitely what we do best, we’ve worked really hard since 2013 to nail this and we love it. There is nothing better than having audiences right up close, jumping and sweating and smiling, shoulder to shoulder with us.

Over the last year, however, we’ve been invited to perform to much larger scale audiences, most recently Milton Keynes 50^th Anniversary celebrations, MK50. We worked along side our old friends at Walk the Plank to perform a spectacular fiery finale for huge audiences.

In preparation for this and future performances of this scale, we’ve begun to interrogate how best to use the performance skills we have so that our content reads and can be experienced by 3-4 thousand people at a time without loosing that kinetic and immediate street charm. We want to showcase and feature our soloist, use space, movement and timing to enhance our music and act as a conduit for the audience experience of live rave music. It’s interesting to see which performance skills are relevant across every scale and which are particular or polarised to intimate or spectacle shows.

We’ve been also building our movement vocabulary exploring physical qualities, space and increasing the range in our bodies. In theory this should see us developing movement shorthand to work from so we can adapt to new stages in the future. In reality it means a lot of bopping around our cold rehearsal space, stretching, tripping over our own and each others feet and hard graft keeping us fit and busy over the winter.

Here’s a film of MK50’s celebrations – it was flipping massive! Well done Walk the Plank for weathering Storm Brian to deliver this beauty.