Kerry Wilts At Ralph Fiennes, Makes Her National Journalistic Debut And Saves People From Fire (sort of)

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 1

Listening/Reading: Folk Radio UK / Best Reference Book Ever! 'All The Birds Of The Air: the names, lore and literature of British Birds' by Francesca Greenoak

Hair Day: nice and short

What I can see from my window no. 22: the 'mood room' at King's College Hospital, currently indigo blue

A torrid time of illness, with early era David Cronenberg-like infestations and general bodyhorror, has left my January and February a little less creative than I would have liked, and where success has entailed watching the whole of The IT Crowd or being able to breathe/eat. However, there have been fun moments here and there...


I ticked off seeing another of my actorly heroes (Michael Sheen giving me the eye at the Young Vic, Michael Fassbender giving me the eye in London Fields, Rafe Spall giving me the eye at Broadway Market  - obviously when I say 'giving me the eye' I actually mean jumping around in front of them desperately hoping to catch their respectively ovibovine/leonine/falconine attention) by going to see Coriolanus in Mayfair, complete with director-star Ralph Fiennes in an after-show Q & A. Ralph was my teenage crush (I spent more time mooning over him than directing my attention towards Real Boys, hence my hopeless lack of boyfriends), so Andy and I leapt to the front row. After being battered both aurally and visually by gutteral gunfire, Ralph's bald bloody head and spitting iambs, it was quite heart-warming to see that he is rather humble, sweet and pensive in person, with some quite agonisingly pregnant pauses after questions, and an anecdote about being so nervous about calling Vanessa Redgrave to be in his film (she was the highlight, exuding gravitas through her every pore, and with the best line by far: 'Anger is my meat. I'll sup on that, and therefore starve') he had to pace up and down in the countryside, calling her in the middle of a field. I was too shy to ask a question, for fear of accidentally blurting 'RALPH! I LOVE YOU! at him, but a good time had by all.

In between splutters, Chris O'Dowd and Richard Ayoade, missing my first ever juice gig through bedridden-ness, etc, I was lucky enough to be in at the right moment to be asked to write an article on female composers, and the relative lack thereof, for The Guardian's Comment Is Free page. Fame at last! Well, some fame, and a bracing for the usual deranged comments and general trollings that tend to appear at the bottom of any opinion article. They do migrate over from their usual sulphurous habitats of the Daily Wail, Express, the English Defence League et al at the whiff of an article on gender and race, so I, after a quick dip in the murky waters, made a pact not to read them. MUCH more healthy if you ask me. I did have to correct one early commenter who seemed to think I floated about in private schools (harr-UMPH!), but thought I'd leave it after reading one who chastised me for working on a project to do with birds - didn't I know that birdsong was a male activity with the aim of securing a female mate, as if a feminist was opposed to all animal activity where the male has the upper hand. I see it now: militant feminists with placards outside London Zoo saying 'Those Feathers Are NOT An Invitation' and 'Don't Tell A Lioness How To Dress'. BONKERS!

I whisked Andy off to the Norfolk Broads for a weekend with the aim of writing some material for the above You Are Wolf birdlore project. Obviously, once there, I didn't write a NOTE, but instead had a mammoth walk and enjoyed at least being surrounded by birds, if not writing about them, at RSPB Minsmere. This was so perfect that it felt a bit like there was a chief bird (let's say a sneaky bittern, too furtive for us to spot) on a walkie-talkie cueing various avian beings to flutter coquettishly over our heads (a pair of goldcrests), upturn their ginger, white and black posteriors in the mere (shelducks) or tread deliberately through the undergrowth (female pheasant) pretending not to look at us. Check out this flutter-frenzy at the bird feeder too! Rather more dramatically, we also spotted and alerted the totally unaware owners of this cottage that their thatched roof was on fire. We helped try and extinguish it in vain, and then watched as rather a lot of the idyllic large house, apparently used in the film Swallows and Amazons, burnt up in front of fifty firemen. Quite, quite horrible. We felt like quiet heroes though! (I am never buying a house with a thatched roof).

Bird tally (at Minsmere or in our cottage's garden): pheasants, shelducks, wigeon, teal, mallards, shoveler ducks, sanderling, mistle thrush, blackbirds, robins, great tits, blue tits, chaffinches, dunnocks, goldcrests. 
Deer tally: 1 muntjac!

Nonclassical Goes Large and William Morris Goes Lovely

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0

Listening/Reading: Radio 3's The Choir and cursing why I'm not in the Choirbook For The Queen; will have to start picking off choral composers in a Kind Hearts and Coronets-type fashion /  Back on 'The Women's History Of The World' by Rosalind Miles.

Hair Day: a flatcap day, eg Head Day: super-stylish, but Hair Day: flattened to a pulp

What I can see from my window no. 22: Sirius, or Venus, I'm not sure. It's shaped like an igloo and has a big black spot on it (Andy bought me a telescope for Christmas). It is WELL spooky.


Nonclassical is putting its glad rags on and getting itself out and about these days, whether in America (Gabriel Prokofiev is premiering his Concerto For Bass Drum out there), Europe, or just at home: the club broke out of its monthly residency in Hoxton's lowdown Troy Bar to host a much larger, slicker night at XOYO down the road, and strike me if a whole world of East Londonites didn't show up. The Troy Bar gigs are always decently attended, but it's a pretty titchy space; around 300 rolled up for Nonclassical's biggest club night yet on Thursday. Where the hell did they all come from?! There were probably quite a few normals who stumbled in looking for something nasty and bangin' to flail to, and a lot of them looked quite pleased to find instead a bubble-haired violinist or scratch student orchestra doing their thing on the stage instead.


The night was ostensibly focused on Minimalist rep, alternating live pieces with DJs. First up as we drank our pocket-burning fruit beers was the lovely Aisha Orazbayeva, something of a star in the ascendent (she excitedly informed me she was playing a solo recital at Carnegie Hall soon), who played Steve Reich's Violin Phase with a Zen-like steeliness. Inbetween, I felt cheerily like a scenester on hearing bits of juice's album (on Nonclassical records, and if you haven't bought it, you SHOULD, HERE!) mixed up nicely by DJ Nwando Ebizie, a new name I shall check out again.


The scratch orchestra tore up John Adams' marvellous (and totally un-minimalist) Chamber Symphony, which couldn't sound more like New York's blaring streets and American Dream-chasing if it tried, followed by perky clarinettist Mark Simpson playing Reich's New York Counterpoint with verve. It was lovely to see people sitting at the front of the stage head-noddingly mesmerised by this piece as if they were listening to some old-school ambient house. 'Cellist Peter Gregson performed some lovely multi-tracked Prokofiev, clearly a 2011 take on Reich's solo/electronic pieces but referencing grime and rave, and one part of which is being released as a single. The least successful performance of the evening was a rather ragged and muddy Worker's Union (the classic rhythmical workout by Louis Andreissen), in a badly-chosen small ensemble line-up. The last piece we caught was played by the Nonclassical juniors, aka Sam from the office and crew, looking - as Sarah said - like an adorably earnest emo boy band, playing Reich's Music For Pieces of Wood, very nicely bookended with some simple thudding beats from the decks either side; the boys should have sat on stools and risen off them two-thirds of the way through when the new counter-rhythm came in, arf. We left before the end, but what we heard made for a top night, fusing excellent, intelligent dance music largely from the Nonclassical canon with brain-titillating live sounds that pleased the crowd no matter where they were from. Onwards and upwards (hopefully with the juicettes riding, shrieking, on their tail feathers)!


A quite different state of affairs was found over at Two Temple Place today, where Andy and I went to check out the William Morris exhibition. A stunningly-designed (though feeling like something of a folly) late 19th-century building on Victoria Embankment, it is now open to the public for the first time. With money no object, the architect JL Pearson went to town on the late Victorian gothic-cute of the exterior and the opulent, wood-festooned interior, borrowing from the Renaissance, Tudor, Gothic, and suggestions of Arts and Crafts: all mahogany carvings of plump Musketeers on the stairs, friezes of scenes from Shakespeare above our heads, ebony pillars, geometric-patterned floors of marble, jasper, onyx and porphyry, and a delight of stained glass in the Great Hall. The Morris exhibition, on a sojourn from its home in Walthamstow, was a perfect complement. What a dude Morris was! An artist, printmaker, textile designer, writer and socialist, I love how he gathered to his bosom myths and tales from all over the world - from the very familiar courtly love of medieval England, all long-haired, fey nymphettes and fantastical, pre-Tolkein imagery to the less-known, such as Bre'r Rabbit from Afro-America and Icelandic sagas - and celebrated them all in his glorious designs, with peacocks and monsters, bulging fruits and writhing roses wallowing around in the lush fabrics. Unashamedly uber-romantic, drunk on nature, and surely a humanist, he wanted to celebrate our collective folk memory, something I think on't a lot.  My favourite piece was a soaring tapestry, based on the Roman goddess of apples and featuring a text that so often accompanied his work (something else I can't help feeling an affinity with):

I am the ancient apple-queen /  As once I was so am I now / 

For evermore a hope unseen / Betwixt the blossom and the bough

Firsts! Party, Gig, Film - And Skydiving (Sort Of)

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0

Listening/Reading: The Filter Queue, who DOLLYman will play with soon...

Hair Day: Temporary hot pink streak after being inspired by cheapo girl-mag

What I can see from my window no. 21: Piccadilly Circus, just, blinking its little tawdry captions

My first party of the year saw me finally donning my black jumpsuit and heels (verdict: NOT tragic! Result!) to go to the PRS Foundation's New Year party at Cargo, meeting and greeting many a musical acquaintance (Tansy Davies, Luke Styles, Sarah Nicholls and Claudia Molitor, and Mira Calix, telling us about her exciting Olympics project involving an installation in a load of igloo-like stone slabs) and meeting some new ones (such as Trish Clowes, cool sax-player/composer). The PRSF were using the opportunity to showcase a few of their funded projects, but there were rather a few raised eyebrows and quivers of mild embarrassment for the first piece: we gathered outside for hot toddies to listen to Howard Skempton's church bell piece, rung over in Shoreditch Church. Sadly, the bells were mingled, nay obliterated by the sounds of traffic, and were so quiet they just sounded, well, like church bells, perhaps in a neighbouring village, and had no impact as a piece of new music. We all huddled there very politely for 12 minutes, and I at least enjoyed the Cage-ish framing of the city's sounds, but that wasn't really the point. Anna Meredith's piece for the National Youth Orchestra, another 20x12 piece, was showcased by a small troupe of NYOers; while nothing new to me and the juicettes, who invite people to yell and whack themselves at every opportunity, it's a great idea to liberate the players of their instruments and show off their musicality in an exuberant, bodily way. It was slight shame we couldn't really SEE the performers to appreciate the choreography as they were crammed in amongst the revellers. I love the PRSF to bits and they are phenomenally supportive of new music including mine, but it strikes me that a bit more planning/forethought might not go amiss at times like these...

First gig of the year was at the Lexington, to see Yorkshire surreal troubadour David Thomas Broughton. He was supported by Elysian Quartet alumni Geese, doing their noisy post-rocking violin/viola/drums/electronics shizz. DTB himself, who juice had first seen at South By South West last year, inspiring at least in me starbursting epiphanies at his off-kilter craziness, was just as charming and silly this time around. His yawning baritone, simple guitar and desolate lyrics would be unremarkable on their own, but he mixes it with something nearing performance art, creating a theatre of mic stands and leads, accentuating his mistakes, freestyling with fruit and shakers and dictaphones, letting his loops spool over until they're fugged in feedback... there's no-one quite like him.

Shame, Steve McQueen's follow-up to his stunning (as in you feel like you've been stunned by a Stonehenge-sized slab and left dribbling and half-dead) Hunger, was my first film of the year. Not quite as extreme as his debut, it still leaves a mark, and I don't mean the memory of Michael Fassbender strolling around with his cock out. An distinctly unerotic but beautiful-looking movie, what stayed with me was the amazing single tracking shot of MF running through New York, and Carey Mulligan's desperately delicate, super-slow version of New York, New York. Another favourite British artfilm director to add to Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay!

Finally my first adventuring of the year: going with Sarah to the Ballardian, mall-like weirdness that is Milton Keynes, to go indoor skydiving. YES! The whole experience was utterly hilarious, with a range of very cute yet very solemn instructors leading us through our moves (cue us trying to keep straight faces whilst the Spanish instructor earnestly demonstrated the importance of leading with 'your 'ips' as he gyrated unsubtly in front of us). The skydiving is done in a specially-made air tunnel fired from below with 150mph winds (the British skydiving team practise there!): you fall in and hang over the pummelling, screaming chute, being occasionally corrected by your instructor and trying not to let the spit that is uncontrollably flung from your mouth go straight into his eye. I spent the whole, short time laughing my head off, even when I got to do the 'high-fly', which means shooting straight up and down 10 metres several times with your instructor in a spiral, skydiving-formation-style, like riding a rollercoaster made solely out of air. I think I left a small part of my stomach flailing around up there. Hysterical!

2012!

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0

Listening/Reading: King Creosote and Jon Hopkin's Diamond Mine/ The Story of Swimming by Susie Parr

Hair Day: It needed some blondifying, so made an attempt at a home remedy this week. Result: dirty orange/blonde streak. Yeah!

What I can see from my window no. 20: A great big dirty slash of butter-coloured sky at twilight

Merry New Year! 

I'm not having all that gloomy 'winter is here, and there's no tinsel and over-consumption to make us cheerful anymore' malarkey. January is, like the overripe satsumas leftover from Crimble, fit to bursting with parties and possibilities. Having earnestly made long lists of my bests arty things of 2011, I'm now already into my Best Art Exhibition of 2012, having been to Tate Modern to see Gerhard Richter's show before it closed. It was all my favourite things: big splashy abstract canvases, near-dribbling off the canvas and with sort of 'apocalyptic disco' colour choices. Coming out of there into the South Bank's darkness made everything look a bit Richterish: the Thames looked like one of his trademark squeegees, the oily molasses water dragged through with the hot orange of the bridge's lights, and we all looked shimmery and only half-real, like his paintings of photos. Here's a lovely video of Gerhard painting.

Tacita Dean's Turbine piece, Film, was also marvellous, and maybe my favourite of all of the works installed there. Fresh from watching Mark Cousins' wonderful The Story of Film (an odyssey through the history of film on More4, narrated in his very idiosyncratic Scottish lilt), seeing the hands-on beauty of celluloid, chopped and layered, in an age of the digital, was beautiful and funny.     

I've also notched up my first gig of 2012, and a marvellous one it was too, with Metamorphic supporting Troyka in a sold-out gig at the Vortex in Dalston, packed to the gills with enthusiastic people out at their first jolly of the year. It was great to be able to play to a knowledgeable jazz audience, and I hope we can do a few more in 2012!!

Other creative resolutions for 2012:

• To practise my flute for the first time in 6 years (ok, pick it up at least once in the whole year)
• To read for 30 minutes a day (ok, read for 10 minutes a day, mostly Time Out magazine)
• To record 2nd juice album (and get even better reviews than for the first one)
• To do a killer You Are Wolf tour, having written whole new set of songs 
• To have a DOLLYman gig somewhere other than the Spice of Life. 
• To be on the radio even more than last year
• To do something NEW, whether it be a possible Richard Long-style walking composition, making visual art, make some visuals for gigs, write a piece for juice and electronics... 
• To get on THE TELLY and BECOME THE NEW GARETH MALONE...

Kerry Becomes A Regular Feature On Radio 3, Goes A Bit 'The Shining' In Aldeburgh And Glams Up For The British Composer Awards

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 2

Listening: Kate Bush's very silly but quite enjoyable '50 words for snow'
Hair Day: disappointing. Needs work from my man in Herne Hill! (Apparently I go to the same hairdresser as Florence Welch, you know)

What I can see from my window no. 19: Chelmsford. By night (I am on a train).

Broadcasting House became as regular a workplace as Handel House or Wigmore Hall for me in November, with two more appearances following my big choral premiere on The Choir. First I went in to record a brand new You Are Wolf song, specially-commissioned by wordsy show The Verb, on the word 'darkling'. I mashed up bits of Keats, Hardy, Milton and Shakespeare in my customary looping stylee for a spooky number. In 10/4! Nice to have a chat, down the phone as I couldn't make the proper recording date, with the lovely poet/presenter Ian McMillan, who, in his voice as molten and rich as the middle of my Mum's homemade Yorkshire pudding, later described me as 'unfeasibly wonderful' and apparently enjoys this blog and my football one! 

I later went in to record a piece about last year's British Composer Awards for Hear and Now's preview of this year's awards. Juice went along this year as nominators of Dai Fujikura's piece for us, 'away we play', a pithy bit of virtuosic vocal sparkliness, which had been shortlisted in the Vocal Category. Never one to miss an opportunity to glam up to the max, we sashayed around in all our sequin-jumpsuited/hot-pink-skirted/cleavage-flashing finest, gleefully composer-spotting whilst gulping champagne and scoffing our mini paper cones of scampi and chips. Alas, Dai didn't win in his category, but we reckon we were pretty close in the running and it's really good to get our name out there as flag-bearers of experimental stuff. We at least had one person to whoop for, Firefly's John Barber, winning in the Community and Education category. Here are the other winners. Nice to see the likes of Anna Meredith, Emily Hall, Mira Calix, Michael Zev Gordon and other fab new musickers; Anna managed to get a wink off  stadium-drawing comedian/musician Tim Minchin, nominated for 'Mathilda' and something of an uber-star amidst our lickle contemporary world. Result! The Awards sadly piffle out at an exceptionally early hour, so Sarah and I allowed ourselves to be happily dragged off to an old man pub with the tipsy and excitable Oxford University Press crew, brilliant soprano Lore Lixenberg and the arch, super-cool Gabriel Jackson, the only choral composer to look like an East End hipster/greyhound-racer.

The Awards were a glitzy, shoulder-rubbing relief in the middle of a rather intense week at Aldeburgh, where I've been one of five composers writing for pianist pair duoDorT on their Quantalum project. Obviously, staying by the sea and working amongst idyllic marshland had some very special moments, but the intensity and isolation, what with mostly working on our own for days on end, did leave me with something of a thousand-yard stare. I'm relatively happy with my piece, a three-movement exploration of pianos, looping and spoken word, with my ubiquitous birdy theme. Favourite moments were a) coming out onto a night beach to look up at a sky like a split fig, near-dripping with stars, some shooting, one plunging down into the sea and b) my afternoon walk at Snape, with the moon already out, spotting birds in the wetlands, surrounded by peeping, burbling calls like dial-up modems, and getting slightly lost in the Warrens as the dusk fell. Here are some pictures!

Kerry Chats To Aled Jones, Gets Spat On By Michael Sheen, And Falls In Love With Camille All Over Again

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0

Reading: Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie
Hair Day: quiffy

What I can see from my window no. 19: Westminster, in the hazy sunshine

Am having an excellent autumn, full of projects coming to a close or promising new ones shimmering into view. I finished up my first Handel House commission, a mix of spoken word, squeaky harpsichord and jangly spinet; I'm calling it 'a portrait of the House by the House'. Hey, here it is!

Graininess and Sheen by Kerry Andrew Composer

A choral piece I wrote in the summer for Making Music choirs, Rhymes and Charms for Fly-Away Things, was premiered on BBC Radio 3's The Choir at the weekend. It's very much at the most accessible end of my choral week (some may say twee....) but I'm still very pleased; the aim, after all, is to attract many amateur choirs to sing it all year round with gusto, not three Ferneyhough-lovers to salivate over it. I went to the studio to chat with the ever-cheery, super-pro Aled Jones, who presents the show, and like to think I came over well, though Andy tittered at my slightly posh radio voice. Next time I'll call Aled 'A-Money' and come over all 1Extra on their asses, then... Listen to it here while you can!

In performance news, juice had a lovely time up at North-East Scotland's most excellent Sound Festival, verily a cornucopia of all things exciting and new in music, and where we crammed in three gigs and a school workshop in two days. Here's an ace review. We didn't feel like we saw much of Aberrrrdeen - during the day we peered through grey mizzle at granite buildings (with a stop for brief colour explosion at the Art Gallery), and the night, which seemed to arrive at about 3pm, hid what were probably the sights of glorious Aberdeenshire. Most eccentric was our visit to the depths of the countryside for our gig at Haddo House, a wondrous estate with signed scores from Benjamin Britten and Van Dyke portraits of Charles 1st; it was bluishly cold except in the library, steeped in ancient history books, where we performed. We drove back through exotic-sounding villages - Drums, Tarty, Quolquox and Cultercullen... elsewhere, I had a lovely You Are Wolf gig behind another grand painting of angrily-pointing politicians in the House of Commons, in the National Portrait Gallery. Here's a video!

Ever-keen for inspiration, I'm trying to keep up the cultcha. Yesterday I saw one of Kit Downes' bands, The Golden Age of Steam, in St. James' rather 'live' acoustic as part of the London Jazz Festival, and chased that up with seeing Michael Sheen's Hamlet, at the very intimate Young Vic, meaning Andy and me, both huge fans, were merely feet away from the sweating, curl-tumbled legend as he spat his way masterfully his soliloquies. The production as a whole didn't feel entirely convincing (set in the wing of a psychiatric unit, with Sheen's supposed madness slipping, I thought, confusingly OUT of view when it should have been appearing), but it was ridiculously exciting nonetheless. Even if you could see flashes of Tony Blair's devil-grin and Brian Clough's assurity here and there...

Gig of the year no. 2 (alongside Peckham's Rite of Spring in the summer) was Camille at Hackney Empire. I had just been starting to get into her new album, so different from her two multi-layered, loop-heavy previous albums, but the whole thing sprang utterly alive in the theatre. Camille, frankly, is an utter goddess of the vocal world, exploring this time, through a beautifully effective bit of theatre (largely the shadowplay created by a long lightbulb on a rope),  pared-down songs - often totally unaccompanied - exploring such a range of sounds, from squeaky child-like ones to technically-difficult inbreaths and operatic stuff. She just made us melt. Ilo Veyou, Camille!

Mists and Mellow Artfulness

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 2

Listening/Reading: New Bjork, James Blake and Camille stuff / Roger Deakin's very lovely 'Waterlog', to fuel my new love of cold-water swimming
Hair Day: sliced and diced; I now look like a 1950s greaser. YES!

What I can see from my window no. 18: the Shard, becoming humungous

'Tis an autumn season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, or in my case, wurlitzers, pop-up theatres and feminist arttalks, ah ha ha ha...

Sarah-juicette and I went to our Nonclassical labelmates The Elysian Quartet's 10th birthday celebrations, which took the form of an all-day experimental music festival in a new fringe theatre, The Yard, up in Hackney Wick. The 'Wick's rather unsalubrious vibe may have sent a few shivers down the spines of some South Londoners, but brought happy tears of joy form me, ensconced back in a land of pub-turned-squats, industrial wastelands and canals. The Yard is a most fabulous new space run by young director Jay Miller, tucked in a square amongst a range of businesses so eclectic I can't believe that Channel 4 hasn't filmed a documentary here yet: vegetable peelers, an evangelical church, mechanics, female mud-wrestlers and a swingers' club (we saw an unhealthy-looking couple - he sweaty and overweight, she haggard and wearing a mere notion of a dress - going furtively into a door marked only with a homemade sign saying 'FUNTIME'. Erk!).


The Elysians had programmed a whole world of leftfield wondrousness: we just caught the end of  multi-media percussionist Joby Burgess' set with a Max De Wardener piece, and then enjoyed the lilting, off-kilter loveliness of Seamus Fogarty's folkish electronica. Quartet members performed some of their splinter projects, with Laura doing her 'cello/voice art-pop thing, and Vince and Emma soaring through their strings/loops/noisy drums shizzle as Geese. The guys move in excellently arty circles, and some of their more high-profile musician-mates also made it along, with folktronica dude Adem delivering a gorgeous solo set just with him and this wonderful contraption that was a bit like a musical etch-a-sketch. I want one! Simon Fisher Turner, renegade grizzled chap whom I know best for writing an a cappella soundtrack to Derek Jarman's film 'Blue' (the most high-art film I have ever seen!), showcased some new electronica and then improvised with the Elysians in a beautiful film made up of stills taken around Hackney.

The quartet has been around 10 years for a reason: notwithstanding their propensity for throwing themselves into mad cool cross-arts projects, their ensemble is just fabulously instinctive and their sound soooo together. They played some Meredith Monk pieces, semi-improvised in my favourite piece of the day to a film of Swedish cranes (the birds! not the construction vehicles!) from Kathy Hinde, whizzed through a brilliant jerky soundtrack from chiptune chap Gameshow Outpatient which he had arranged for them (do you know any other quartets who perform acoustic versions of chiptune?) to a hilarious short animation of a houseproud vole, and finished it off with a live soundtrack to Tony Comley's cute film about a world-saving panda. It was all brilliant, made more marvellous by its setting and the wedges of rosewater and raspberry cake... juice should start planning their 10th anniversary party, scheduled for 2013!

I've been enjoying curating my Composer in Residence season at Handel House, where Claudia Molitor and Sarah Nicholls installed all sorts of interactive, thought-provoking pieces for a mostly arty crowd (barring the American couple who thought they had booked tickets for a Baroque concert and instead found Sarah slowly attemnpting to play the harpsichord with bundles of pound coins for half an hour, ah ha ha! They had faces like THUNDER!); last night Leon Michener tinkered with harpischord, wurlitzer and e-bows on a clavichord, improvising with bassist olie Brice and quite wonderful singer Seaming To, who I really hope to see again soon. She was clad in a stunning high-fashion take on gothic Victoriana, and manipulated Leon's homemade magic lantern music box to project creepy cut-out's onto Handel's shutters. Excellent! Elsewhere this week, I've also crammed in part of a feminist art talk (disappointing, mostly about being a mother, yawn) up in my old hood and gone to the Amersham Arms' newish jazz night, run by the SE Jazz Collective. Check it out if you're in the South, as the Camberwell Crypt has now died a death...

Very happy to see the final part of my Art on the Underground project snaking down the escalators at Bethnal Green, completely free of adverts. Here's a snap!

Broadstairs vs. Boulez (And Poems)

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 2

Listening/Reading: Very cool new jazz group Thought-Fox; Just finished the superlative and immersive 'Wolf Hall'.
Hair Day: in need of pep and vim

What I can see from my window no. 18: see last poem below

In the last few weeks I have become a South London water-baby, with just an eyelash-flutter of sun being enough to send me down the hill to Brockwell Lido for a cold swim. It's a highly addictive, heart-thrumping pastime, wonderfully communal (eg wiggling into my dry things in full view of all other swimmers, all manner of bodies out on show, kids running around), and the water, less chlorinated than indoor pools, is a milky thing of wonder. So the hot autumn spell was a perfect excuse to avoid work and douse myself, and even better was the trip to sunny Broadstairs, where we visited Louise and Stone Bays and got some hearty sea-swimming in. So much did we gulp up the last summer rays that we missed the train to take us back to the South Bank's Boulez concert, and by the time we got there, they wouldn't admit us. Curses! So I forsook possibly my only chance to see the man in person conducting his own music, but, hell, I think I like outdoor swimming more than just about anything else, the master of Modernism included. We consoled ourselves briefly with watching a bit of 'Pli Selon Pli' on a screen, with none other than vocalist legend Linda Hirst, who'd also been waylaid; the music was given an - at times remarkably germane - extra layer of percussion by the barman on our floor crashing around sporadically with ice buckets and stacked glasses. Hur hur.

Two gigs of late: Metamorphic had a really lovely one at the Forge, reviewed ecstatically here. Juice introduced the newest group baby to Elisabeth Lutyens in rehearsal (much crying ensued) and gigged in Hexham Abbey, giving our 'Laid Bare: 10 Love Songs' songbook another welcome airing.

Here are some recent poems!

Thames Moon Swimming

With gasps that are more delight than shock,

we rush into a clamour of reeds.

As light crumbles towards the moon,

we swim between the patches that are left

- the boathouses, the single streetlamp -  

our heads polished like brassrubbings.

Walking back down the path

in light that is now more like a scent,

we are halflings among the hedges;

our sealsouls bobbing in the river.

Daylight Fox, Waterloo

Crossing in front of the cars and my bike,

he shocks like a burn on the skin.

A mulch of winter leaves, a dank sinew

reeking of urine and musk, and

capable of screams that brand the heart,

he is a brazen wildness amongst metalshine

and tarmac.

How long have they been here, waiting

by our feet at crossings, slipping past

on sidestreets, weaving through us

as if we were birch and elm?

Rosemary and Peter, Picking Blackberries

At separate points along the path,

they collect only the ripest, the ones

with the innocence of children

when you hold out your hand for them.

Her plastic rainhat upturned, she moves

with a dancer’s grace; she is first-snow and rubies,

sugar paper and bone, hands flitting

through the brambles like goldcrests.

He is a hero and charmer, idling in the bushes

with inkwell mouth and fingers.

In their second marriage, one that has lasted 40 years,

their eyes shine like the berries they can’t quite reach.

Brambles, bones, blackberries.

5^th Floor (for Nicholas Hilliard)

over to the west

into light that is silvering

the edges of my ivy, mint and sage

starlings flock

rising from the far buildings

as if on the street below

a manuscript detailing

the colours of precious stones

their heaviness and their glitter

has been dropped

in the evening wind

Hay Bales and Knitwear

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 2

Listening: Ewan MaColl and Peggy Seeger's 'Radio Ballads' project
Hair Day: 50s pin-up

What I can see from my window no. 17: the Olympic stadium

I made an autumnal resolution to see more (hopefully cheap) culture and generally hobnob a bit more, and it's kicking off in style! Last week we made our last trip of the dying summer to visit Bold Tendencies, who run the artsy events at Peckham's brooding 7-storey car park, to catch a showing of Andrea Arnold's three short films in the hay bale-walled pop-up cinema - the most well-known being 'Wasp', a grimly British bit of filmic gristle which nabbed an Oscar. I find her work, alongside her later features 'Red Road' and 'Fish Tank', totally inspiring, and am currently planning my own foray into short film-making, hopefully with a slightly more dreamy quality: bringing myth and folktale elements into an urban environment. All I need are actors, cameras, directorial nous and money... ahem.

Last night I was invited to the swanky Hospital Club to see a London Fashion Week event, where my friend Elspeth Brooke had created the music, a sort of Kraftwerk-meets-Corelli soundtrack, to a choreographed show of a new collection by Brooke Roberts. I hung around in the bar with Elspeth and her fashion writer friend Sharon, drinking the best-titled cocktail ever: The Second Coming of the Earl, which was frankly just as surprising as it sounds, hur hur. Brooke has the surely totally individualistic twin career of innovative knitwear designer and radiographer, and uses medical imaging in her work. It was refreshing to see dancers modelling, thus displaying heartily muscular calves rather than twig-like pins... Along with Brooke, Elspeth is a Creator in Residence at the Club, and I'm looking forward to choosing something from her collection to wear when I play with Elspeth in her burgeoning Creeping Jenny electronica/pop project!

Rather than dreaming of magical realist shorts and x-ray-inspired sheer tops, I should ACTUALLY be writing some music: current projects are a sporty-themed choir piece for Youth Music Voices, who will be performing as part of the Cultural Olympiad next year (am channeling the Honda ad as we speak, but with less windscreen wiperage and more canoe paddles), and planning my downloadable mp3 track for Handel House, which will mix spoken word interviews and music... 

White Peak Poems

Here are the five poems I wrote whilst in the Southern Peak District last week:

September 6^th, 2011

badger/angel

for DOLLYman

he thuds into the earth,

great white beast,

shedding ashen feathers all over the road

something savage

has sought out his heart

(sensing its extraordinary sweetness)

death has already spread her cape

over his back and begun to work him,

licking his ears with a coal-wet tongue

hours later, he’s nothing

but ink and oil, and dank night pool;

nothing but the road

September 6^th, 2011

September Heron (First Day Back At School)

A heron smartly rises from the brook:

one sheet of 100mg A3 ivory paper, cut

with a craft knife and crisply folded

at acute angles, given a deft stroke

of charcoal and hung over a yellow compass;

it rises, and it soars.

September 7^th, 2011

Under hawthorn and hazels

which hand the rain down

leaf to leaf, drop by drop,

we wait by the weir, daughter

and mother, easily talking;

the sound of the rain

and the sound of the weir.

September 8^th, 2011

The Roaches

I

The peregrine falcon hangs on the wind

above rocks the colour of ravens.

She turns, and the weather turns

with her wing-tip flash: the tarn flares

and walkers become bright as gorse flowers;

the fawn and violet of early heather

find their way into the pine trunks

and mushrooms like golden eggs are found in the grass.

Then back they come, the clouds as dark as bogs,

seeping into the grass; pine-barks gloss over

and the truths of heather’s bruises surface;

walkers run for cover, the tarn turns

its shutters, and the falcon soaks up the dark

of the raven-rocks in her far-spread wings.

II

A laugh on the wind

is snatched by a crow;

the crow’s throat-rattle

shivers through the pines;

the pines’ needle-shimmy

is rallied by chiff-chaffs,

hidden in the scrub

by the trail that we wind up,

talking, and laughing.

Walking With Mothers

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 1

Listening: Ella Fitzgerald, PJ Harvey, Roshi 
Hair Day: greasy

What I can see from my window no. 16: the death of summer. Sob.

I went to the South Peak District for a Walking With Mothers holiday this week, the sort of break where you are ONLY cool if clad in cagoule, walking trousers and the best boots Mountain Warehouse has to offer, ohhh yes.  We had some top walks in the very untouristy White Peak area and enjoyed some brilliant natural wonders:

1) Thor’s Cave was a gaping maw high on a hill in the Manifold Valley, as if blasted straight out of the rock. With its scalp-smooth limestone and pitch-black hollows, it was all my ‘The Descent’ fears come to life: Mum had to force me to use my camera flash to shine into dark tunnels, where I assumed a rubbery mutant would be half-heartedly growling back at me.

                                                

2) Chee Valley saw Mum and I venture, Indiana Jones-style, into the mud-and-nettle trails next to the Chee River, glowered on by canyon walls, clambering over stepping stones and trees before the monsoon rains hit and battered us into a taxi rescue.

                                        

3) Hen Cloud and The Roaches were marvellous crag-topped hills and ridges with amazing views of the Tittesworth Reservoir.

                                      

4) Lud’s Church was a brilliant, forest-hidden chasm 100 yards long, drenched in luminous green ferns with water dripping irregularly like the sound of a clock dying. The Lollards apparently hid here in the 14th century; I just about resisted the urge to run about pretending to be Sir Gawain fighting the Green Knight in the epic poem also thought to be set here, though did clamber up as many sopping rockfaces as as I could and squeezed through some tiny gullies, as is my wont.

                                                    

Birds of note: grey heron, nuthatch, youngish dipper, yellow wagtail, peregrine falcon, buzzard and kestrel.

Animals of note: hare, stoat, 4 dead badgers.

                                           

Kerry Goes Underground

I had the launch for my Art on the Underground project, working with artist Ruth Ewan and a load of pesky youngsters at Hackney's Laburnam Boat Club, at the Museum of Childhood last week, meaning I could cast a dewily nostalgic eye at my old manor just behind it. (I still love you, Mulberry House!) The mini-concept album that I created from the spoken word/songs/field recordings of the LBC-ers, or as it was rather nicely called by Culture24, 'an a cappella scrapbook', is available online and I guess the pillarbox red posters will be around soon, meaning my name will be all over the tube network, hurrah! Do bend your ear to these marvellous kids here and share it around if you like it!

Next up at the weekend was the Association of British Choral Directors' Convention in Birmingham, where the National Youth Choir of Great Britain premiered my ABCD 25th anniversary commission, The Earth Hath Voice, in Birmingham Town Hall. It was a fairly meaty concert, with Ars Nova and the spookily good (like a load of super-poised high priestesses. With uncanny intonation.) Cantamus packing out the first half - the latter's Judith Bingham piece, Lace-making, being a big highlight. The NYC did a fine job on my piece in the second half, and it seemed to go down pretty well with the audience. Mike Brewer, I think, put everyone else's pieces to shame with their wonderfully funky, boisterous joyfulness. Though of course nothing is more exciting than having Eric Whitacre gracing the Convention with his blonde-maned presence, and ripples went through the choral delegate audience, turning everyone into a bunch of tittering maiden aunts as he swept on, looking like some sort of glamorous, sharp-suited Hollywood star compared to all of us pasty, snaggle-toothed Brits, hur hur. I'm utterly fascinated by his success: what other choral composer is also a) signed to the Storm Model Agency and b) gives keynote speeches to the UN Leaders' Programme, for goodness' sakes!! I was very sad not to get a chance to meet him and if nothing else, have some sort of Fabulous Choral Composers' Hair-Off Smackdown, in which obviously I would win the 'Edgy Quiff Award' but he would wipe me out with the 'Mr Glossy Locks' and the 'Hair-Tosser of 2011' gongs. Ah ha ha.

Still, I DID get spend time with an actual friend who is, some might say, MORE famous than Eric: Paul Mealor, erstwhile Composer To The Royals, who was there to give a talk about rewriting his music into Ubi Caritas for the Royal Wedding. Paul used to hold court in the postgrad room at York, bestowing all sorts of useful compositional advice and plenty of giggles back in the day, and it was a real pleasure to see him again, and have a few buckets of white wine in the hotel bar with the ABCD-ers. He fed me drops of juicy gossip about all his composer friends, hanging out at the Classical BRITS, popping over to America, and all the other things he does now that he is MAD famous, and was as entertaining as ever. What a star!

Two cultural things of late: Twombly and Poussin at the Dulwich Picture Gallery - I much preferred Cy's solo show at the Tate, though it was lovely to spend time sitting in the company of the big splodgy beasts in his Quattro Stagioni; and Ralph Fiennes in The Tempest, a treat from Andy, who somehow managed to suppress his fear that I would throw myself onto the stage in wilting ardour. Actually, Ralph is a bit old and terrifying now, but it was still great to see him live (I saw him do Richard II many moons ago), even if he looked a little uncomfortable in Prospero's cape, especially when he had to groove to his sprites' fairly awful crooning. Ha ha.