Post Helsinki and Covid-19 days

Before I get into how music and composing is affected by the global pandemic, I want to remember those halcyon days of Feb and early March when working together with other artists on new work was a normal thing and a valued part of the collaborative creative process.

The time in Helsinki was fantastic, working with exceptional physical artists from Ilmatila: Ilona Jantti, Eleonora Dall'Asta, Ana Delia Gudiño and the brilliant musicians of Uusinta Ensemble: Violin - Maria Puusaari, Viola - Max Savikangas, Clarinet(s) - Helmi Malmberg.

We spent 3 weeks developing a 45min contemporary circus work. We went into the process (choreographer Ilona Jantti and I) with all the physical and musical material we thought could be molded into a piece and through the development process refined this material, bringing it into a convincing structure and changing or editing it so that music and movement felt born of the same theatrical impulse.

It was a very fulfilling experience creatively, to get out of my composition studio and to be interacting with other artists in the creation of a new work. For the past few years most of my time has been spent alone composing, with only short bursts of interaction with other artists (during rehearsals for works usually) and to once again be in a room collaborating and making something new was very refreshing for the creative soul.

The resulting work, which we gave a preview showing of in Helsinki in early March is Pinch Pleat, the third collaboration between Ilona Jantti and I, since we first started working together in 2010 in London. Previous works of ours include site responsive creation POLAR (commissioned by Jacksons Lane/Shunt), Handspun (commissioned by Royal Opera House, Covent Garden).

Pinch Pleat is an abstract theatrical journey through contrasts which merge music, circus and physicality. Uusinta Ensemble musicians are part of the stage work as well.

As is the case throughout the arts world premieres and performances have had to shift and change. We are now looking at premiering this work most likely in 2021 in Finland and we are working with our partners to give Pinch Pleat a host of European premieres in the near future.

Since finishing the residency in Helsinki it was little more than a week until most of the world went into lockdown and with it the obliteration of live performance. I had two premieres cancelled and have had work for 2021 and 2022 cancelled, postponed or placed under a big question mark. But I feel I am one of the lucky ones, and I am certainly very positive about the future. Unlike my performer colleagues a big part of the compositional process happens in isolation, though this is most definitely tied to the live performance of the work, so take that away and there is no composing. My main composition projects for 2020 are proceeding and I am doing much the same work, in the short term, that I would have been doing anyway.

What has been interesting is the emergence of online performance opportunities and online specific commissions. This also points towards the realignment of many funding bodies towards the support of online based practice and the shift in programming towards smaller scale work. I have taken on a couple of online performance commissions (which I will make public when I’m allowed to) and have had an up and down experience with online performances of existing works of mine. What a lot of this says to me is that this crisis offers a much needed chance to break with outdated and just down right bad practice in the arts. I have encountered many more positive and energised artists during this crisis than dinosaurs stuck in outdated economic models and last century arts thinking. But there are issues of power and control in the arts which prevent creativity and responsive innovative ways of moving the industry forward. Life changes, as we see all around us, and it would be healthy to see some aspects of the arts that are no longer fit for purpose change.

This is not the forum to go into any detail and I have found conversations with actual people have been the best way to affect change. That said, the times feel ripe for significant innovation and a rethinking of how we make and communicate our art forms and we the artists have the power to do this. We are the ones who create the content, we have the power to decide if/how/by whom our work is put into the word and we are the ones who can reflect the world that has so dramatically changed around us. This reflection is crying out to be received by audiences and after we come out of this crisis new work will be the way that we process what we have lived through. A return to life as it was is something that is either untenable or actually unwanted in many professions and by many people. The arts should also use this moment to rethink how and why we exist in the world.

The arts ecology is not a simple one, it is deeply interconnected and saying lets do things differently is not the same as redressing these complex systems that have developed over centuries. But it has been done before and beneficial change has come out of times of crisis, in particular in post-war Britain. It will be down to the artists to affect a change and where organisations are looking to do things differently out of this crisis, there will be the partners who know that life as it was is not an option any more. How different, how innovative, how equal, how accessible, how sustainable any change or post-covid arts industry will be is there to be shapped. I feel like creativity is bubbling away and that people won’t go back to life as it was. Perhaps the overwhelming desire to perform, earn money and experience live art will supersede any meaningful change, maybe. I do believe that as an industry we can do better than that and that there will be a positive change. It will need to be artist led and I believe it could be one that brings artist well being, creativity and audiences closer together.