Keith Piper’s Viva Voce film is installed in the old members’ dining room, Tate Britain. In Viva Voce, Keith Piper stages an imagined conversation between artist Rex Whistler and a fictional academic, Professor Shepherd, who asks Whistler about his 1927 mural The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, challenging him on its racist narrative and imagery.

I was asked by Keith to provide some musical material for the film, Viva Voce. He and I then shared ideas about the music of the 1920s that could have been heard by the frequenters of the Gargoyle Club of which Rex Whistler was a member. The heyday of the US ragtime craze had passed by this time but left influences in the music of a number of touring bands one of which was the Plantation orchestra with American jazz singer and dancer, Florence Mills whose song I’m a Little Blackbird, Looking for a Bluebird was a hit, and has since been seen as a plea for racial equality.

A ragtime rhythm is suggested in the song which is upbeat in tempo and delivery. The voice seemed to represent for me the spirit of the centrally wronged figure in Rex Whistler’s contentious mural, the black woman forced to flee and depicted ignominiously naked, up a tree. It seemed that the extract chosen from the Little Blackbird song could perhaps carry some respect for this figure and act as a kind of leitmotif for her, this wronged, un-named figure, throughout the film.

The melody is consequently referenced throughout, played on the five-string electric violin, the tune changed from the major to the minor key, lowered by an octave and slowed right down, the line played alternately between pizzicato and being bowed. The session was recorded by Lukasz Soltysiak at Middlesex University and sound designed by Gary Stewart.

More Info – Tate Website

Tom Phillips event, Fifty Years of 20 sites in ‘n’ years, seminar and commissioned performance event

Live performance with ensemble devised and led by Tansy Spinks, playing graphic scores – Ornamentik (1966), solo violin and Music for ‘n’ Musicians (1973), with Kate Ryder (prepared and toy pianos, Tom Mills (theremin), Daniel Ross (Tom Phillip’s studio objects), Nick Rampley (bassoon) and Tansy Spinks (electric violin) as the nascent Tom Phillips Graphics Score Band.

Curated by Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, inspired by Donna Haraway’s notion of collective creation and organisation: ‘sympoiesis is a simple word; it means “making-with”’ (Haraway, 2016: 58), with Iris Garrelfs and Tansy Spinks.

Programme: two solos and a duo where Tansy Spinks and Iris Garrelfs improvise and respond to place and location.

Ornamentik, Tom Phillips graphic score from 1973, Tansy Spinks (violin, voice)

Revisiting Monica Sjoo’s paintings as scores Lament for my Son and Meeting the Ancestors at Avebury, from her performance at the Sjoo Beaconsfield exhibition, August 2022, Tansy Spinks (violin live with recorded violin on headphones)

Washing Up, Iris Garrelfs (tin cans, bucket of water, voice)

Duo with speaking singing toy birds, voice with voice changer, violin and objects referencing local composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) and his arrangement of Longfellow’s epic poem Hiawatha.

Event website Cosy Nook – Making With Vol.1

Nine short pieces as a live, solo promenade performance, (acoustic violin and nine stones) responding to the paintings of Swedish born artist Monica Sjöö, at the Peace Camp day event at Beaconsfield Gallery, Vauxhall.

Starting in the replicated peace tower from Greenham Common, playing the Greenham song ‘Stand Up Women, Make Your Choice’, the performer walked into the building, stopping at chosen paintings, responding with the violin. Each painting is marked by a large stone, on the floor. Moving on, an assistant maiden places each stone into a central basket.

There was so much nuance, variation and subtlety in each encounter. Every Maiden and her stone [a stone placed on the floor, marked the painting being looked at] felt infused with specific and particular powers and the interface with Sjoo’s cosmology was extremely intimate. It was extraordinarily moving and spine tingling at times.M Curran

…because solo violin – forced me to focus and strangely I began to live the music, to join in, so to speak, the music. I was eager to see what each stone drew forth, to find which painting you were in dialogue with and at the end, as if I had taken a drug, or found clean air, Monika’s paintings seemed to grow, to deepen, to become more beautiful, clearer and numinous. I realised that these late paintings were stunning, rich in colour and meaning, strong and very great. But it was quite definitely the music and you playing it, what you seemed to be feeling/experiencing that opened windows and doors in my mind’s eye and let the light in. Today I looked at the photos of Monika’s work and the magic still held. For that, I thank you very much as you gave me back to the essence of Monika. E Jellinek

Three hand bound text scores –

1. From transcribed sound conversations
2. Distilled, site related-fiction
3. Rubbings of soles of the walkers’ shoes.

These objects evolved from a sound walk, led by Tansy around Peckham, and were originally commissioned by M2 gallery, for a solo exhibition In The Mind’s Ear – a Text Score for Peckham in 2016.

The format of the book echoes the line of the stave and was made in Morley’s bookbinding classes. They were shown again as part of The Engine Room (Cornelius Cardew tribute) exhibition at Morley College Gallery in June 2022, curated by Camilo Salazar.

Live score performed on violin forThe Hurrier, Anne Robinson’s expanded film work on 5 screens at APT Gallery, London, December 4th 2021. Original Hurrier song by Anne Robinson.

Watch The Hurrier on Vimeo

Visit Hurrier.org for further information on Anne Robinson’s Hurrier project.

Audio from The Hurrier  live score

Materiality in Sound: a live improvisation based on the Leonardo da Vinci drawing of 1519 and a collaboration between Tansy Spinks (electric violin and extended technique) and Kate Ryder (prepared piano), jointly known as SPYDER. The piece was created for the New Pathways in Improvisations two day live-streamed event devised by Ben Dwyer at Middlesex University.

Voices from the Creative Industry sponsored by Claret Press and Clapham Publishing Services – a recent podcast discussing sound, listening, and creativity, where I talk about how to listen and consider what listening is and how it informs my creative practice.