The Tiger's Mind / Artist Residency
The Wilson Museum & Art Gallery, Cheltenham.
04th - 14th August 2018
The Tiger’s Mind is a rarely performed score that replaces traditional musical notation with a text. Originally written in 1967 by the English experimental composer Cornelius Cardew (1936 - 1981) this piece is partly improvised and partly mechanical in conception. Six mysterious narratives are memorised by any number of performers and it is played out like a game of hide and seek. During my artist residency at The Wilson Museum & Art Gallery in Cheltenham I delved into the stores to find six objects to illustrate and bring Cardew’s text to life, compiling documentary evidence and creating musical responses to each object.
Set up as a temporary research laboratory, the work took shape in the gallery over the course of ten days through a variety of soundscapes including field recordings made at Winchcombe Pottery (Cardew’s birthplace), and using cut-ups, word games, discussions, improvisation workshops, collaborations with a variety of musicians and featuring orchestral performances. An evolving documentary of the work produced during the residency is being compiled for a radio programme scheduled for broadcast at a later date.
Live events taking place in the gallery on Saturday 11th August 2018 saw a combined performance of three distinct works: Sextet - The Tiger’s Mind was performed by percussionist Mark Sanders and accompanied by an orchestral score which I devised as an environmental or landscape setting. The performance also used diary entries penned by Dr. Edward Wilson during the fateful Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica in 1910 - 1912. Poet and writer Adam Horovitz narrated an abridged version of events and the performance was a response to Wilson’s black and white chalk drawing On The Way To The Meteorological Screen.
Set up as a temporary research laboratory, the work took shape in the gallery over the course of ten days through a variety of soundscapes including field recordings made at Winchcombe Pottery (Cardew’s birthplace), and using cut-ups, word games, discussions, improvisation workshops, collaborations with a variety of musicians and featuring orchestral performances. An evolving documentary of the work produced during the residency is being compiled for a radio programme scheduled for broadcast at a later date.
Live events taking place in the gallery on Saturday 11th August 2018 saw a combined performance of three distinct works: Sextet - The Tiger’s Mind was performed by percussionist Mark Sanders and accompanied by an orchestral score which I devised as an environmental or landscape setting. The performance also used diary entries penned by Dr. Edward Wilson during the fateful Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica in 1910 - 1912. Poet and writer Adam Horovitz narrated an abridged version of events and the performance was a response to Wilson’s black and white chalk drawing On The Way To The Meteorological Screen.
