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Monthly Archives: July 2015
Singing: Prayer to a Guardian Angel: Patrick Hawes
Prayer to a Guardian Angel is from composer Patrick Hawes’ album Angels. It’s just the most hauntingly beautiful song. So I sent away for the sheet music. I have been privileged to meet and to be conducted by Patrick Hawes, … Continue reading
Posted in Music, Singing, Singing Sacred
Tagged Guardian Angel, Lazarus Requiem, Patrick Hawes
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Singing: Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal, Now The White (from the movie Vanity Fair)
This is the best recording I can get of this lovely song by Mychael Danna from the 2004 film version of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, with Reese Witherspoon in the female lead (Becky Sharp).
The lyrics are from the sonnet by Alfred Lord Tennyson Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal Now the White Continue reading
Posted in Music, Romanticism, Singing
Tagged Becky Sharp, Britten, Mealor, Mychael Danna, Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, poem, Quilter, Reese Witherspoon, Singing, sonnet, Tennyson, Thackeray, Vanity Fair
2 Comments
A Spookiness of Stones
Further to Eclipses and Cuckoos, a further nine stones, unearthed on our lottie over the past month or so. Where they had lain, are now sweetcorn and globe artichokes (and one cardoon, misidentified by the garden centre and masquerading as an artichoke).
They are very similar, cardoons and artichokes. You can eat cardoons – the stems – whereas it is the bud (the large globe) of the globe artichoke that is eaten.
What’s spooky about these nine stones? Continue reading
Posted in Allotmenteering, Art, Inspiration, Long Fiction, spirituality, Writing
Tagged fiction writing, flint, Long Fiction Writing, Stones
5 Comments
Tumblr Features My Work : The Dust of Life
Tumblr emailed me to say they’d featured a couple of spreads from one of my Arthouse Coop Sketchbook Project sketchbooks in their BS Project. Continue reading
Posted in Art, Artist Sketchbooks, Collage & Assemblage, Mixed Media, Multimedia, Photography, Printmaking, Short Story Writing, spirituality
Tagged 2012 Sketchbook Project, Arthouse Coop, Arthouse Coop Fiction Project, Just Giving, Rob Stevens Singer Songwriter, Street Children Scavengers, streetchildren, The Pages Of My Life
2 Comments
Flint & Feather Resurrected
Above the laptop is a packet of radish seeds. A ball of string.
Adjustable spanner.
Two staplers.
Secateurs. Continue reading
Posted in Allotmenteering, Art, Inspiration, Photography
Tagged Allotmenteering, Beans, Cabbages, Chives, fiction writing, golden courgette, Growing Veggies, love, nasturtium, novel writing, Round Green Courgette, seeds, Sorrel, Squash
2 Comments
What I’ve Been Singing: Le Spectre de la Rose: Les Nuits d’Eté: Berlioz
I had a first-time try last Friday at singing some of the songs from Hector Berlioz’ song cycle Les Nuits d’Eté (Summer Nights) the texts for which came from six poems composed by Theophile Gautier.
I’ve had a CD for some years of the song cycle recorded by the late great Janet Baker, so I was not entirely unfamiliar with it. I never thought at the time that I’d one day be singing it.
The theme of the cycle is love, its progress from innocence to loss and renewal. The second song of the cycle, Le Spectre de la Rose, began as a work for piano – Afforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance) – written, in 1819, by Carl Maria von Weber. Continue reading
Posted in Music, Opera, Romanticism, Singing
Tagged Ballet, Ballets Russes, Berlioz, Diaghilev, Invitation to the Dance, Le Spectre de la Rose, Les Nuits d'Eté, Nijinsky, Opera, Romanticism, Singing, Song Cycle, Weber
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Sunday is No-Spam Day
Sunday is No-Spam Day Continue reading
Poetic Mapping: Walking Into Art 