'Phoenix & Phaedra holding patterns'

A Found Sound Radio Play

Composition for live performances using classic portable radios, FM transmitter, 4 loudspeakers, and Shruti drone box

6 track CD 57min. To be released on Spekk [Japan] in Summer 2010

1 On Air
2 Cyan sees through you
3 Eyrie of the Phoenix
4 Red Plumes
5 Eyes close in heaven
6 Love calls us to the things of this world

you are hearing track 6

I was commissioned to write a new one hour mixed media composition.
The themes of the festival were about machines and the sound of space.
The venue was a divine 650year old, sinking church in the heart of Coventry.

I wote this work to celebrate the arrival of my 3 month old son Phoenix. So I wanted his name in the title,
and I've had the 'holding patterns' in my head for a while trying to make a very ethereal composition of interwoven sounds.
By chance it turns out that the Phoenix bird is also the embelem of the city after it was flattened during WWII.

I perform the piece from behind the audience - out of sight - removing the spectacle of the performer
leaving a sound cinema and an empty stage. My collecion of portable radios is ever changing and tailored to venue.

Commissioned by A Thing About Machines Festival, Coventry
World Premier at St John the Baptist Church

email for booking enquiry

Venue staging diagram


 

Performance Technical Rider

The work is intended for performance in other spaces,
so if you have one I can plerform it in, then please let me know !

It would work well in most types of spaces and venues. The bigger the better

I need a 6 foot wide table with a clean Mackie 12002 mixer, 1 discreet desk lamp

I have my own set of 9 smalli radios to bring if I drive. If I fly then we ship the box back and forth


The audience sit on chairs facing the front, and I play at the back - out of sight.
It's about the spatial composition in the venue, and the music. I take myself out of the focus.

I use a regular PA, but with the two left channel speakers and sub woofers placed at the front of the audience,
and then a pair of right channel speakers and sub woofers at the beck of the audience.
I bring an FM transmitter to broadcast half of the composition to the radios.
The sound fluctuates between them, and the spatial PA speakers.
I may also walk around playing my Shruti Drone Box !...

I use a simple pair of spot light bulbs to flicker basic silouettes of the audience onto the interior front walls of the space.
Unless I drive to venue - I'll need you to supply a standard hi-fi amplifier with
bare wire speakers connectors to attach my sound-to-light controller

Please let me know if you would like an MPfree [Music Promotor Free MP3] download of the album for your consideration

+

A bed, dinner, travel, and a fee

thank you

Janek

 

 

Photos of concerts at The Bluecoat, Liverpool, and Kings Place, London. I have the Shruti box in my hand.