Life is so wonderful, I think you'd love it

I think this is what my mother said to me on one of my last visits before she departed this life in 2010. After a remarkable and active life her last few years were a sad descent into dementia; all the traits that make someone who they are unlearned and disassembled one by one, like childhood in reverse. In terms of language we saw all the stages from the forgetting proper nouns and common nouns, to a difficulty in forming coherent sentences, to words whose syllables were distorted, only half-remembered, as a young child might try to pronounce a new and unfamiliar word. For someone who spent their life lecturing and public speaking and who loved to inspire enthusiasm for art, it must have been a strange and terrifying process. I don't know why I didn't record her speaking voice earlier (she could deliver a lecture about Venice some time after she had forgotten who I was, or what to do with a cup of tea and a biscuit) but by the time I made these recordings her speech was mostly disconnected syllables and invented words with the odd platitude and conversation-filler. The source sounds for this piece are mother's strange monologues, a crow in the tall trees of the nursing home, the sounds of the lapping water and the creaking floating platforms of the Mersey ferry (she lived most of her life near Liverpool)... later on the evening ambience of Venice - water, vaporetto stops, footsteps, a restaurant and bells.

This concludes the series of sound pieces 6s & 7s. The others can be heard here... https://soundcloud.com/marklockett/sets/6s-7s

The Falklands Tango Club

As for many people of my generation Margaret Thatcher represented a world view that was totally opposed to my own, a culture of individualism, materialism, selfishness and greed combined with an anachronistic patriotism. Among the very bad things she did for Britain - privatisation of industries, the crushing of trade unions, financial deregulation resulting in the economic crisis we're now in, the brutal contempt for British working people, the branding of Nelson Mandela as a 'terrorist', the list goes on and on... perhaps the worst was the utter folly of the Falklands war. I always felt that the differences could have been resolved by a community arts project, a cultural exchange initiative that could bring the Argentinians and the islanders together in a graceful dance....
A tribute to Maggie from the soon-to-be-released album by Stanley Adler and myself...

Album Leaf

It was our friend Urte's 50th birthday the other day - an artist from New York who found herself living in the Aude through a long chain of events. Among her strange and mostly recycled gifts, I recorded this. A little piece I wrote last year as part of a collection of 49 pieces called Winter Leaves - album leaves dedicated to artist and musician friends.
Off to Birmingham today for a stint of teaching at the Conservatoire. On Tuesday I'll be playing in the Recital Hall - a programme with some more of these pieces.
http://www.bcu.ac.uk/pme/conservatoire/events-calendar/mark-lockett-piano-13-01-22
http://marklockett.com/news

the programme notes...

22nd January 2013

Recital Hall 6.30pm

Andrew Downes        7 Preludes for piano Opus 89 (2006) 

Solitude

Leaves in Autumn

Winter Lanes

Spring Lambs

Summer Calypso

Daybreak in the Fields

Storm Force

Mark Lockett              Winter Leaves (2011-12)

This group of piano pieces follows on from other works exploring calendrical cycles such as 6s and 7s and The Big Haiku. There are 49 pieces all composed between December 2011 and January 2012 - one per day as the title of each indicates. A performance can consist of any number of the pieces in any order, so the performer chooses which ones to play.

Consistent with the numerous pieces entitled feuille d'album, albumblatt, etc of 19th century composers, these pieces are short and don't follow any prescribed form. Each one is dedicated to an artist or musician friend as a token of admiration and friendship, and although they're not intended to be musical portraits, there is perhaps some subconscious hommage-paying at work, which I prefer not to analyse!

Album Leaf 22/12/11 for Andrew Downes

Album Leaf 21/12/11 for Faheem Mazhar

Album Leaf 15/12/11 for Aziza Sadikova

Album Leaf 25/1/12 for Zöe Redman

Album Leaf 17/1/12 for Alex Hutchings

Album Leaf 22/1/12 for Lamberto Coccioli

Album Leaf 24/1/12 for Marie-Louise Taylor

Album Leaf 27/12/11 for Ivo de Greef

Album Leaf 14/12/11 for Cheng-Ying Chuang

Album Leaf 13/12/11 for Dmitry Kormann

Album Leaf 8/12/11 for Chitraleka Bolar

Feuille d'Album 18/12/11 for Jacques Charpentier

Toten Blatt 7/12/11 for Greg Chandler

Album Leaf 20/12/11 for Urte Reyes

Album Leaf 23/12/11 for Olalekan Babalola

Feuille Blanche 11/1/12 for Valérie Schlée

Album Leaf 7/1/12 for John White

Album Leaf 18/1/12 Ezra's Waltz II

Album Leaf 16/1/12 for Frank Moon

Album Leaf 14/1/12 for Sid Peacock

Album Leaf/Notturno 31/1/12 for Jamie Crofts

 Mark Lockett was a lecturer in world music and ethnomusicology at the Birmingham Conservatoire from 1989 to 2002. He now lives in the south of France. He has taught at the University of Toulouse and has run music workshops in the psychiatric hospital of Limoux for a number of years. Current projects include an electro-jazz duo with cellist Stanley Adler and an opera for soloists, chamber orchestra and gamelan entitled "Debusi".

Softly, as in a morning sunrise

Most Monday mornings at the crack of dawn Stan comes round with his cello. Quick coffee and then down to a couple of hours solid work, practicing and sometimes recording, until he has to take off back to Carcassonne around 11. Great way to start the week! Today we recorded a version of the above-named Standard, composed originally as a tango in 1928 by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II. Here, however, I recomposed the melody in the north Indian dawn raga Lalit...

Exotica

Today is the Concert de nouvel an in Limoux, by the Lyre Municipale - the harmonie of local music school under the baton of Guy Robert, who was also director of the music school until recently. It's a big group with children, alumni of the school, various amateur and professional musicians. As with last year's concert I've been drafted in to play tanpura for one piece - a little touch of exotica in the sea of rather militaristic wind, brass and percussion. The tanpura (which I bought for £30 in a launderette in Leicester) is treated with semi-reverential awe, and in fact most people don't realize that it's very easy to play. The only real skill is in tuning it, and even slightly out of tune it sounds horrible. Whenever I've played with Indian classical musicians, they will grab the tanpura from you and tune it for you. You can't trust a student to do that! John Mayer used to say it was the most boring instrument in the world to play, but actually the great thing is that you get to be on stage with your guru!
Here is Ali Zaki Haider, a senior disciple of the great rudra veena master Ustad Asad Ali Khan, accompanying his teacher...

Happy old year

Just to see the old year out, here's an out-take from the hothouse studios. I was messing around with some samples just now. Noir-ish ambience, deserted street, guy in a trilby stopping to light cigarette...

Burt Bugarach

"Lord, we don't need another mountain, there are mountains and hillsides enough to climb....to last us until the end of time". Presumably we will be allowed to climb up Bugarach once again, the mountain having been the centre of attention of the world's media this past week. The danger of the mountain exploding and the emergence of the green lizard people's spacecraft has now passed, at least temporarily. My friend Andrew in Newcastle has suggested the village now celebrate the dawn of this post-apocalyptic era with a festival of easy-listening music.

I went up there last night to see what was happening. Stopped by bored but good-natured gendarmes I was allowed through the road checkpoint. The journalists and TV crews have by far outnumbered the population of the village. Bugarach folk were not much in evidence. Desperate last-minute interviews with anyone willing to talk about why they'd come and what they thought about the end of the world. A few alien-spotters who had come to party in the wind and drizzle. As I walked around the backstreets to record the ambient sounds of this momentous non-event, it was really pretty quiet.