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.

In May, Mr Wilson’s Artistic Director, Sonya Moorhead, was selected by ISAN to attend Fresh Streets #2, a Street Arts Conference hosted by Circostrada in Santa Maria de Feira, Portugal.  3 days of debate, presentations and networking were followed up with Imaginaries Festival, 3 days of inspiring street art. Below are some of her thoughts, returning home.

(Sonya met lots of cracking people throughout the week, but this amazing chap was her absolute favourite: the only drum and bass Jew’s Harp player at the conference… possibly the world. This is all live, no backing track! A total gift out of the blue, he made this incredible, impromptu offering in the very last session of the conference.)

“Portugal has been a real treat. Who doesn’t want to eat fresh tomatoes, view a diverse range street theatre and talk about art in a hotchpotch hybrid of broken French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German? I feel very grateful to have been selected as part of the ISAN delegation to Fresh Streets #2 and am happy to share as much of the experience as possible with other members.

Stepping away from work and regular responsibilities liberates time and in this fresh mental space, new work takes place. Removing myself from “The Real World”, I’ve stepped into a landscape of thought that I normally only explore in the creative process. It’s lovely, if a bit indulgent, to inhabit that world, uninterrupted, for an extended period of time and meet so many other professionals from our tribe on the same “trip”. It really did feel like those engaged in the conversation were developing and progressing street arts, live in the room.

After three days of presentations, conversations and debates, the flood has abated and I’d like to offer what’s washed up. I am saturated with information, mostly biased by my own interest, but if I’ve learnt anything, it’s that often experiences are universal. So, here’s a few of my Fresh Streets #2 take-aways:

No 1. – RAGE, RAGE WILD BEASTS
(In response to Keynote speech by Noeline Kavanagh, Macnus)
Street artists can and should be creative anarchists, redefining the order of public space to the benefit of beauty. In a world that needs fun and love more than ever, we must be wilder, braver, more provocative and less patient. What are we waiting for?

No 2. – REACH OUT AND TOUCH
(In response to a conversation with Miguel from Project Ez)
We make theatre in the street because we want to connect with audiences directly. Street Theatre steps between the audience and their technology or social media. It offers unsanctioned and thrilling moments of human connection that people didn’t even realize they needed. A fantastic example of this was Su A Feu by Deabru Beltzak, holding the street to ransom. Tight, machismo and thrillingly intimidating, they left a nervous and giddy crowd in their wake. I also loved the brilliantly curated Steli by Stalker Theatro, for this reason, literally bringing people together in spontaneous creative connection.

No 3. – GOOGLE DOESN’T HAVE ALL THE ANWSERS
(In response to Rita De Graeve Policy Adviser for Culture and Economy (Belgium)
There are so many skilled professionals beyond our existing network that are well placed to guide us as individual practitioners and companies if we just make the effort to identify them. We must not presume we have an acceptable understanding of law, finance, policy or business just because we navigate it as part of our work. We must also not presume that non-arts practitioners don’t understand our creative practice or that they are somehow incapable relaying their knowledge creatively. If you don’t ask for advice and help, you are only liable for you own lack of knowledge

No 4. – AN IDEA IS JUST AN IDEA
(Copyright in Street Arts Workshop with Matthias Rettner and Teresa Nobre)
ARTISTS: If you do nothing else today, read this and get savvy about copyright and how it impacts your practice as makers and doers.
I know of too many artists who site occasions where they feel that their material or ideas have been copied but their name has not remained attached to their ideas or is even credited. The law protects intellectual property as the expression of the idea, for performance artists this is the show. Here lies a problem, because in order to acquire funding/commissioning we must be transparent and tell people about our ideas before the show is made. The Law does not protect shared ideas, but to my mind it feels like it still exclusively belongs to the artist. Lawyer, Teresa Nobre, said the only thing we can do to protect our ideas (before they become a tangible expression and made into work) is to arrange a confidentiality agreement. To extend the trust between commissioners, funders and applicants, perhaps all application processes should include a confidentiality clause, leaving artists confident that their ideas remain their ideas, especially if they are not awarded the commission in the first instance.

No 5. – OCCUPY THE STREETS, NOW MORE THAN EVER…
(In response to the Manchester Arena Bomb.)
This trip is stained with guilt. We stepped away and relinquished the horror of Manchester’s recent bombing. How dare we have such a heartening experience when families who live near us are engulfed in a searing new Hell?
Unexpectedly, I found myself reflecting upon my journey from a 1980’s childhood in a divided Northern Ireland to a career and love affair with Outdoor Arts and creative interruption in public spaces. I know what it feels like to wake-up to bad news and realize it’s not going away. The darkness goes on and on and sometimes gets closer and it’s difficult to imagine a world where things are different, where peace reigns. I didn’t experience outdoor arts (bar the odd busker) until I was well into my 20’s because congregating people in public spaces was deemed agitating in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland however is a great demonstration of hope. In parallel to the contagion of extreme politics, I truly believe that acts of kindness, art and inspiration only risk epidemics of the same. If you stop using public spaces for culture and connection because of fear, terror wins. We must occupy the streets, now more than ever, populating our cities and towns with acts of peace, reconciliation, understanding and hope.”