I have always been a huge Doctor Who fan, but as a child my fandom was bordering on religiosity. I would never dream of missing an episode and luckily my understanding parents always made sure I never did. Maybe I haven't changed now with regards to Nu-Who, but have just become a bit more laid back about it because I know I'll always be able to catch up with it on iPlayer.
I grew up in a household that listened to a lot of music , either on the radio or on the my dad's 8-track cassette player. One my earliest memories of music is being enchanted by Cat Steven's Lady D'Arbanville, which I remember at the time thinking was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. By the time I had gone to primary school, I had absorbed my parents taste in music by The Beatles, Elton John, The Kinks, The Monkees etc. The first album I ever bought for myself was Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and the second was a compilation entitled A Collection of Beatles Oldies. By the time I was seven or eight I had added their more recent acquisitions, such as Ian Dury and the Blockheads and The Stranglers to my own personal taste.
Composer and producer Steve Kilpatrick has opened a new studio in Manchester.
Kilpatrick has created music that has been played globally on the likes of the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, MTV, and VH-1, as well as compositions for the Resident Evil 6 and Raccoon City trailers. He was also involved with award-winning BBC Radio 4 dramas Amazing Grace and Cottonopolis, and composed pieces for the feature film A Coven of Evil.
The music theatre version of The Night Bride was composed for a concert in a hall fitted with a quadrophonic sound system in Vienna in 2012. The piece was to be composed for soprano and narrator, to be performed by Anikó Tóth, and cimbalom, performed by Tim Williams of Psappha. The rest of the composition would be quadrophonic electronic music created from field recordings, as well as Anikó Tóth's voice.
The Night Bride started life as a short story I wrote that was published in New Writings in the Fantastic in 2007 and later became a music theatre piece which I composed to a libretto by Mike Sizemore. The piece received its premiere in Vienna in 2012 for soprano, cimbalom and quadrophonic tape.
What was a little unusual about this adaptation was the fact that there was an unpublished interim adaptation of the piece which informed the 2012 musical version.
Before writing the libretto, Mike wrote a comic book adaptation which was beautifully illustrated by David Kennedy. Here is that version.
Way back, I composed and recorded the music for a new BBC Radio 4 drama called Amazing Grace. The drama was broadcast in five parts throughout the week beginning 28th June on Woman's Hour in 2010. The drama was written by Michelle Lipton - and was directed by Justine Potter. The lead character, Grace, was played by Wunmi Mosaku and opposite her was Mrs. Bucket herself, Patricia Routledge.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, here's a brief synopsis:
After attending the performance of Strike! and the premiere of Residue at the International Computer Music Conference in New York in 2019, I went directly to a composer's residency in Visby on the island of Gotland, Sweden.
This residency was for three weeks and would be the first time in my entire life that I would have such a long time concentrated entirely on music. While that was certainly wonderful, I did find myself going a bit nuts at times.
As a composer, 2009 to 2019 has been a pretty good decade for me, and I thought it might be fun to document the most prominent events. I had a real drive in getting more overseas performances, and I began to transition from more abstract electronic compositions into more music for acoustic instruments.
info@soundfackeryproductions.com
