To celebrate the opening, Melodians Steel Orchestra and Turner Contemporary’s resident ‘Big Sing’ choir will come together to perform an exciting and unique musical collaboration of contemporary music. The performance will include a varied programme from Melodians Steel Orchestra who will be joined by Thanet ‘Big Sing’ Community Choir to perform three unlikely vocal and steel band arrangements from composers and arrangers Emily Peasgood, Robert Thompson, Dr Tom Chatburn and Tamla Batra, featuring:

• Autumn Leaves by Joseph Kosma, arr. Robert Thompson & Emily Peasgood
• All Night Long by Lionel Richie, arr. Emily Peasgood & Dr Tom Chatburn
• Music by John Miles, arr. Tamla Batra & Emily Peasgood

Performances are on Saturday 11 October from 2-2.45pm and 4-4.45pm in Turner Contemporary’s Sunley Gallery and promise to be loud, high energy and not to be missed!

Running concurrently, Crate Studio of Margate are also delighted to announce the opening of ‘English Magic Re-Mix’, a collaborative show of new works by Jeremy Deller and Fraser Muggeridge. Taking elements from Deller’s English Magic exhibition, English Magic Re-Mix is a selection of new and re-worked imagery. Conceived originally as a celebratory way to mark the end of a touring show, English Magic Re-Mix acts as the naughty offspring of the original.

The exterior of the Crate building (a former printworks behind Margate High Street) will be transformed with posters and viewable at all times throughout the duration of the show.

English Magic Re-Mix opens on Friday 10 October from 6pm-9pm and will then run concurrently with the final showcase of English Magic at Turner Contemporary, Margate.

For more information visit

Turner Contemporary www.turnercontemporary.org

Sounds Like Art www.soundslikeart.co.uk

Em Peasgood www.empeasgood.com

Melodians Steel Orchestra www.melodiansuk.co.uk

Crate Studios & Project Space www.cratespace.co.uk 

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James Turrell’s Skyspace sculpture resides within the gardens and since I first sat down and hummed in there, last May, I have been excited about its potential for choral performances. The acoustic in there is absolutely delicious; bright yet simultaneously dry and reverberant. Singing inside Turrell’s Skyspace is like singing inside a short, fat convex vase with its wide middle and narrow opening at the top. There is a seating ledge all around the sculpture’s interior and as you sing the sound fills the space before floating up where it thins, becoming focused and pure, before leaving through the Skyspace as a whisper of its former tonal self.

Pip and I had planned sing in the Skyspace to test and record the acoustic, but we hadn’t counted on being accompanied by several visitors, two young families, and a dog, all sheltering from the rain outside – and inside – as they clung to the sides of the sculpture to avoid the steady stream of rain pouring through the Skyspace hole where it lay, forming a puddle, in the middle of the floor. Much to their amusement, we went ahead and sang anyway, first tentatively and then with more clarity.

Later, Pip moved outside the sculpture, where you can walk up a slope, becoming level with the Skyspace hole. “Can you hear me?” I shouted, and then sang. Nothing. I asked the visitors inside if they might be willing to sing, or shout, whilst I joined Pip outside. A couple of children shouted “yes!” and I ran outside to catch their sound.

After a couple of minutes, Pip and I were still waiting, with disappointment. I had hoped that if a choir performance did take place in the Skyspace, our audience could listen from outside as the sound drifted up and out through the Skyspace hole. But eventually we did hear a long, lone, ‘ah’ from a beautiful tenor voice. On returning to the the sculpture we asked who the singer was and Paul came forward.

Paul is a piano teacher who hasn’t sung in years since surgery damaged his vocal chords. “I feel such disappointment with my voice now, compared to what it was”, he said. “I rarely sing anymore”. “But you sing beautifully”, both Pip and I responded. We entered into dialogue with Paul and he told us about his PhD research and expressed his concerns about his singing voice. “Your voice is beautiful now”, I said. “Leave the comparison of ‘then’ and accept your voice for what it is now”. We recommended that Paul joined a choir and Pip invited him to the Dawn Chorus the following Thursday.

Eventually the rain stopped and as the visitors started to leave, Paul, Pip and I continued to talk and then started to sing. I felt honoured that someone who felt disappointed with their vocal ability was comfortable singing with two strangers in the Skyspace sculpture on this rainy day. After ten minutes of improvised tonal sounds Paul quietly stood up and left. I lay down, looked up at the Skyspace, and Pip and I continued to sing. I am not a religious person – and I am resisting the urge to slap myself as I say this – but what I experienced felt primitive, spiritual and connected.

Pip enters Turrell's Skyspace

The entrance to Turrell's Skyspace

James Turrell's Skyspace

The Skyspace

Pip Wright

Family's shelter from the rain

A dog shelter's from the rain

Paul

Pip Wright

Emily relaxing

Paul in the Sculpture Gardens, St Michael's Mount in the distance

Later on in the week I received an email from Pip: “guess what? Our friend Paul showed up for Dawn Chorus this morning. Half way through the session he walked up and said “shall I teach my arrangement of ‘Steal Away’?” and a good moment was had by all”.

If you ever do visit the Skyspace at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, lie down and sing whilst looking at the Skyspace above. Go on, give it a go. You might feel silly but you also might also be surprised at how it makes you feel.

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St Ives is a vibrant art colony on the North Penwith coast, in Cornwall, with a rich artistic heritage. With its unique quality of light, clear blue skies, pretty cobbled streets lined with picture-perfect fisherman’s cottages and beautiful harbour, it is no surprise that potter Bernard Leach, artist Ben Nicholson and sculptor Barbara Hepworth lived in the town, to name a few. In 2003 Tate St Ives opened and the gallery displays British and international modern and contemporary art and includes The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden. 

I have had a wonderful time roaming the streets, visiting small – and large – galleries and especially spending time at the Tate and at The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden. The project I would like to develop for Sounds Like Art involves exploring the artistic heritage and legacy in three Penwith coastal towns renowned for their artistic activity. Over the last ten years I have visited this part of Cornwall with increasing regularity. I find peace in coming to Penwith and often spend my days composing music, writing and taking long walks along the coast. 

In planning any project there is a great amount of research and coming to St Ives has really opened my eyes to the possibility of a very unique and culturally rich project. I cannot divulge any more information at this stage  (even though I would love to, as I am extremely excited!) other than to say watch this space. 

Emily Peasgood

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We are pleased to announce that on the 11th of October we will be collaborating with Thanet Big Sing and Melodians Steel Orchestra at Jeremy Deller’s English Magic launch celebration at Turner Contemporary in Margate.

Last week, composer Emily Peasgood visited the orchestra at their home in Balham, London to start exploring possibilities for the collaboration, which will involve a performance of unique arrangements of contemporary songs from Lionel Richie, John Miles and David Bowie. 

Performances will take place at 2pm and 5pm. For more information, please stay tuned! 

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SINGING LANDSCAPES by Sue Flory

(Preparing the Canvas)

Sounds, like art create.

Create aural

pictures and images

conjured out of nothing.

Nothing: silence,

empty page, blank canvas

to be peopled by notes.

Notes: crotchets

minims and quavers

waiting to be realised,

given voice,

to live in time,

to resonate in space.

Opiates to the ears.

Solo voice,

one melody,

single line of beauty

like a sketched monochrome.

(Painting the Score)

Oh yes, we can indeed rejoice

in that bright and soaring voice.

But, add some more to that one

to gain a greater depth of tone.

For music even more divine

weave in the golden alto line;

harmonising some sienna shades

giving mountains, valleys, glades.

Tenors bring a warmth of sound;

in burnt umber this is found.

The underlying, anchoring hue

comes from the basses’ Prussian Blue.

With singers’ palette now at hand

composers can create a sound

as varied as a landscape view

with texture, colour, vocal hue.

Yes, sounds, like art can create

a work of art that’s truly great.

Mellifluous beauty will abound

in a landscape of delicious sound.

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When I started composing Landscapes my knowledge of JMW Turner was zilch. Nothing. Nada. Although I hail from a creative background, art and appreciating art was not a part of my background. In fact, until I moved to London in 2000, I had never even been to an art gallery.

Since 2000 my interest in conceptual and contemporary art grew but still I had not fully encountered the art of the JMW Turner, the great nineteenth century landscape painter.

In order to compose a piece inspired by Turner there were limitless possibilities and interpretational approaches I could take. I didn’t know what I was looking but I knew that I needed to discover something truly unique about Turner to enable an authentic musical response to his art.

So, I set about on a journey of discovering as much as I could about the artist. I didn’t know where to start as I knew so little and so, as James Hamilton was curating Turner Contemporary’s Making Painting exhibit, I picked up a copy of his Turner: A Life biography to start my journey.

As I read, I widened my research and discovered the wider influence of poetry in Turner’s life and its influence on his art. From 1798, the Royal Academy started to allow artists to append quotations to their artworks in the catalogue entries. to this avail, Turner not only appended the poetry of his favourite poets from Milton, Thomson and Pope to the ethereal poetry of Mark Akenside, but he also started writing his own poetry.

Much of the authenticity of his poetry is questionable as he begged and borrowed favourite lines of verse into his poetry, of which the majority was not of a high standard. But here and there, the odd few lines of verse really are quite beautiful.

One poet of great inspiration to Turner was 18th century English poet Mark Akenside, writer of Pleasures of the Imagination. In fact, in one of Turner’s Perspective lectures at the Royal Academy he is quoted to have paraphrased Akenside as follows:

   “Painting and poetry flowing from the same fount mutually by vision, constantly comparing Poetic allusions by natural forms in one and applying forms found in nature to the other,meandering into streams by application, which reciprocally improve, reflect and refract, and heighten each others beauties like…mirrors”.

Turner believed that painting and poetry mutually enhanced the other and subsequently enhances the viewers sphere of understanding his art. For Turner combining both poetry and painting enhanced the expressive range of his art.

My research into JMW Turner continues. It is rather addictive and I am enjoying finding out so much about this prolific man. What I have found so far which has contributed to the composition of Landscapes is that the influence of poetry, and music, was profound.

If you would like to find out more about JMW Turner and I can recommend the following books and articles:

•     Akenside, Mark (1818). The Pleasures of the Imagination. London: T. Cadell & W. Davies.
•     Hamilton, James (1997). Turner: A Life. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
•     Lindsay, Jack (ed). (1966). The Sunset Ship: The Poems of J.M.W. Turner. Suffolk: Scorpion Press.
•     Livermore, Ann (1957). ‘Turner and Music’. Music & Letters, 38 (2), 170-179.
•     Livermore, Ann (1957). ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Unknown Verse-Book’. In L.G.G.Ramsay and Helen Constock (eds), The Connoisseur Year Book, 1957. (pp. 78-86). London: The Connoisseur.
•     Smiles, Sam (2000). J.M.W.Turner. London: Tate Publishing.
•     Wilton, Andrew (1990). Painting and Poetry: Turner’s Verse Book and his work of 1804-1812. London: Tate Gallery Publications.
•     Ziff, Jerrold (1964). ‘John Lanhorn and Turner’s ‘Fallacies of Hope’’. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 27, 340-342.
•     Ziff, Jerrold (1964). ‘J.M.W. Turner on Poetry and Painting’. Studies in Romanticism, 3 (4), 193-215.

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