Haworth Hodgkinson's Review of 2018
Music
The past year has seen a few performances of my music in and around Aberdeen. In April I was invited
to play as headline act at an event in the Enter series of programmes of experimental music organised
by the group Shift→Enter at the University of Aberdeen. I played a solo version of my piece South
Breakwater for keyboards tuned in 19-tone equal temperament. The technical challenge of getting
keyboard and laptop to talk to each other to produce the required tuning nearly led to disaster, but
a last-minute bit of magic by Adam Cresser got things working and the performance went well.
South Breakwater came out again in May, this time played on multiple keyboards by Intuitive Music
Aberdeen at St Andrew's Cathedral in Aberdeen. On this occasion we played in conventional 12-tone tuning
to avoid the challenge of retuning multiple keyboards. The piece doesn't have quite the same atmosphere
performed this way, but it still seemed to go down well with the audience. Indeed one or two audience
members had also been at my 19-tone solo performance, so were able to appreciate the differences. The
cathedral concert also included Prime Rant, a not-too-serious piece exploring prime number bar
lengths: 11, 13 and 17.
Intuitive Music Aberdeen
at the Green Room
For another Enter gig in June I devised a midsummer sequence of words and music in which poems by
Catriona Yule, Mandy Macdonald and me were read with instrumental music from Intuitive Music Aberdeen
based on part of the Summer Solstice section of Dundee Ambient, and this sequence was
repeated in Inverurie in July at an event marking the launch of Aberdeenshire Council's Cultural Strategy.
Later in July we brought together the midsummer sequence, now entitled Summer Solstice, with
South Breakwater and Prime Rant, plus Freak Out, a piece we had performed the year
before, for an afternoon concert of my music given by Intuitive Music Aberdeen at Newton Dee. As always
happens, we were made very welcome at Newton Dee and received much enthusiastic comment afterwards.
In September, Intuitive Music Aberdeen played my piece Drostan's Calendar at the Green Room in
New Deer, the first time this piece has been played in Aberdeenshire. Drostan's Calendar is an
hour-long piece layering music for live keyboards over processed recordings of the sea made at monthly
intervals at Aberdour Beach in 2004. In New Deer we had a small but discerning audience, and the performance
went very well in the relaxed atmosphere of this lovely venue.
Later in September I was back in Aberdeen for a further Enter programme, this time playing Dawn Postlude,
a fixed media piece that is not so fixed in the sense that it can exist in different versions of widely
differing lengths. One audience member said my music reminded her of Tarkovsky films, which I took as
a compliment.
For its last gig of the year, Intuitive Music Aberdeen performed at Blackwell's Bookshop in Old Aberdeen
as part of the Solstice Shorts Festival. This was one of five simultaneous events on the shortest day
across Scotland, England and Wales. Writers from around the UK and beyond had submitted poems and short
stories on the theme of "Noon" to Arachne Press in London, and from the shortlisted selection we chose
a sequence to read with music based on the Winter Solstice segment of Dundee Ambient.
This was video-streamed live, and an edited audio version can be heard online. We plan to make an edited
video available later.
Bull Hill to Saplin Brae
released by High Moss
Recording
South Breakwater, which featured in several of this year's live performances, also appeared on
the High Moss album Lanterns, in a 2016 version for four keyboards in 19-tone equal temperament.
The title South Breakwater is a reference to Peterhead harbour, so I maintained the balance by
referring to Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire's other large harbour town, in Kinnaird Head, the other
piece on this album.
Dawn Postludes was my second album of the year, and it contains two versions of the same piece,
Dawn Postlude, which was first performed at the September Enter concert. This is a conceptual
process piece, which can vary considerably in length depending on the speed at which the process is
set to unfold. The two versions on the album last 15 and 55 minutes.
My third and final album was released on High Moss at the very end of the year, and contains five pieces,
all composed and recorded in 2018. The title Bull Hill to Saplin Brae combines geographical references
to Lancashire, where I grew up, and Aberdeenshire, where I have spent most of my life. These locations
feature in the two main pieces on the album – the other pieces are shorter occasional compositions.
Poetry
I have performed my own poetry with improvised or semi-improvised music at many events over the years,
and I'm glad that people still ask me to do this from time to time, even though I don't seem to have
been writing much new poetry in recent years.
One such invitation was to perform at Inverurie Town Hall at a wake event for the Gordon Forum for the
Arts, which performed a vital role in supporting the arts in Central Aberdeenshire over its lifetime
but was felt to have become unsustainable. A less sober occasion (in more ways than one) was an all-night
summer solstice event at the Green Room in New Deer, at which I performed a solo set.
In December the Academy of Expressive Arts, a new venue and enterprise in the centre of Aberdeen, hosted
A Gweed Yuletide, an evening of seasonal stories, poems and music at which Fiona-Jane Brown and
Linda Smith performed and I took a couple of solo slots.
During the course of the year I also performed poetry without music at events at the William Lamb Studio
in Montrose and the Aden Allotments in Mintlaw, and I was pleased to be invited to take part in Anne-Marie
Fyfe's project The Voyage Out when it visited Findhorn. This was a series of poetry workshops
and performances in coastal communities around Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and East-Coast US and
Canada. This enabled me to write and perform on the same day a poem collecting ideas from recent visits
to Coll and Tiree.
Other projects
It's always good to have a few projects that challenge in new ways and don't fit into my established
categories. In 2018 these included joining Kris Orskov and Karen Osterberg in a performance of some
of Kris's songs at the Green Room, New Deer, and an improvised performance at the first meeting of the
Aberdeen Occult and Avant-Garde Society.
In February I provided music for Hoors, Harpies and Harridans, a Hidden Aberdeen Tours event
with storytelling and theatrical enactments, and in August I was involved in the making of a film with
many of the Hidden Aberdeen crew. No Ladies Please, scripted by Fiona-Jane Brown and directed
by Yvonne Heald, tells the story of a group of female delegates at a Scottish TUC conference in Aberdeen
in 1973 who invaded the men-only pub across the road from the conference venue demanding to be served.
I will be creating music for the film, which we intend to release and premiere early in 2019.
Thanks
Many thanks to all the people I've had the pleasure of working with during 2018: to my Intuitive Music
Aberdeen colleagues Mandy Macdonald and Colin Edwards as well as guest performers Catriona Yule, Marka
Rifat, Mark Spalding and Margaret Christie; to Bea Dunsmore and Mark Dunsmore of Shift→Enter who
invited me to perform at their Enter events; to Fiona-Jane Brown and all her talented band of actors
at Hidden Aberdeen Tours; to my writing colleagues in the Apothecaries and other groups for their continued
support and feedback; to Annabel Strange, Marta Noone and Ugo Vantini of the Aberdeen Occult and
Avant-Garde Society who are giving the Aberdeen performing arts scene a well-needed prod in the comfort
zone; to the owners, managers, staff and volunteers of the various venues who have made me feel welcome
when performing; and to everybody who has come to my performances, bought and listened to my music from
High Moss, and otherwise supported me in person and online.
Haworth Hodgkinson, 1 January 2019
Some Facebook pages to like and follow...
My own public Facebook page | |
The record label that releases my music | |
The ensemble that has given performances of several of my pieces this year | |
The group behind the Enter series of concerts, some of which have included my music | |
The company behind many of the tours and theatrical productions I've worked on | |
The film that I am writing music for | |
The group promoting experimental performance in Aberdeen | |
Network supporting writers and new writing in North-East Scotland | |
...and, last but not least, the brand under which I maintain websites for several arts organisations and individuals | |
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