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Pete Atkin >> Gigs >> Pete's music in New York
(Message started by: Ian_Lindsay on Today at 18:43)

Title: Pete's music in New York
Post by Ian_Lindsay on Today at 18:43
I was prompted by Pete's year end email to go to a performance of Edward Bond's play Restoration last night. The performance was in a small theatre in an NYU building and the cast was made up of students graduating this year from NYU drama school. As you might recall from Pete's email, the play features songs (about a dozen of them) for which the music has always been composed afresh for each production and the director, Mark Wing-Davey, had invited Pete to compose the music for this production.
It was a great evening. The play is described as a restoration comedy about the English class system. I was astonished how strong the acting performances were and how good the English accents were (most of them at least...). The songs lack Jamesian lyrics but the music was excellently performed by the trio of cello, piano and percussion. Of course for me the main interest was in the music and I was amused how distinctively Atkinsian it was. The musicians even seemed to sound as though they were mimicking Pete's style of playing, perhaps the result of Pete having spent 2 1/2 weeks in rehearsals with them.
Though it would be nice if the music became permanently adopted for future productions of the play, that may not happen, so I suspect that it is destined to become one of the more obscure collectors items for Midnight Voices (as Pete's wife described it), especially for the most obsessive completists amongst you. I don't know how it will be accessible by you however - maybe Pete will have an idea.

The real pleasure of the evening for me was to introduce myself to Pete and chat with him and his wife. Pete was as always the nicest person one could ever meet and seemed genuinely thrilled to see me. Not for myself of course, but as a representative of Midnight Voices (albeit very lapsed) and an example of its diaspora.

So thank you Pete for prompting me to see a play I would not otherwise have seen, and above all thank you for your music.  

Title: Re: Pete's music in New York
Post by Kevin Cryan on 02.02.13 at 15:21
Some photos from rehearsals.

http://kevincryan.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/photos-from-restoration1.jpg?w=487



More info here (http://kevincryan.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/edward-bonds-restoration/)


Kevin Cryan

Title: Re: Pete's music in New York
Post by S J Birkill on 02.02.13 at 18:17
Thank you Ian for the report, and good to see you keeping in touch through MV. I never expected a Voice would fetch up at this one (we were on the 'wrong' coast yesterday, in Seattle, with no plans to visit NYC). I'm sure Pete would have been thrilled indeed that you'd gone along.

Naturally all of our readers will be hoping somehow to hear a recording, but we'll not be holding our breath.

Steve

Title: Re: Pete's music in New York
Post by Pete Atkin on 11.06.13 at 16:04
Well, it's taken a while, but I have now heard back from Edward Bond's agent that the music I wrote for the 'Restoration' songs has been approved, and that E.B. has no objection to my posting them on YouTube.  So I've gone ahead with my plan to make montage versions using photographs from the technical rehearsal, and here is the first one.   With a bit of luck, I'll be able to refine my technique for subsequent ones.   This is the opening song, a deceptively upbeat assertion which turns out to be heavily ironic.  I don't call it a 'number', because even though the songs are integral it really isn't a musical.   The songs are more like thinks bubbles or 'reel thorts' or chorus comments, and are always and only sung by the working class characters, who sometimes step outside their own time to sing them, and who sometimes confront the audience directly with them.

http://youtu.be/mpHjJmt5GPs

Title: 3 YouTube vids
Post by Pete Atkin on 14.06.13 at 11:48
There was a typo in the credits of the first Restoration upload.  I corrected it (re-did the credits completely), re-published the whole thing, and re-uploaded to YT, but the same typo has been (carefully?) reproduced, along with a couple of new ones.  So something has happened between Windows MovieMaker and YouTube.  I will try again, but that will mean a new link when I do.  Still, I hope I've put in enough tags to make them easily locatable.

Devotees will recognise a bit of musical self-plagiarising in 'Once Armies Met', but I guess that's legal (who would sue me, after all?).

Once Armies Met
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_-rbDeNBrw

Man Groans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTbwmOpPAQI

Big Broad Bright Sunny Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MngdYCPZ57A


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