Parkinson Saunders
Tim Parkinson – songs 2011 (2011)
Tim Parkinson – House of Common (2018)
Tim Parkinson – Song 2020 No.1
Matteo Fargion – Songbook (2014) [extracts]
Material
John Cage – Bowbarovsk, a Traveling Circus on Nights at the Circus
Here’s the video of the full performance of our realisation of Cage’s _____, ___ ______ CIRCUS ON __________. The score provides instructions for ‘translating a book into a performance without actors, a performance which is both literary and musical, or one or the other’.
Our version had the title Bowbarovsk, a Travelling Circus on Nights at the Circus.In this realisation, performed at Bath International Music Festival, we used Nights at the Circus (the circus reference is circumstantial) by the Festival’s featured writer Angela Carter. Fragments of the text can be heard throughout the realisation, drawing on the book’s narrative, which moves from London to Petersburg and then to Siberia, following the movement of a group of circus performers at the end of the 19th Century. The mesostics were created by MA Creative Writing students, whilst the recordings of places and sounds mentioned in the book were collated in the Music Department. The relevant musics are principally circus marches and waltzes, played by musicians from the Music Department. The title is a portmanteau of the first and last places mentioned in the book, and references the changes of location in the narrative.
Apartment House
Mauricio Kagel – Acustica
Apartment House perform Kagel’s Acustica at LSO St. Luke’s, London as part of the Cut and Splice festival.
Other
Gavin Bryars – Far Away and Dimly Pealing
Here is the film John Lely and I made in November 2008. Bryars’ 1972 text score requires the performer to cause sounds to happen a mile away, without anyone else making the sound for you. We made two attempts at the piece, which can be seen in each part of the film. The sound is very quiet and can be heard faintly in the second attempt.
Cornelius Cardew – Treatise
This is a short edited film containing excerpts from a six-hour realisation of Treatise at The Drawing Room in London in July 2009, with Tim Parkinson, Angharad Davies, John Lely, Lee Patterson and Rhodri Davies.