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 What a total idiot - agreeing to write a large scale chamber work describing Quantum Physics. I ask you! But I did it…
June 1st '07 - ‘Superluminal’ premiere day. I meet the musicians in the huge chapel of Lancing College. That day the chapel looked as though it had dropped from the sky onto the south downs – and that was exactly how I felt. The life of Einstein, Copenhagen theorists, Planck’s constant, Schroedinger’s Cat – and me directing from the guitar whilst operating samplers and Kaoss pads with my toes.
Well – I got through it and people clapped and said nice stuff (probably whilst thinking: “Why can’t he play some nice Spanish music”). I smiled, thanking God that the battery in my i-beam held out and the string players hadn’t got lost.
By midnight I was home repacking gear and, after just four hours sleep, I was in the car heading for Devon. The sun rose in my rear view mirror and the weird sounds of the previous night echoed in my head. This was the life.
That day’s gig was a concert of free improvisation inside a giant plastic bubble in Barnstaple town centre. “All in a day’s work” thought I, beginning a mammoth six hour improvisation with Lawrence Casserley (computers) and Simon Dessorgher (flutes, whistles). The audience wandered about the inflatable structure or just gazed in at us goldfish musicians. Bubble temperature hit 40 degrees as we cooked ourselves into an ecstatic, avant-garde swirl, pausing only for me to perform Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint on my Gary Hearn Skeleton guitar whilst Lawrence and Simon went for bottles of water.
The next morning I stopped the car on the way home and jumped in the sea. I swam far out into the bay at Golden Cap and looked back at the Dorset coast. The cliffs glowed as beautiful as I have ever seen them and the sea was perfectly still in the early morning sunshine looking almost convex and oily, disturbed just for a moment as a little wooden fishing boat slid past. I trod water and felt the string marks on the pads of my left hand fingers. I’d done so much playing this year, especially in the last few days, and this was where my guitar had brought me. I felt content. (click to continue)
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This picture shows the finale of the March Airport Club which featured my song "Miniature Man" sung by the massed chorus as I flew the tiny foil figure over the heads of the rioting clubbers on the end of my mighty beach caster. Only April and May to go and thats the end of the first season of the new club. I'm working on next month's finale already.
The pace of the weekend didn't let up as Gary Hearn arrived for the full scale celebrations surrounding the 60th birthday of Guitar Guru Mr David Crozier (Guitar Junction, Worthing, Sussex). Mr C was presented with a shiny new Patrick Eggle acoustic by the great luthier himself whose loud shirt and big cowboy boots were only overshadowed by his ability to party even harder than yours truly.
Electric Counterpoint (2007)
Music from the Colourdome (2005)
La Guitarra Latina Vol 1 (2000)
The Music of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1998)
