Bridges

 

 

 

Bridges was a special collaboration with composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, photographer Lizzie Coombes and groups of musicians from our three programmes Music in Prisons, Sounding Out and Making Tracks, to celebrate 21 years of the Irene Taylor Trust with a new piece of music. Watch the accompanying film by Lizzie Coombes and Andy Wood above.

As part of our 21st Year Celebrations we wanted to create a lasting memorial to our work to date, which would draw together the three strands of our work, Music in Prisons, Sounding Out and Making Tracks.

Following a very successful collaboration with Turnage, Coombes and Wood in 2012 on the piece Beyond This as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, it seemed the obvious solution was to get ‘the band’ back together for an even more ambitious project!

Bridges gave musicians from all of our programmes the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with a world-renowned contemporary composer. Mark joined our project team to work with individuals taking part on our projects, spending 2 days with each group to generate the material and help realise their ideas. During this time the participants asked questions, learned more about Mark’s work and his compositional process and worked with him to create their sections of the piece.

“Extremely honoured to work with such professionals and for giving me an opportunity to work in a band. Learnt a lot and helped in personal growth.” Bridges participant from Music in Prisons

Mark wrote linking music to join together the three sections of the piece for the film version of Bridges, which was the centre-piece of our celebration gig at the Union Chapel on 22^nd November 2016. The Sounding Out band Platform 7 performed their section of the piece live. Mark also re-orchestrated the piece for an ensemble of classical musicians from the Royal Academy of Music Open Academy.

Mark-Anthony Turnage was interviewed about his collaborations with us over the years on BBC Radio 3 ‘Music Matters’ alongside our Artistic Director Sara Lee and Sounding Out musician Gary – listen to it here; http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b083qmvm

An exhibition of photographs by Lizzie Coombes taken during the creation of Bridges is showing at the Free Word Centre, Farringdon, until 30th January 2017. Visiting info here.