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Whaletone Opera - Act Three
- Curing Tonosama
February 2005

WHALETONE DAY 2

Everyone arrived one by one (some are travelling from Sendai City 30km away). Keishi ( a taiko drum player and maker who took part last year) also rejoined us today with one massive drum and stand.

Everybody did some calligraphy. I sang to them a neumatically notated version of ave maria from UK composed in about 12th century with three staff notation. (An early music singer Ayako is coming tomorrow to take part with her one year old child, she does not improvise and wants to be prepared, so she emailed us this score, after Nomura asked her). Nomura and I sang it together and then other individuals sang it. We all did black ink on white paper impressions of the music.

Nomura also recorded some of the sounds of the painting.

We tried one piece of calligraphy out as a musical score as a whole group.
We spent some time on it and made sure we all learned it. (Later I notated it conventionally so we can send a version to Ayako.) We sang it in two parts with male (5) and female (10) and Nomura conducting. It became a 14-bar phrase. It had simple vowel sounds and a pop (pulling finger out of mouth pop, which it seemed no-one could do excpet for Keishi, also in school that morning nobody could do it???) and a mouth click.

We divided the group into three, they then chose some of the other calligraphies and worked for half an hour on making their own versions. One group was women with only voices, the others used some instruments also.

At the end of the evening all the new pieces were performed to each other.
The `titles` were-
  1. Plum blossom (gp1)
  2. Heather (gp2)
  3. Jinsei (life, c`est la vie) (gp3)
  4. Seaside Dream (gp1)
They then performed them again.

For me the vocal quality of plum blossom was exquisite, like delicate Ligeti, heather was very masculine and loud, Jinsei was conducted by the pianist by using an umbrella, sometimes she had to lean a long way from the piano and this made it interesting for me. Seaside dream made a connection to me with Blackpool.

At the end Nomura and I went to hear the guitar group (Ezuko Hall is also used as an adult music rehearsal venue with many groups each evening.) The guitar group have a strange bassguitar that I have only ever seen in this building. 6 strings, flat bridge, spike, to be played vertical or horizontal. Unfortunately no-one was playing it last night.

Many people stayed later last night playing music, chatting, tidying calligraphy mess. One woman commented that she had listened to the act 2 version of cockera toy and it was VERY fast.

Riken took us home. he is now responsible for this project and is very happy. They have already discussed budget for next year complete opera which also coincides with the theatre`s tenth anniversary. More news of this another time.

In the afternoon I worked on a song based on the ideas of black and white which came out of the first evening. It has a melody using only black notes for the black phrases and white notes vice versa. It has whole tone scale (3 black, 3 white) for the `chorus. Nomura tried to encourage me not to write too much of it becasue others may add to it, but it turned out that I did not sing it to them anyway. Last night I read some of the new Murakami novel and added another verse. Who knows what will come of it.

Black ink on a white page
White snow on a black coat
Black skirt on a white girl
White light in a black room
Hold on for the whole journey

Black humour in a whiteout
White trust in black boys
Black future in white men
White hopes blackout

Hold on for the whole journey
Black pudding in a white bowl
White rice on a black plate
Black gold splashed on white linen
White sheets on a black bed

Hold on for the whole journey...

OTHER NEWS

So still snowing. This morning I walked two hours in the hills and saw birds and shrines and clouds and houses.

I am developing ideas about the differences and similarities between shogi composition and goat music and have begun to write something about it.
Similar in that they have a set of rules as a way that groups of mixed abilities might `compose/create` new music. Different in that shogi you create a score and do not have to listen closely to everyone... Anyhow, it will be much more detailed than this.

When we finish in Sennan we go to Tokyo for a day to visit Ikeda a maverick music teacher who visited us at Lindley Schools last year.

I am feeling very rubbish at Japanese.

New words-
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