CHRISTMAS BRASS BAND CONCERT

A permanent wave of silver hair rippled across the auditorium on Friday marking the start of the Christmas season for us. It was the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama's annual brass band concert at St David's Hall. A very jolly programme included Santa Claus-Trophobia, by Sandy Smith, A Christmas Fantasy by Gordon Langford, and tunes by James Last, Leroy Anderson and others with audience participation singing the usual popular carols. 
     All the students dressed up, decorated their instruments with gold and red tinsel, some wore santa  hats and reindeer ears. There were outstanding solo performances by Megan Alexander, Matthew Fletcher and Grant Jameson, conducted by Dr Robert Childs, a leading figure in the world of brass music. It was a really fun hour of entertainment.  The band will be playing again at the RWCMD this Friday, 12 December at 1.15pm. If you want cheering up, don't miss it!

REMEMBERING AUGUST

On Friday we saw the duo Remembering August at Acapela Studios in Pentyrch. Jesse Hallett (vox piano and Luke Searle (vox, acoustic guitar and mouth organ) are both 19 and met studying music at Bridgend College. Although they were the support group to singer-songwriter Louise Latham, their original sounds, genuine emotions and beautiful harmonies made the evening special for us. They were launching their first EP, 'Brother.'  On the cover they state,
      'This is a collection of songs that express our emotions and feelings over the past six months. From loss of friendship, love and our relationship with each other. Through these songs we hope you will understand us a little more.'
     We wish them good luck. Acapela has an instinct for promoting quality and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more from them in the future. Where's Jools Holland's scout?

TREE AID AFRICA

 A couple of weeks ago Rhys, my husband, took part in a local arts and craft market, selling his art work and raising money for Tree Aid Africa. He sold three paintings and a print, and donated 50% (£160) of the proceeds to this charity. We used to donate to the National Trust to offset our carbon foot print, then visited one of their Cardiff sites and found that it was a in a place of outstanding natural beauty. So, we looked for another smaller charity where our small donations may have more impact.
The following describes the organisation and is taken from their website.

TREE AID helps villagers living in the drylands of Africa unlock the potential of trees to reduce poverty and protect the environment.

“Two for One” – the TREE AID Philosophy

At TREE AID, we believe that tackling poverty and environmental protection are inseparable.

We help villagers in the drylands of Africa unlock the potential of trees to break this cycle of environmental decline and poverty. We help create self-reliance for poor communities building not only their chances of survival but also their dignity and respect.

At the same time, we help poor people invest in their environment, building its richness and health not just for today but for generations to come.

It’s what we call a “two for one” solution that breaks the cycle of poverty and environmental decline and offers a sustainable way forward for people across the Sahel.

Themes:

What we do – there are four key themes to our work which all our projects incorporate.

Access and rights

Securing long-term access to natural resources for the poor and making rules and regulations clear and enforceable ensures that they have confidence in and can benefit from protecting and enhancing those resources.

Looking after the environment

Building a greater understanding of how best to manage natural resources in order to protect and improve the environment, and making the benefits clear.

Nutrition and food security

Increasing crop yields and establishing an additional food supply from tree fruits helps poor communities produce more food, reducing hunger and malnutrition and increasing resilience in times of drought.

Enterprise and trade

Supporting the poor to develop income sources from the sale of non-wood tree products provides cash to spend on immediate needs and creates the means to invest in their families’ future.

Read more: http://www.treeaid.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/#ixzz3KG6Dw0ba

GUITAR DUO: OLIVIER CHASSAIN & STEIN-ERIK OLSEN

Thursday night saw us sitting in a half empty auditorium to see a world premiere. Norwegian Stein-Erik Olsen and French Olivier Chassain performed the guitar compositions of Ida Presti  (1924-1967). The programme is described as a 'homage' to her and her husband, also a guitarist, Alexandre Lagoya. The duo are described as 'the foremost guitar duo of all times., and Ida Presti as 'the princess of the guitar.'
     
 Olsen and Chassain are a brilliant duo themselves, their virtuoso performances certainly honoured Ida's legacy. Pity that more people were n't there to enjoy and appreciate the performances.

       It would be good to hear a female duo play Ida's work. I wasn't sure if the lack of emotion (apart from in the last piece 'Etude fantastique')  was due to the composition, which even in 'La Hongrosie,' in memory of her mother, seemed to lack passion, or that Olsen and Chassain's interpretation was more intellectual than emotional.  Nevertheless, it was another very enjoyable evening at the Royal Welsh College for Music and Drama.

THE IMITATION GAME

The Imitation Game is a 2014 British-American historical thriller film about British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, a key figure in cracking Nazi Germany's Enigma code that helped the Allies win World War II, only to later be criminally prosecuted for his homosexuality. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, Keira Knightly as Joan, and is directed by Morten Tyldum with a screenplay by Graham Moore, based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.
     Cumberbatch's performance is awesome. He plays complex Turing with sensitivity, arrogance, a brilliant mind, and total autism in his relationships with his colleagues. 
        I'm not a fan of  Keira Knightly and I'm not sure how true the character of Joan is in the Turing story, but she is convincing as his fiancé willing to put up with Turing's homosexuality in order to  save him from criminal conviction and to enable the work of cracking the enigma code to continue. He knows it won't work. 
         There are really touching flashbacks to his childhood at boarding school, where he suffers horrendous bullying, has a close friendship (his only friend) with Christopher, who later dies of TB. Turing names the machine he creates after his friend. Later, it is called the Turing Machine, the first computer.
         Turing and his team crack the German's Enigma code, with 180 million million possible settings during the war but it was kept a secret as it was feared that the Germans would quickly invent another code just as impenetrable. In the process many lives were sacrificed to win the war. The team used calculus to help the War Office devise a strategy that would not raise the German's suspicions. It is said that cracking the Enigma code shortened the war by two years and saved 14million lives.
        Sadly, a few years after the war, Turing was convicted of indecent behaviour, and instead of prison was offered hormone treatment to cure his homosexual tendencies. This led to his eventual suicide. The Enigma code remained a secret for 50 years.

  Very highly recommended, The Imitation Game is on General Release now.

   

INTERSTELLAR & CULTURE SHIFT

Interstellar is a 2014 space adventure film directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine, the film features a team of space travellers who journey through a wormhole in search of a new habitable planet. It was written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan; Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, whose work inspired the film, acted as both scientific consultant and executive producer.
           I saw the film the night before the launch of 'Culture Shift' and so the issues that the film raise were still floating around the following morning. The sense of 'apocalypse now' permeated the start of the launch with 'The re-enactment of art'- an interview with two artists by Suzi Goblik. In 1991 She wrote,
         "I suspect we are at the end of something-a hypermasculinised modern culture whose social projects have become increasingly unecological and nonsustainable."
         In the film, Interstellar, Michael Caine's character, the Head of NASA, says that human beings were not intended to save the planet, they were made to leave it. The film set a few decades in the future finds our planet choked by dust storms and ecological disasters, resources almost run out, the earth can no longer sustain our race. We follow explorers into space to find a place where we can all escape to, not as tourists but as emigrants. What is particularly moving to me is the exploration of what it is to be human, the attachments we need to survive, how we find our ways to adapt to loss, but the pain of separation can be unbearable. The relationship between father and daughter is especialy moving. Michael McConaughey's character, is brilliantly portrayed- an astronaut who has to leave his daughter, probably never to return-in order to save the human race.
          Topically, Caine's character quotes the Dylan Thomas poem, 'Do not go gently into that dark night,' about the death of his father, 'Rage rage against the dying of the light.'
          Coming back to the idea suggested by Suzi Gablik that we should always keep the image of apocalypse in our mind's eye, Interstellar certainly does that. To reaffirm the importance of both, here's another quote from the report, quoting Gablik.
         " It is precisely to the periphery and the margins that we must look, if we are to find the cores that will be central to our society in the future, for it is here that they will be found to be emerging."   

          Interstellar is on general release now.

CULTURE SHIFT: How Artists are responding to Sustainability in Wales

Today I attended the launch of a report, 'Culture Shift' commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales. Sian Thomas, one of their officers involved, said that instead of their usual practice of buying-in consultants, they decided to commission artists; 'Change the process, Change the outcome.' Well, how revolutionary is that? However, they would only pay for the lunch at Chapter for the participants (and very delicious it was too), but all the contributing artists had to give their time free. There were no summaries of the report available, presumably there was no money for those either. The Chief Executive, Nick Capaldi, their Chief Exec since 2008 had his eyes closed through most of the presentations once he'd done his own. Tiring job getting paid to go to conferences. I had no sense in his presentation that he was passionate about the issues although he talked the talk. Once he is obliged by law to put sustainability to centre stage, perhaps he'll be different. In some ways, the issue of sustainability is not dissimilar to where the issue of equal status for the Welsh Language was some thirty odd years ago. Not that he spoke a word of Welsh, not even a Croeso or a Diolch. Neither did Doug Eagle, the Director of Chapter. On the other hand Poet, Activist and Welsh learner, Emily Hinshelwood put us all to shame with a real effort to convey her message through Cymraeg. Her own story and her poem about her journey across Wales, asking everyone she met three questions about climate change, was the best bit of the morning. She is one of Wales' most influential and committed community arts leaders around sustainability issues and the arts, although she would never describe herself so. She literally and metaphorically walks the walk. There is a bill going before the Welsh Assembly drafted in association with Cynnal Cymru (Sustainability Wales) entitled, 'The Well-being of future generations.' This will make it legally binding for public bodies to get their act together and their policies, behaviours and goals will also be audited by the Welsh Audit Office and a Commissioner. Furthermore, there's a community initiative that is inviting individuals and groups to be part of a national conversation-'The Wales we want'. It was a real pity that there were no presentations in the morning session on the results of the research. Without summaries or copies of the report to hand it was therefore difficult to have much engagement with the audience. However, the report does make interesting reading and is a very important milestone in mapping what is happening in Wales. I was unclear by the end of the morning session how the results will be taken forward. I guess, the afternoon workshops may have addressed that, but I decided I couldn't afford the time. Instead, went off for a walk in the woods, re-motivated to put the environment back to the centre of my own writing,work and art. To upload the report see http://www.emergence-uk/wp-content/uploads/CULTURE-SHIFT

WHO ARE YOU? GRAYSON PERRY AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

This weekend I visited the new Grayson Perry exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I'd really enjoyed the three Channel 4 TV programmes that explore the complex issue of identity in Britain today. Fourteen portraits of individuals, families and groups, including politician Chris Huhne, a young female-to-male transsexual, Northern Ireland Loyalist marchers and X-Factor contestant Rylan Clark, have been inserted into the Gallery’s nineteenth and twentieth century rooms on Floor 1.
           As a transvestite artist he comes to this subject in a non-judgemental way, his subjects warm to him and are on the whole surprised and delighted by the end result; a portrait in tapestry, a hijab, ceramic fertility goddesses, a relic chest, a rock band poster, a pot inscribed and decorated with meaningful imagery of his subjects. There is a self portrait as an internal map or landscape, a bit like the medieval Mappa Mundi, where Jerusalem was the centre of our universe, his centre are his values, beliefs and concerns. What is particularly interesting in this exhibition is the way in which his art works are juxtaposed with other portraits and artefacts.
           What I particularly like about Grayson is his down-to earth questioning approach, his wry humour, and his craftsmanship. And of course his flamboyant alter ego Claire, who wears some great frocks.  He can draw too! (Take note Tracy Emin)
          I am currently reading his book, based on the 2013 BBC Reith lectures he presented earlier this year, entitled, 'Playing to the Gallery: helping contemporary art  in its struggle to be understood,' and it is a really good read.  He is guest editor for the October 10-16 2014 issue of The New Statesman, a special issue on the Great White Male.'(That's the straight, white, middle-class men who dominate our culture(and politics)' 
         One question he asks us his audience, is to think of one word that gives us an immediate clue to how we define our own identity. I found this quite difficult; would it be woman, feminist,working class, rebel, socialist, binge eater, cynic, mother, wife, counsellor, writer? Although I might be all these things in parts, which is my immediate response? I think it would probably be human being. What would yours be?


Grayson Perry: Who Are You? is a series of three sixty-minute films broadcast this autumn on Channel  4. The Exhibition is on at the National Portrait Gallery until 15 March 2015. Admission free.

CARDIFF CONTEMPORARY FESTIVAL 4 -PARADISE LOST

I was so pleased to catch the last day of this exhibition, held at the dilapidated and beautiful Customs & Immigration Building on Bute Street.
' Paradise Lost unites established and emerging artists in one of Cardiff's most iconic disused buildings. Painting, video, installation, sculpture, photography and live performance respond to the unique setting'...'in a fully immersive art experience organised by the great tactileBOSCH collective in celebration of the memory of Kim Fielding.'

     The building itself offers an atmospheric backdrop to some very creepy and creative installations. Artists' names and the titles of exhibits weren't always obvious or were missing, so it's hard to credit  individuals. One of the curators said that the organisers thought that the overall title, 'Paradise Lost,' was enough. They didn't want to be prescriptive and to let the viewer bring their own imagination and thinking to the piece.  It was a helpful starting point, but some of the installations needed more to guide my imagination. My friend said that the problem for the untrained in conceptual art is to assess what's really good and what is not. As we struggled to understand what the artist was trying to say, I found myself leaning back on my emotional responses to the pieces, which are of course also important.  I found myself appreciating pieces, such as the giant woodcut prints that involved traditional skills and were beautifully crafted.  I found myself really wanting to be fair and not dismiss a piece because I couldn't make intellectual sense of it, but installations that seemed like a random collection of objects without guidance, didn't help me take the artist seriously, and for me that's a real missed opportunity for both of us.
       Having said all that I did enjoy the exhibition it was stimulating, I am still left wondering about some of the exhibits, and the images are still floating about my mind and senses, such as the chimney sweep brushes, blue umbrellas, and newspaper clippings of teaching vacancies in one exhibit, the pit pony, stamping on a copy of Private Eye's front page with a photo of Arthur Scargill with a loud speaker, and a bible with moral questions inserted, such as,''Would you kill Hitler's mother?'   I suppose you would need to know Kim Fielding well to understand  the significance of a pile of wooden parquet blocks juxtaposed with two pint glasses and a cocktail glass balanced on the wall. I can only guess.

CARDIFF CONTEMPORARY FESTIVAL 3 - THE BAROQUE CELLO PROJECT

'The Baroque Cello Project is a sound and video installation  centred on a newly finished hand-crafted Baroque cello celebrating the discarded  the underheard  the nevernoticed.'
      Leona Jones (artist), Sion Dafydd Dawson (musician), Adam Winskill (luthier) and Jeff Chapman(video) collaborated in this project. The performance at the Arcade in St David's Centre was intriguing and moving. Sion had commissioned Adam to make him a cello, of maple and spruce. Leona collected all the sounds that would normally go unnoticed in the making of the cello; the marine roar of the wind in the woods, waterfalls, the planing of wood in the workshop, the flutter of wood shavings, tapping and banging of tools, running water. She re-enacted some of these sounds and movements in a kind of dance echoed by the beautiful sounds produced by Sion, creating  a kind of baroque improvisation, although I'm sure it was all carefully scripted.
        At the end of the performance we were introduced to the young luthier (I'd never heard that word before), Adam. It was the first cello he's made since leaving college. It is a wonderful piece of  art, most beautifully crafted with a personality of its own.  The whole project is awesome.
There's still a chance to see the performance on Friday 7 November 1-1.30pm.
 See baroquecelloproject.com.    arcadecardiff.co.uk