Harper Trio: Passing By

Harper Trio is a new collaboration between Maria-Christina Harper, Josephine Davies and Evan Jenkins. All three are well established musicians, Maria-Christina studied classical piano and harp both in Athens and at the Royal Academy but became frustrated by the lack of opportunity that classical music afforded for musical expression. She went on study Music Therapy which encouraged improvisation and then found her way into jazz. Previously she has recorded and released an album, Gluten Free, as MC & The 7 Pedals and Draft with lute player Yiagos Hairetis.

Josephine Davies was named ‘Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year’ in 2019, she is involved with several projects, much of her music occupying a space at the intersection of music and spirituality. She has released several albums including a(n excellent) couple with her band, Satori.

Looking on dicogs.com, Evan Jenkins must be the busiest drummer in Britain! He seems to have played drums on a huge number of jazz and blues albums and is currently playing with the Matt Schofield Trio and the Neil Cowley Trio. 

The album Passing By is comprised of seven new compositions by Maria-Christina and with nothing but a cursory knowledge of jazz I have few reference points for reviewing it! I’ve been listening to a couple of albums by Satori, Josephine Davies’ band, and a couple of albums by Donny McCaslin. All of them excellent but this album is different, the combination of electric harp/harp/saxophones/drums gives it a sound of its own. At times it is quite meditative and reflective, even skirting poignant with ‘Standing Alone’, which invites you to take time out. At other times its really quite out there flirting with psychedelia and the avant-garde. Maria-Christina’s harp assumes various guises as she puts it through effects pedals and that means the album keeps coming up with surprises. If ‘weird’ is the presence of the unexpected then it is a weird album! The first track I heard by the band was ‘In Cairo/Grandma’s Coat’ on ‘The Freak Zone’ and it stood out as wonderfully innovative, fresh and odd even there!

Maria-Christina’s compositions synthesize Greek and Egyptian influences with avant-garde jazz, resulting in really interesting sounds and structures. The combination of three great musicians doing their thing makes for some great textures, and the interplay between the different instruments is always interesting.

The seven tracks on Passing By are;

East Hill Meditation

In Cairo/Grandma’s Coat

Safe Place

Castle Hill Road

Passing By

A Greek In Spain

Standing Alone

Together they cover quite a range of styles and moods! The relaxing opener, ‘East Hill Meditation’ sets the scene before the slightly sinister, psyched out intensity of ‘In Cairo/Grandma’s Coat’, which has a great electric harp/sax interplay and reminds me of ‘Blackstar’ by Bowie but being played by Henry Cow! The next track, ‘Safe Place’, calms it all down again, really very mellow and relaxed. Then we are into ‘Castle Hill Road’ which picks up the tempo, some superb sax all over the insistent electric harp and drums, mesmeric and wonderfully unsettling! There is a reoccurring motif through the album that I can’t quite identify (sound, riff, chord sequence?) and it is present again in the next track, ‘Passing By’, which gathers speed and intensity then slows again as it moves along, superb! ‘A Greek in Spain’ starts with a collection of interacting sounds that draw you in, percussion, sax and harp… gradually it takes a more melodic shape as the harp becomes the focus…then it takes an unexpected turn of road, and we’re off on an adventure! ‘Standing Alone’ is probably what you need after the previous track, quiet, thoughtful, reflective. Bit of a chill out zone with some really beautiful harp.

With almost no knowledge of jazz at all I have to say that Passing By is a great album, its intriguing, surprising, adventurous, energetic, thoughtful. After catching their debut single earlier this year I contacted Maria-Christina to see if she would consider an interview to discuss Harper Trio and the new album, she kindly agreed.

I was listening to Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on Radio 6 towards the end of May when ‘In Cairo/Grandma’s Coat’ came on, completely otherworldly, intriguing! It sounded somewhere between Henry Cow and ‘Blackstar’ by David Bowie! Tell us more about Harper Trio! How did you get together?

Thank you! I’m very excited about this project and can’t wait to share all the music from this album which will be out end of October. We all met in Hastings through mutual friends.  I wanted to record a few songs I had written for a different project and we got to know each other more and became good friends. Our mutual friends moved back to London so we decided to try out and play as a trio and see what happens. I still remember our excitement when we played for the first time, we all felt it really worked!

You are all very accomplished, established musicians, a jazz supergroup?! 

That is very kind of you. We all had our own musical paths and it seems like a great time for all of us to get together. One of things I enjoy a lot in this trio is that each person comes with their personality and sound and at the same time we all match and complement each other.

Where would you place Harper Trio in the jazz continuum? How would you describe your sound? Avant garde psych jazz?

This is an interesting topic and a challenging one. I feel that we have elements of avant-garde psych jazz and spiritual free jazz with influences from traditional eastern music.

Who would be either side of your album in a (non alphabetic but) orderly CD rack?

Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra Arkestra, Mulatu Astatke, Mathew Halsall.

What artists, musicians and writers have influenced your (individual and collective) approach to music?

There are so many and so different. I’m a classically trained musician so I have studied and listened to most of the composers that have shaped what we call classical music. At the same time in my free time, I would listen to a lot of 60’s and 70’s rock bands. I can hear both these worlds in the music that I have written for this trio; I like the fluidity of classical music and the freedom that comes with improvisation from the 60’s and 70’s psychedelic rock music.

I didn’t realise on first listen to the single that you were playing a harp! How did you develop such an unusual sound?

Thank you for saying that! I always felt that the harp has been misunderstood and placed in a box that has defined it in a negative way. I am interested in exploring the sounds and the capabilities of the harp like guitarists did back in the day. Following their steps I have been experimenting and trying out different effects and ways of playing on the instrument that has allowed me to start developing a new stylistic approach.

I read that Josephine (Davies) draws on Japanese Buddhism in her music practice and have come across the phrase ’spiritual jazz’ a few times, could you unpack that description a little?

One more thing we have in common with Josephine is our interest in self-development, reflection and an admiration towards Japan’s culture. Spirituality. I think it comes down to becoming more aware of what is by searching and standing still. Finding ways to be grateful and respectful of all things around and try to let go of our ego and believe or feel that there is something more out there. For both of us spirituality has influenced ideas and thoughts we had that we then translated into a music composition. Sometimes this process is more conscious and sometimes not as much.

How does a HT track come together? What is the creative process or does it vary from song to song?

I write the music for Harper Trio. Some of the pieces I had already written before we became a trio and then everything else, I wrote having in mind this trio. So, the structure is always there but within that there is a lot of space for improvisation. One of the main things I wanted was to have a combined improvised space in the pieces instead of taking solos in turns. I feel that improvising together makes the music more powerful, creating space for anything to happen.

Would you see instrumental music as the equivalent of abstract art? The transposing of ideas and concepts, experience and emotions into another form?

Art is as abstract as we allow it to be. I think that lyrics in music attract our conscious mind and then with instrumental music maybe we can delve deeper into our unconscious. Not that one is better that the other, both can have a big influence on us but we have learned mainly to communicate through words so anything that doesn’t include words can feel abstract and in a way that is maybe what allows us to explore and think out of our usual way when we listen to instrumental music. Without the words there is less limitation in the musical journey as the journey feels more open and less directed.

Do you ever feel frustrated by that musical form? For instance, if there is a subject you want to address in an unambiguous way?

I have been mainly composing instrumental music. I like noise so when I find something frustrating, I play louder and create ‘cacophonous’ sounds or I play sounds that would feel more fragile. At the same time, I have written a few songs and lyrics and it does feel nice to add words sometimes. Again, it goes back to the interpretation of the artist and the listener; sometimes the emotion behind the music is so powerful that there is no space for words

I recently caught a band at Cafe Oto and asked about the balance between composition and improvisation (it was all improvisation). Where does the balance fall for HT? Or is structure v improvisation a false dichotomy?

My writing process starts with a lot of improvisation in the beginning and then gradually I introduce structure until I get where I want musically; then I pick up sounds or phrases from the improvisation to form a piece. I enjoy both structure and improvisation and I try to keep a balance between the two. All of the pieces I have written for Harper Trio have a structure, most of the times with a theme that we start and end with, and then a lot of space for group improvisation.

Does that balance change when you play live?

The balance stays generally the same but the energy really changes when we play live! We are very excited to share the stage and share our sound-thoughts with the audience.

There seems to be a lot of excitement around jazz at the moment, Ezra Collective winning the Mercury Prize and I noticed a recent Evening Standard article highlighting its popularity and pointing people to various venues in London. Is it enjoying a resurgence or is the media just paying it a bit more attention?

There is a lot of exciting music coming out, new collaborations, music genres coming together. Like with everything in life, when the media pay attention, more people pay attention too so that’s a good thing, an opportunity for great musicians to share their music ideas with a wider audience.

When is the HT album, Passing By, coming out and how can people get hold of a copy? Are there any opportunities to see you live coming up? 

Passing By will be out on Friday the 27^th of October and we will have our album launch gig at The Royal Albert Hall / Elgar Room on the 2^nd of November. The album will be out in vinyl, cd and in all digital platforms as well. We have a few more gigs coming up in and out of London and we will have merch with us but people can also buy from my Bandcamp page https://mariachristinaharper.bandcamp.com

 

Big thanks to Maria-Christina for time and words! Harper Trio are playing the Elgar Room at the Royal Albert Hall on November 2^nd and Bear Club, Luton on November 10^th. Catch them if you can!

 

Bibliography.

 https://www.marlbank.net/posts/maria-christina-harper-interviewed-harper-trio-single-in-cairo-grandma-s-coat-is-our-new-track-of-the-week

 https://samleak.medium.com/efg-london-jazz-festival-interview-with-josephine-davies-bf90b6a41b77

 https://mariachristinaharper.com

 https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/here-we-go-again-inside-london-s-latest-jazz-revolution/ar-AA1gkIA8

 https://www.discogs.com/artist/1014358-Evan-Jenkins 

 

The Art School Dance Goes On: Leeds Post-Punk 1977-84

In the Intro to Simon Reynolds’ 2005 book Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 he observed ‘There are scores of books on punk rock and the events of 1976-77, but virtually nothing on what happened next’ (1), that was echoed as late as 2014 by Gavin Butt’s comment that ‘there is relatively little scholarship on the period’ (2). Over the last few years that situation has improved with a number of books on post-punk published, for instance Matthew Worley’s 2017 No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture 1976-84,  David Wilkinson’s 2016 Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain, Mimi Haddon’s 2020 What is Post-Punk? Genre and Identity in Avant-Garde Popular Music 1977-82 and Post Punk Then and Now published in 2016, a collection of ‘talks, lectures and discussions’ (2) on post-punk edited by Gavin Butt, Kodwo Eshun and Mark Fisher. The fascinating chapter by Gavin Butt, ‘Being in a Band: Art-school Experiment and the Post-Punk Commons’, focuses on the Leeds post-punk scene which included Gang of Four, Delta 5, the Three Johns and the Mekons. The chapter contextualises the Leeds scene both culturally and institutionally recognising the importance of Leeds art schools and drawing attention to the fact that for some being in a band was seen as a prefigurative activity, opening up new possibilities of being and doing. Butt comments ‘People created bands because they wanted to change the world’ (2).

In the chapter Gavin said that he hoped his interviews and research would result in a book on the subject and it did with No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk coming out in October 2022 on Duke University Press, who said of the book, ‘After punk’s arrival in 1976, many art students in the northern English city of Leeds traded their paintbrushes for guitars and synthesizers. In bands ranging from Gang of Four, Soft Cell, and Delta 5 to the Mekons, Scritti Politti, and Fad Gadget, these artists-turned-musicians challenged the limits of what was deemed possible in rock and pop music. Taking avant-garde ideas to the record-buying public, they created Situationist antirock and art punk, penned deconstructed pop ditties about Jacques Derrida, and took the aesthetics of collage and shock to dark, brooding electro-dance music’. Mimi Haddon comments that Gavin’s ‘energetic and fluid writing, vivid and entertaining interviews, and focus on fine art’s relationship to the origins of post-punk…brings a new and valuable perspective to music’s history. Exciting and original, No Machos or Pop Stars invites us to hear post-punk in a new way’ (3).

At the time Gavin put together a 10 track playlist to accompany the book (4) and now that idea has been expanded to a twenty track compilation The Art School Dance Goes On: Leeds Post-Punk 1977-84 on Caroline True Records. The (double vinyl or CD) album has been compiled by Gavin and includes a fascinating collection of ‘unreleased, unheard & rare tracks’ by an eclectic mix of lesser and better known Leeds based bands who ‘experimented with art-punk, electro, pop, dada, fluxus and punk-funk’, the album also includes ‘extensive liner notes and reproductions of unseen ephemera and artworks’ (5). 

Side 1 of the album kicks off with a demo of ‘Trevira Trousers’ by The Mekons and over the next four sides (of vinyl) we get a couple of previously unreleased tracks by Gang of Four (‘The Things You Do’ and ‘Disco Sound’), both including embryonic elements that become more developed in their later tracks. There are also two tracks by Sheeny and the Goys (‘Pretty Girls and ‘You Let Me Down’), The Three Johns (‘Snitch’ and ‘Bloop’) and Another Colour (‘Wartime Working Woman’ and’ World From A Chair’) which range (for me) from slightly unhinged (‘Snitch’) to excellent (‘Wartime Working Woman’)! There are tracks by bands you may not have heard of; Steve Shill and Graeme Miller, Ron Crowcroft, Smart Cookies, Household Name, MRA, (and the wonderfully named) Cast Iron Fairies alongside better known bands such as Delta 5, Soft Cell, Fad Gadget, Scritti Politti and Shee Hees.

The creativity and range of styles on The Art School Dance Goes On: Leeds Post-Punk 1977-84 is remarkable and pleasingly disorientating as it moves from funk punk to parodic country to early electro to proto industrial. It would work as a stand alone documentation of an extraordinarily experimental and creative time and place but of course works best as an accompanying piece to Gavin’s book, allowing us to hear the bands and music encountered in No Machos or Pop Stars.

If you are interested in a point when people reimagined and practiced music as a radical alternative to the status quo or just interested in post punk then check out The Art School Dance Goes On: Leeds Post-Punk 1977-84 and No Machos or Pop Stars.

The Art School Dance Goes On: Leeds Post-Punk 1977-84 can be ordered at

https://carolinetruerecords.com

     

Bibliography.

(1) Reynolds, Simon (2005). Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984 (London: Faber and Faber).

(2)  Butt, G. (2016) Preface, Introduction and Being in a Band: Art-school Experiment and the Post-Punk Commons – a Lecture by Gavin Butt (16/10/14) in Gavin Butt, Kodwo Eshun and Mark Fisher, eds, Post-Punk: Then and Now, Repeater Books, London.

(3)  No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk  www.dukeupress.edu/no-machos-or-pop-stars

(4) A Playlist to Accompany No Machos or Pop Stars by Gavin Butt https://dukeupress.wordpress.com/2022/10/18/a-playlist-to-accompany-no-machos-or-pop-stars-by-gavin-butt/

(5) The Art School Dance Goes On: Leeds Post-Punk 1977-84  https://carolinetruerecords.com

Peter Gabriel. O2 Arena, London. 19/6/23

It was 1974 when I first heard Genesis, ‘I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)’. Like some aural gateway drug it led to Selling England By the Pound, Foxtrot, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Nursery Cryme, Trespass, then the awful news that Peter Gabriel was leaving. Then relief when Trick of the Tail turned out to be wonderful, although the wonderfulness only lasted a few more albums, after Then There Were Three I jumped ship. In September 1978, the same year that Genesis had earlier headlined Knebworth, there was a second Knebworth gig with The Tubes, Boomtown Rats and…Peter Gabriel. I sat there mesmerised, as far as I remember my friend then sold me his copy of Peter Gabriel 2 that had been released a few months earlier. After Knebworth ‘78 I saw him live several more times,  the last being an anti apartheid gig in ‘83 at Selhurst Park. Over the next years I heard bits and bobs, nothing grabbed me, then was shocked to see a middle aged guy at the piano doing ‘Father, Son’ on TV in 2000. 

When Gabriel’s new album and tour was announced late last year for some reason I was keen to go, maybe wondering if this could be the last tour as his album release rate is not exactly prolific. Since lockdown I have been listening to a lot of ‘70s music including stuff I was into at the time, was it a nostalgic response, did I expect a seventy year old Gabriel to play a set made up of tracks from his first four albums?! I had a lot of catching up to do, bought the compilation Hit (Miss), the album Up and the excellent book Without Frontiers: The Life and Music of Peter Gabriel by Daryl Easlea.

So…here we are sat in the cheapest seats, as far away as you can get from the stage in the cavernous O2 Arena, about ten rows from the back, forty years on from Selhurst Park. It would be interesting to work out the distance we are from the stage, I guess it’s the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle, Pythaguras’ theorum (see accompanying photo to get an idea). I have kept up with the tracks Gabriel has released off his forthcoming album; ‘Panopticom’, ‘The Court’, ‘Playing for Time’, ‘i/o’, ‘Four Kinds of Horses’, ‘Road to Joy’; one a month to coincide with the full moon. They’re good, intelligent, growers dealing with important subjects; possible positive uses of our collective ability to document global activity, the pursuit of justice, experiences, memories and the self, interconnectedness and interdependence, contrasting expressions of spirituality, escape from being trapped within ourselves. Each track has had an associated artwork and text. I’m intrigued as much as excited by the prospect of this gig, reviews so far have been very positive.

A voice tells us to take our seats as the show starts in 15 minutes. I’m always interested in support bands so we do…but a lone figure appears on stage and starts to chat, after a couple of sentences I realise it’s Peter Gabriel; relaxed, amusing, intelligent. He introduces a campfire scene and the gig starts, the musicians sat round the 'fire' under a full moon, low key, possibly the most incongruous start to a major venue gig I’ve seen. He has assembled all the component parts of a conventional rock gig and then completely subverted the whole thing, excellent. And in many ways that set the scene for much of the evening, very few rock cliches here. Want a greatest hits show? Sorry, wrong gig. Want a big ego strutting his stuff? Sorry, wrong gig. Like some of the new tracks, large swathes of the evening are thoughtful, intelligent, reflective. It is track five, ‘i/o’ when the evening starts to pick up pace followed by ‘Digging in the Dirt’ but the best track by far in the first half is a new track not yet released, apparently called ‘Olive Tree’; stunner. A couple of tracks later the first set closes with ‘Sledgehammer’, the majority of the O2 takes off. The delivery is all a bit too ‘Tom Jones’ for me.

I guess it was about 20 minutes later when the second half kicked off with ‘Darkness’, Gabriel sounding at times a little like Blixa Bargeld. ‘Road to Joy’ sounds great online, live it was even better. Next track up was ‘Don’t Give Up’ with cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson subbing for Kate Bush…Only she didn’t, she completely made it her own, and as the evening progressed she came increasingly to the fore as a singer, cellist and pianist. 

Gabriel has put together a top line band including long time collaborators David Rhodes, Manu Katche and Tony Levin, who looks disconcertingly similar to the last time I saw him forty years ago! 

After ‘Don’t Give Up’ was the slightly PG3 new track ‘The Court’, all edgy and urgent followed by ‘Red Rain’, another high point. A few tracks on was ‘Big Time’, I thought it seemed a bit lame in this context but suspect I was a minority of one! The second set ended with ‘Solsbury Hill’, still sounds genius. The encore was ‘In Your Eyes’ but then a second…’Biko’. Linked by Gabriel in the intro to contemporary struggles the song has lost none of its power and poignancy.

The underlying characteristics of Gabriel’s tour 2023 are courage, humility and trust. Courage to include so many new tracks and construct such an unusually paced gig. Trust in the audience to stay with him in what was far from a historic best of/bangers type gig. Humility because he seemed to constantly point away from himself to other band members, to the artists of the associated art works, to his wider team, the implication being of the importance of collaboration and cooperation. In an individualised, alienated, competitive political economy it was an evening that subtly pointed to other, better models of society.

     

Referenced for set list.

Irwin, Corey. 2023. ’Peter Gabriel Plays First headlining show In 9 Years: Videos and Set List’.

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/peter-gabriel-tour-launch-2023/

Megson: Live Review.

Described by Robin Denselow on theguardian.com as ‘the most original duo on the British folk scene’, Megson released their first album in 2004 and their most recent, What Are We Trying To Say?, earlier this year (1). Now based in Cambridgeshire but originally from Middlesbrough and Billingham (of which I know nothing except that which Interrobang have told me via their track of the same name!), Megson is comprised of married couple Debbie and Stu Hanna, the duo perform and have recorded a mixture of traditional and self written songs, with Deneslow reflecting on their 2014 album In A Box that the ‘best songs are their own’ (2).

Folk music isn’t really something I’m familiar with, (I’ve seen Seth Lakeman, is he folk?) but I did like this description on makingmusic.org.uk ‘folk music is often thought of as being the music belonging to ‘the people’. It has been historically used as a reflective term to distinguish certain types of music from those associated with institutions such as royal courts, the church, or Western classical music’ (3). Music of the people, music from below, reflecting people’s experiences and concerns. Sounds promising.

So, Megson were playing the local art centre on Friday 28th and I went along not really knowing what to expect but hoping it wouldn’t be boring and they were…Excellent!

The set was mainly self-penned with a few traditional songs and a cover of Chris Rea’s ‘Road to Hell’, and it was very much music of the people. Their songs engaged with the range of pleasures, hopes and problems familiar to most of us; from the mixed experiences of a caravan holiday to ‘Generation Rent’ off Good Times Will Come Again. Stu switched between guitar and mandolin with Debbie playing accordion on a few tracks in a set that could best be described as low key protest music. Their between song chat and intros at times expressed an understated, humorous but very real dissent against the current socio-political state of the UK while the tracks ‘We Are Better Than This’, ‘Generation Rent’, ‘The Good Times Will Come Again’, ‘Road To Hell’ and a traditional folk song ‘Four Pence’ all dealt with current (and historical) struggles of the working class. Interestingly when Stu introduced their last track ‘Good Times Will Come Again’ as something to hope for after the next election an older audience in a Tory safe seat applauded! Promising!

Makingmusic.org.uk goes on to comment ‘The flexible and democratic nature of folk music as owned by the people though, as well as shared and created through each individual personal experience, has given it a political dimension that persists today’ (3), Megson are proof of that claim, their song writing dealing with the mundane and everyday but also engaged with contemporary working class experiences and struggles in a way that parallels Ruts DC.

Bibliography.    

(1)Denselow, Robin. 2010. ‘Megson: The Longshot’ https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/jun/03/megson-cd-review

(2)Denselow, Robin. 2014. ‘Megson: In A Box review-folk songs with a fascination for history’ https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/15/megson-in-a-box-review 

(3)’An Introduction to Folk Music’. 2018. https://www.makingmusic.org.uk/resource/introduction-folk-music

Mirror Mirror by Pentameters Theatre

Robert Calvert is probably best known as the conceptual artist who, often in collaboration with Barney Bubbles, constructed overarching frameworks for the band Hawkwind. It was he (writing) and Barney Bubbles (artwork) who put together the Hawklog, an extended piece of writing that accompanied Hawkwind’s second album, In Search of Space, and he conceived of the Space Ritual tour as being based around the dreams of space travellers in suspended animation. Calvert also wrote the lyrics for Hawkwind's best known songs ‘Silver Machine’ and ‘Urban Guerilla’. He took a hiatus from Hawkwind between 73 and 75 rejoining as their chief lyric writer and vocalist for the next four albums which culminated in the album 25 Years On (as Hawklords) and the accompanying booklet about Pan Transcendental Industries. However pre, during and post his involvement with Hawkwind, Calvert maintained a prodigious output releasing two books of poetry, five solo albums, a book and four plays!

One of those plays, Mirror Mirror, written in 1979 has been put on by Pentameters Theatre, between March 22-26th above the Horseshoe Pub in Hampstead. Pentameters was founded in 1968, and is still run, by Leonie Scott-Matthews, who knew Robert Calvert personally.

Mirror Mirror is a futuristic play set in 2030 that portrays a day in the life of Eleanor Bryant, who initially arrives home excited having bought a psycochromic dress that responds to her interior life with changing colours and patterns. In her apartment is a multiperspectival mirror whose various channels represent her as others perceive her.

The play revolves around the externalising of the interior life of the main character Eleanor, played by Samantha Charles who, I guess, spends 75% of the play on stage alone. The focus is initially on her ambivalent relationship with her new dress but gradually turns to her relationship with the multiperspectival mirror and her concerns over (particularly) her husband’s ‘view’ of her. Eventually she decides to call a technician to fix the mirror as she is sure there must be a fault in its representation of her husband’s image/imagination of her. 

 I think it was Roland Barthes who observed that the meaning of an art piece is constructed in the interaction of the viewer with that piece, the implication being that an art piece has no stable meaning but is reinterpreted by each interaction. Mirror Mirror was written in 1979 and has probably been interpreted in many different ways in the ensuing forty years. Watching it in 2023 the play seemed to be extraordinarily relevant, foregrounding contemporary socio-cultural themes.

Samantha Charles’ nuanced performance as Eleanor explored the internalisation of objectification and the prioritising of female physicality as she struggled with the effects of age and the knowledge that her husband had married her primarily for her looks. She highlighted the anxieties generated by consumer capitalism’s demand that women attain and sustain an adherence to an always out of reach ideal and the self preoccupation this can lead to as she attempts to prove to herself her continued attractiveness via her relationship with the unfortunate technician, subtly played by Edward Smith. (Who, in a wonderful inclusion of Calvert’s 'The Clone Poem', best known via ‘Spirit of the Age, turns out to be a clone.)

Eleanor’s 1979 interaction with, and desire for affirmation from, others via the mirror seems remarkably prescient in 2023. The subsequent establishment of social media, our posting of selfies, our desire for ‘likes’, the oscillations in our self esteem depending on the affirmations of others, our staged presentation/s of self are all present in the play. In her adoption of recognisable poses and practices Samantha revealed the performativity of gender and the reproduction of female stereotypes in a way that was reminiscent of Cindy Sherman’s work.

The twist in the last section of the play comes as a surprise and further emphasises the complexities of self presentation.

Mirror Mirror is an intriguing, engaging piece of performance art that speaks to us in 2023 about gender, relationships, consumer capitalism’s baleful effects on our self esteem and the power of social media. Samantha Charles, Edward Smith, producer Leonie Scott-Matthews and director Colin Gregory have done a brilliant job in producing a mesmerising and relevant piece of work!  

Simon Strange. Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk To New Wave.

According to Intellect Books, Simon Strange is a musician and producer engaged in ‘Ph.D. research into the connections’ and interactions between art colleges and popular music. He lectures on the socio-cultural context of popular music and creative collaborations at Bath Spa University having been ‘head of music at Bath College’ (1). I didn’t know any of this when I met him at the Punk Scholars Conference in London last December and can happily report that he is also a really nice, humorous bloke. At the conference he did a presentation/interview around his very recent book Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk To New Wave. There have been a few books recently around the tie up between art colleges and 1960s/70s music, exploring the effect of art college education and experience on specific bands and scenes, Michael Bracewell’s Roxy: The Band That Invented an Era and Gavin Butt’s No Machos Or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk focus on this relationship and it’s included in Rebecca Binns’ Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avant-Garde and John Roberts’ Red Days: Popular Music and the English Counterculture 1965-75. There are probably more but they’re the ones I’ve read!

So, Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk To New Wave, what’s it all about and how does it do it? The book’s focus is an exploration of radical art school education and its influence and effects on (predominantly) punk, post punk and new wave.

The book ‘connect(s) art education to the development of popular musicians in the genres of punk, post punk and new wave through a conceptual framework called Blank Canvas…the idea of a blank, pure space, or position…a redefining of artistic concepts’ (p. 5), arguing that ‘(a)rt college education mainframed conceptually driven and culturally connected elements, which informed some key bands through the mid to late 70s, where philosophy, politics, culture and science, for example, interfaced with artistic development’ the lack of emphasis on technical ability opening up a space for ‘increasingly experimental, radical and multi-genre music’ (p. xiii). If that sounds a bit daunting it isn’t as Simon’s writing is accessible, unpretentious and at times playful (his inclusion of lyrics within the text).

The book is divided into three parts tracing the seismic shift in art education and (therefore) wider culture from modernism to post modernism in the 1970s. Postmodernism being beautifully defined (p. 62-70) and utilised as a key concept throughout the book (p.73). 

Running through the book are four themes; hierarchies, process, experimentation and relationships (p. 6). The dismantling of traditional hierarchies between high and low art, between people, between technical accomplishment and ideas, within bands and music. The increased importance of artistic process over product, a more process orientated mindset within art and music, which in turn led to increased experimentation and innovation. The interconnections between people and scenes (p. 238-250). Eno’s concept of ‘scenius’, the postmodern dismantling of the modernist/Romantic idea of the lone, often male, genius and instead the recognition of the importance of ‘collective interaction’ in bringing ’great work to the fore’ (p. 250). 

The book is populated by a fantastic and fascinating array of characters and entities as Simon traces the interconnections between avant garde art, UK radical art colleges/tutors and popular music of the 70s; Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, BAUHAUS, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Dada, BRIAN ENO, Rita Donagh, Roxy Music, Richard Hamilton, the Situationists, Art and Language, Black Mountain College, Bill Drummond, Rhodes and Mclaren, Pauline Black, Gina Birch, Barry Adamson, Roy Ascott, Victor Pasmore, Mark Fisher, Newcastle, Leeds, Hornsey and Ipswich art colleges/schools jostle and crowd the pages in a celebration of the dismantling of the artificial dichotomy of life and art (p. 263). (The reason Bauhaus and Eno are in capitals is to remind me what significance roles they have in the book, the importance and wide spread effect of Bauhaus pedagogical model in UK radical art colleges and therefore on art student/musicians, the centrality of Eno as a pivotal figure in the transposition of avant garde and experimental ideas into UK popular culture in the 1970s.)   

In the final section, Simon considers the similarities between punk and hip hop, both urban, anti establishment, DIY, utilising avant garde techniques (p. 254-55). He also draws attention to the presence of women within punk, post punk and new wave, despite the overt patriarchy of the time, and the importance of the 2 Tone scene (p. 259). Agreeing with Mark Fisher, Simon concludes that ‘(c)ulture is decelerating, juddering to a halt (p. 256), reflecting that the 1960s/70s was a period that enabled working class kids access to art colleges and the time to develop concepts/ideas/craft through education grants, the dole and music industry investment (p. 256-258). Current lack of cheap accommodation, education funding and the dismantling of the welfare system has ensured that art education and the music industry is (again) dominated by the bourgeoisie (p. 257-8).

However the author sees some room for hope for a new Renaissance in art and music with the wider deployment of AI/automation, the consequential increased importance of leisure time and the possibility of the introduction of universal basic income, these factors giving those currently excluded from art and music renewed opportunity to participate (p. 254, 258).

Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk To New Wave is a superb relook at the importance of the avant garde and radical arts pedagogy in an important period in UK arts, art education and music. A fascinating book for anyone interested in the arts and music of the 1970s particularly but more widely for anyone interested in the interconnections and influences that effect, encourage and shape culture.

 

Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk To New Wave is available at https://www.intellectbooks.com/blank-canvas and lots of other places!

Bibliography.

1. https://www.intellectbooks.com/simon-strange