Here are a few select photos from the performance of my commission ‘Labyrinth for Mixed Choir and Soundscape‘ in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh on New Years Day. St Giles was transformed into a labyrinth with a huge minotaur at its heart. The Cathedral was filled with evolving soundscapes and bursts of choir. The public queued for a chance to take ribbons from the minotaur without being spotted. It was a great success with 1000′s of people attending!

Thanks to Iain Armstrong (laptop), Lis Murphy (soprano), Judy Brown (alto), Dominic Barberi (bass), Oliver Singleton (barritone), Tom Prichard (minotaur), Mike Sherin (minotaur).

We had our big rehearsal in St Giles Cathedral for the New Years Day event:

Take on the challenge of the Labyrinth: a twisting sonic journey through St Giles’ Cathedral, with a minotaur at its heart. Can you reach the centre without being spotted? A game of sound, movement and monsters – come along and play, or just listen to the evolving musical score from composer Pippa Murphy.

A minotaur, a labyrinth, an evolving soundscape and a choir..

Come and play! 2-5 New Years day

http://thenewyeargames.com/

Go Compose! is an intensive composition project for young composers aged 13 – 18 who are still at school. It’s a unique opportunity to work with professional composers and musicians to create your own, original piece of music which will be performed in the Red Note Ensemble’s Noisy Night on 22 October as part of the sound festival.

The project will be led by composers Pippa Murphy and David Fennessy with professional musicians from the Red Note Ensemble. There will be additional support from students from the University of Aberdeen’s music department.

This is an experimental contemporary dance project to find connections between sound and motion using interactive technology. Dancer and choreographer Skye Reynolds has been trying out several ideas since 2010 using various devices with Jung in Jung and I joined them on their residency at Dance Base Edinburgh to lend an ear or two..

The residency was funded by Dance Base Edinburgh and Arts Trust. Matt Collings (MSc Digital Composition and Performance) and Yann Seznec also attended some days of the residency as potential collaborators in the future.

The dancers who were involved in this project through performance and research were Adrienne O’Leary, Clive Andrews, David Aing, Emma Snellgrove, Fiona Jeffries, Tamsyn Russell, Tom Pritchard and Tony Thrills.

In May 2011 I delivered a composition and listening programme as part of the St. Abbs Music Project: a joint initiative between The National Trust for Scotland, Sound and Music (SAM), the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO), Scottish Borders Council’s Arts Development Team and Youth Music Intitiative.

The St Abbs Music Project will see the creation of a new music composition by composer Howard Moody that celebrates the significance of the St Abbs Head coastal and marine nature reserves on the stunning coastline of the Scottish Borders.

Sonic Postcards is SAM’s unique national education programme which encourages participants to “open their ears” to explore and compare their local sound environments through the composition and exchange – via the internet – of sound postcards, shared with other schools and members of their community.

As part of ‘pARTicipate’ – a new National Trust for Scotland learning initiative which seeks to engage people with their conservation work – SAM have been working with P6 classes from two primary schools in Eyemouth and Coldingham to explore and capture the sounds of the St Abbs environment over the course of 3 days in May.

Day 1: The project was launched with a site visit to St. Abbs Head, where National Trust for Scotland Property Manager, Liza Cole, and audio artist Pippa Murphy led the group around the cliff tops in search of the perfect recording locations. Pupils captured sounds of the various species of birds that flock to St Abbs, as well as the sea and the stones beneath their feet. The group had a great time, although the windy conditions made recording very challenging!

Day 2: On Wednesday 25th May, Pippa and Sound and Music Learning Producer Natasha Chubbuck were joined by Sandra Morrison from NTS as they returned to Coldingham Primary School for a morning session with the group, exploring listening skills and making more recordings in the classroom.

After listening back to recordings from the trip and hearing examples of individual birdcalls, the P6 group used their own voices to amazing effect re-creating the calls of kittiwakes, puffins and guillemots, as well as the whistling wind. In the second half of the session pupils worked in pairs to create unusual sounds from things they found in the classroom. They made some great recordings that really complimented the audio recordings made on site: who would have thought a pen on a whiteboard could sound so much like squeaking chicks, or a box of pegs like stones crunching on the beach!

After the gales of the field trip, Pippa and Natasha took advantage of the calmer weather and returned to St Abb’s Head that afternoon to make some more recordings of the kittiwakes and guillemots nesting on the sea stacks.

Day 3: On Thursday 26th Pippa, Natasha and Kirsten Hunter, SCO Connect Officer, were back at Coldingham Primary for the final day of the project; creating the Sonic Postcards. After recapping on Wednesday’s sound recordings the class worked with Pippa to create their own class Sonic Postcard (see below).

In the second part of the session the pupils worked in pairs to create their own ‘graphic scores’ using the sounds they had recorded, before creating their own Sonic Postcard compositions using Audacity on the classroom computers. All the children did a great job and it was amazing to hear how different their Postcards were, despite being composed from the same group of sounds. Many of them really told a story through the sounds they used and the arrangements they had made.

In the afternoon the rest of the school and parents were invited to listen to the Sonic Postcards that the P6 students had created – an amazing achievement in such a short space of time!

Following the Sonic Postcards project the children involved will have the opportunity to contribute the sounds they have recorded to the new composition by Howard Moody, which will be performed as part of the SCO’s South of Scotland Tour in 2012.

I’m working on an engagement project called ‘The City Rings’ which links 4 schools in Aberdeenshire, Belgium, Spain and Denmark. The City Rings is an international project dealing with the exchange of experiences by means of sound.

During the month of October 2010, each partner organisation will work with one or more classes from schools. We intend to collect all data and impressions of the project via a blog, but our aim is also to make these matters interchangeable. The pupils will be able to respond and react to each other’s creations in an audiovisual manner. Later on in the project they will also be able to create their own fictitious city with the citymixer.

Eventually, every class will have created and shared their proper view of their own city in the form of a 1-minute soundscape. They will have followed the same program: observing sound, the principles multi-tracking, writing of a scenario or score and composing with sound.

http://thecityrings.org/

I’ve been working on a new piece for 3 flutes and Bass Clarinet commissioned by the Scottish Flute Trio with funds from the Scottish Arts Council. There will be 4 performances.

This commission will be premiered at the Arches, Glasgow on June 17^th 2010, followed by performances at Catstrand (June 18th), Traverse, (June 19^th) and Byre Theatre St Andrews (June 22^nd)

See http://www.scottishflutetrio.com for more details

This month I will be rehearsing and performing with Scottish Opera for this year’s Five:15

I’m working on a new commission for Saxophone and live electronics to be performed at the dBale electronic music festival on April 21-23 2010. This years theme is ‘Frau Musica Electronica’ and I will be curating and performing a concert of my own work including ‘Voix du Sable’, ‘Pathfinder’ ‘Caspian Retreat’, ‘Postcard from Paris’ and a New work. Other featured composers include: Annette Vande Gorne, Françoise Barrière, Le Femmes Savantes.

See www.esbasel.ch and  http://www.garedunord.ch/ for more details.

I was asked to be guest editor of Sound and Music’s ‘The Sampler. Have a read of this if you’re looking for gigs over the next couple of weeks:

The Sampler