Tag Archives: collaboration

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Collaborations, News, Sound/Composition

Commission Outspoken Arts

Love Street – The Musical

Martin O’Connor and I are once again working together  – this time on a co-commission by Outspoken Arts Scotland.

We have been invited to develop a proposal for a  new theatre production in Paisley called Love Street – The Musical.

Over the last couple of months we have been out and about visiting organisations and gathering stories from people in Paisley who have memories and connections to Love Street. More to follow…

Love Street Paisley Express
Call for stories in the Paisley Express
Love Street research
Research at Paisley Heritage Centre
News, Reviews/Articles

Rough Breathing – The Herald

181124 Keith Bruce Rough Breathing

Near the end of our CCA/AC Projects Residency we held an informal event in the Creative Lab. We shared a performance of work-in-progress and had a wonderful Q and A/discussion.

Many thanks indeed to Keith Bruce for including Rough Breathing in this nice piece about CCA Glasgow and the Counterflow Festival 2019.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17241164.keith-bruce-glasgow-continues-to-host-ground-breaking-music/

News, Performance, Residencies

Rough Breathing Update

Nichola and Alex recording CCASession with Wendy 181117IMG_6429

CCA sharing from JC 2
Thanks to John Cavanagh for this performance photo.

During our residency Alex South and I explored different elements through the Rough Breathing context – live electronics, audiovisual, and psychoacoustic and sonic relationships between voice and clarinet in addition to breathing practices informed by Pranayama.

We posted some blogs at AC Projects Counterflows, and shared some work-in-progress at an informal gathering at CCA near the end of the residency.

Huge thanks to Alasdair Campbell/AC Projects, Creative Scotland, Alex Misick, Kenny Christie and all at CCA Glasgow, and our guests in the lab, sound designer William Aikman, filmmaker Wendy Kirkup and dance artists Joan Clevillé and Solène Weinachter.

News, Residencies

Space/Time – Magnetic North

Version 2

I am super delighted to be part of the 2018 Space/Time creative retreat with Magnetic North Theatre Company. This is arrival day at the wonderful  residency centre Cove Park in the west of Scotland. The sunset is stunning.

My fellow artists are Eoin Carey, Pat Law, Ross Whyte and Sharron Devine and the residency is facilitated by Magnetic North’s Artistic Director Nicholas Bone  and Alice McGrath, Creative Director of Red Bridge Arts.

During the residency we will be taking an in depth look at our various practices through the question ‘how does an artist keep developing?’.

News, Performance

Rough Breathing – Sharmanka

Sharmanka Scrutton:South

Rough Breathing Performance
Sharmanka

Many thanks to John Cavanagh for inviting us to perform on 1st July 2018 at Sharmanka Gallery amongst the wonderful, atmospheric kinetic sculptures.

Alex and I are collaborating as a performance duo  exploring the music/sound potential of voice and clarinets through improvisation.

I am very much looking forward to our residency in Oct/Nov 2018 with CCA/AC Projects to pursue our Rough Breathing project.

Here’s a link to the Sharmanka event. https://www.facebook.com/events/181727232538481/

 

News, Performance

Beton 7 Festival in Athens

Q + A 1

Opening Event

Demosthenes introI was absolutely delighted to be part of the opening of the Beton 7 Festival in Athens on 4th June 2018. The event opened with an introduction by curator Demosthenes Agrafiotis, followed by my solo performance When Night Comes, screenings of Wendy Kirkup’s two films Touches Bloquees and film from a score, and a Q + A session with Wendy and me in conversation with Simon Murray.

After the opening the festival runs from 5th – 17th June 2018. The theme of the festival was “Visions-V_Ideas, Performances”…

“Visions-V_ideas, Performances” celebrates 5 years since its launch at BETON7. In April 2014, it was stated that the set of actions of the festival aimed at exploring the interface between performance and video in the specific frame of the Votanikos neighbourhood – the site of BETON7, Center for the Arts.

A review may be necessary, not in the sense of a conclusion but an assessment for future adjustments. According to a terminology, performance is at the crossroad of the living arts (arts vivants), which rely on the human body as the main tool, in order to found its artistic idiosyncrasy or specificity (dance for example) and the visual arts, where physical elements allow to shape primarily spatial structures (e.g. sculpture). At this crossroad, the video is entering, which is the field, the opportunity to create a new version of what is happening at the aforementioned crossroad from aesthetic and social point of view.”

Gallery 1

When Night Comes 4

Many thanks to Rania and Demosthenes for their invitation, welcome and hospitality.

 

 

News, Reviews/Articles

The Mark of the Beast review

The Mark of the Beast gets a ***** review

Presented by Martin O’Connor and Platform
Written and Performed by Martin O’Connor
With Nichola Scrutton and the North East Recovery Community
Platform, Easterhouse 13th-15th April
The Scottish Storytelling Centre 19th April

Inspired by Glasgow and its relationship with alcohol and addiction, Martin’s latest poetry performance The Mark of the Beast explores society through a prism of morality, temptation and family attitudes towards the ‘demon drink,’ and is performed in Martin’s recognisable blend of Scots and song, shot through with religious references and imagery.

The performance includes sound design created by Nichola Scrutton featuring personal experiences of alcohol addiction from members of the North East Recovery Community.

Creative Team:
Martin O’Connor – Writer and Performer
Nichola Scrutton – Composition/Sound Design
Fergus Dunnet – Set Design
Hana Allen – Stage Management
Davie Green – Lighting Design
Alan McKendrick – Directing Support
Eoin Carey – Image and Production Photography

Theatre Review – The Herald
The Mark Of The Beast
Platform, The Bridge, Glasgow

*****

“Whit ye huvin?” The voice has a chirrupy geniality to it: pure Glesca’ camraderie. “Ur ye huvin’ a drink or no?” The camaraderie is now teetering on the querulous, the aggressive even. Offence is on the verge of being taken, here. Minutes into this pithy, comedic, often harrowing monologue about various shades of alcohol addiction, writer/performer Martin O’Connor has wheeched us inside a pub, and into the core shorthand of belonging – of being a mate, a part of a community – that is inherent in the offer of a pint.

One pint… unseen voices chip in with memories of the wee swally that first introduced them – often, as far back as childhood – to the compulsive disorder of getting totally blootered. The recorded voices belong to Glasgow’s North-East Recovery Community: mixed into Nichola Scrutton’s chorale-cum-sound design, they will add personal witness to O’Connor’s tangy, savvy progress through the cumulative effects of long-term alcohol abuse. There’s the bilious heartburn of self-loathing, the upsurge of resolve – “Ah’m affit..” – and the lonely isolation of battling your demons when your pals remain in the boozer.

There’s a graphically vicious section when a posse of well-dressed lads become a pack of drunken thugs, relentlessly kicking a total stranger

just because… because he was there. It all sounds, feels, pungently real.

O’Connor’s talent for morphing social documentation into a bravura prose-poem pivots merrily on the rhythms of everyday Glesca’ patois, but – back-lit by designer Fergus Dunnet’s row of stained glass windows – he offsets the gallus patter with the soaring fire and brimstone of biblical texts, juggling revelations and hallucinations in a linguistic cocktail of those abiding havens: bevvy and religion. We laugh a lot, because O’Connor understands bathos but he never mocks the alcohol-afflicted, or diminishes their trials in what is a truly exceptional piece of work.

Read the review online