Walpole Old Chapel
Liam Byrne
July - Clare O’Connell (cello and artistic lead), Liam Byrne (viola da gamba), Stuart King (clarinet) and myself installed ourselves in Walpole Old Chapel Suffolk for our Snape Maltings residency to work up CHROMA’s Awakening programme.
This programme was born, as many wonderful things are, as a creative pivot to a change of plan the previous Summer. When the violinist had to drop out of a concert, Clare replaced him with clarinetist Stuart because she wanted to have a good friend involved in what was now a rather last-minute piece of programming, then she conjured up a new programme that showed off what the rather unusual combination of contemporary cello and clarinet with the period instrument viola da gamba could do.
It was a magical combination. Not only as a soundworld but as a trio of people. Each of them learning so much from the experience - rehearsals were full of revelatory moments and laughter.
Clare wanted very much to develop this melding of Renaissance and contemporary with Liam and Stuart, and asked me if I would create visuals as a backdrop for the performances. I had been so uplifted by their music-making so far that I was more than delighted to say yes. So Awakening came into being, developed into as a seamless hour of music, moving from darkness to radiant light, with Liam also providing electronic passages to join the pieces, and with three composers invited to respond with short pieces to insert into the programme: Freya Waley Cohen, Rubens Askenar and David Bruce.
Liam articulated beautifully part of the joy of this process:
I would love somehow to also get the idea across that we are still learning about the old music through this process, rather than just refreshing it. For me one of the really exciting things about this exchange is that we're able to look at the Renaissance stuff with a bit of analytic musicological expertise on my part, married with a wonderfully imaginative open-minded exploration on your part. The great danger in the performance of Renaissance music nowadays is that it's been "revived" enough in the twentieth century that one can easily think that we - as a culture - know how it works. But for me what's wonderful about this project is the way it puts all of the repertoire involved into a sort of scintillating conversation which, instead of feeling "out of context", enables us to really get at the meat of what everyone is trying to say. I guess it's filed under the heading of "why is classical music so hung up on context?".
We spent an immersive and productive week. It was a classic Suffolk July - huge blue sky, humming heat, sunshine pouring in through the chapel windows.
It was golden.
Clare O’Connell
Walpole Old Chapel (cared for by the Historic Chapels Trust ) has an unusual interior, with boxes for the congregation downstairs resembling stable stalls, benches upstairs and the whole place flooded with light. We had glorious sunny weather for the whole week, a true Suffolk big-sky Summer moment!
the trio on tea break
