Terremoto

Made this film with Nicky Mathewson. Take a little look and share if you desire...

Hope you enjoy it!

This is what my house...

... is extremely full of (bursting with) at the moment. It's very lovely and warming and  a tad nerve racking. We're off on Thursday and will be away for almost a week, travelling around the country, performing this very special show - UOEIA.

This is the same show that we premiered in Rotterdam back in May. There was this post of How Rotterdam Went and before this post The Premiere of UOEIA

We're doing this...

It's all jolly good...

Hello out there.

I've not been around for a while again, so here I am.

It's all good around these parts. The weather's been amazing. I'm rather brown. We've been enjoying many barbecues and too many spritzers.

Hugely excited for the kid's summer holidays and the long days of fun, picnics, making and generally relaxing without having to be anywhere.

I have mainly be doing this recently...

Drinking too much of this.

Finding this on Bridport market for a fiver.

Dressing like a humbug with a skirt I found in a charity shop.

Finding these for a measly fiver in the sale today to show off my cankles.

Finishing off the teal and tangerine corner with a lamp donated by crazy friends.

Finding this Romanian plate for 50p

And bobbing out of long.

And also, we performed the UOEIA Operina in Bridport (the one we did in Rotterdam) at another IF event at the end of June which went really well...

Enjoy!!!

More preparations to do for a workshop I am leading at Bridport Arts Centre for Small Things right now...

Hope you're all enjoying the weather.

How Rotterdam Went...

I've gone and stolen his blog post again, partly because I'm being extraordinarily lazy and also because I'm going to yoga in thirty five minutes and if I get stuck into writing a blog post, I will naturally be late...as I often am... So from hereon, it's him... 

Swiss Family Phizmiz performance of "UOEIA", favola in jodel, at Operadagen Rotterdam, 2013. A commission of DePlayer, part of the evening "That Global Glottis". 


Two different cameras, both slightly incomplete. You can piece the whole thing together in your head by seeing both. If you're so inclined.


Fragments, or most of, of "UOEIA" from the camera of DePlayer's lovely Koos. 






Most of "UOEIA". Filmed and edited to fit Youtube by bart plantenga , author of the books "Yodel in Hi-Fi" and "Yodel-Ay-Ee-Ooo", from which this operina takes it's theme and inspiration.






You can watch more from yodelling event That Global Glottis at bart plantenga's Youtube playlist, including Andrea Wittchen, Phil Minton, Danibal, Myriam van Imschoot, and Kutzekelina.



Photographs by Martha Moopette (mostly). Swiss Family Phizmiz adventure.

That's it then...

Bisous.

Swiss Phamily Phizmiz, Fox Masks and Yodelling

If you read the post I put up a little earlier (from the fella's blog) you may have noticed that it mentions that myself and the kids are in his (Ergo Phizmiz's aka the hoosband) next show, which is called UOEIA and is all about yodelling. (You can read more info on the show in the post below).

I've been meaning to get this post up for ages but I've been trying to finish a never ending hand drawn animation for this show, that took FAR longer than I anticipated.

So, yes, we're in the show! The main part we all play are Foxes. I'm a teacher (as a Fox) and the kids are pupils and we're teaching them all about the history of music and yodelling. It is fairly daunting to think I'll be on stage again, even though I have been involved in quite a few of the shows now, but mainly the production stages and am often backstage fixing costumes or tending to the kids.

The last show (that I unfortunately couldn't go on tour with that time) was Gargantua which had a wonderful character that evolved and constantly changed throughout the show but was predominantly a Fox. For this character I had to paint a pre-existing plastic Fox mask...and here it is.

The only thing is that I'm supposed to be painting four of these masks this evening. We've got more rehearsals tomorrow, I've got a clay lunk to make for an animation for Channel Four's Randoms Acts to send to Vicki Bennett and get it sent off tomorrow so they can animate him, I've got to finally photograph all fifty-three pages of the hand-drawn animation and at some point finish learning all of my lines for the show, which is on in one week (ooooh dang nabbit). And if you happen to be in Stroud on Saturday, so are we! Gargantua is playing somewhere in Stroud... but you should check out the blog (on the link just above) for more information...

So this is generally how life goes. But it's all good. It just means I'm a terrible blogger and have nowhere near as many followers as proper consistent bloggers do. Oh yes, I also had to go to London last week to get Autumn's passport done in a day, which was quite funny. Found out in the uber-expansive-post-office-kiosk-room, the bloke next to me, fretting that he didn't have all his details had the same birthday as me and was exactly 10 years older. I couldn't stop laughing. That was a tad embarrassing. Also, whilst I was waiting for my number to be called (each person got a ticket with a large number on) from a screen with a lovely digital voice, I was so very tempted to shout B-I-N-G-O but Larry David Style (Afraid only Curb Your Enthusiasm fans would get this one).

Oh, and Autumn's had/is just getting over Chicken Pox! Oh yes, and also our main computer is still being repaired so all the video projects I had on the go have been stalled once again! C'est la vie.

So, here are some photos from the hand-drawn animation. It's a tongue tree. If you scroll down fast enough you might be able to see the animation in process.

These pictures are from a few days ago, before I'd finished colouring it all in. You should have seen the amount of red and green coloured pencils I went through! Although it was mainly because all of the leads in each pencil were snapped all the way throughout, so they were all pretty useless really.

Here are a few pictures from the rehearsal from earlier too... (Photos by Talulah's nine year old friend, Rory Armstrong).

Right then...I think I'm going to join the hoosband who's watching the 50's Twilight Zone in bed. (We love it). This post has taken so long as I'm using my tiny stupid netbook PC thing, which is SO incredibly slow and crashes every few minutes, that I shall just have to get on and have a jammed packed fox painting and lunk making session in the morning.

So good night fellow dreamers.

"UOEIA" premiere, May 30th 2013

“UOEIA”, an operina on the histories of yodelling by Ergo Phizmiz, based on books by Bart Plantenga. In woodland school, two young foxes are presented with the history of the world through yodelling: the enchantment of the planet, the birth of civilisation, through to the attempted destruction of yodelling by church and state, all culminating in the rescue at sea by yodelling by Harry Torrani, the English yodelling cowboy, of Mercedes Gleitze, first lady to swim the English channel.

“UOEIA” is performed by what, appropriately enough, should be termed “Swiss Family Phizmiz”, in a mixture of vocalisation, performance, shadow-puppetry, masks, paper-collage, and animation, with a kaleidoscopic music score that twists between original acoustic composition and sound-collage from across the history and richly varied cultures of yodelling.

Writer, Director, Composer: Ergo Phizmiz

Performers: Martha Moopette, Talulah Lotus, Autumn Poppy, Ergo Phizmiz

Video: Ergo Phizmiz, Simon Mathewson, Martha Moopette

“UOEIA” is a commission of DePlayer, and will premiere at Operadagen Rotterdam on May 30^th 2013, as part of the yodel themed evening “That Global Glottis”.

With "That Global Glottis" DE PLAYER presents a program poised on the cutting edge of where experimental sound meets opera and the phenomenon known as yodelling. The technique of yodelling basically accents that jolt of air that occurs during the rapid movement between chest and head voice. While opera singers are taught to polish away that vocal leap with glissando techniques, yodellers do the opposite: they highlight the breaking of the voice.

"That Global Glottis" features a reading, a film series, and a Late Night Performance Event that spotlights this unique vocal technique as global phenomeon. The program was developed in close collaboration with author bart plantenga, renowned for his books YODEL-AY-EE-OOOO: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World and his recently published Yodel in Hi-Fi, From Kitsch Folk to Contemporary Electronica. Both books emphasize the fact that yodeling is found everywhere from pop to opera, not just among the Swiss and in the Alps but also among the African Pygmies, the Nazi Jugend SS, Bollywood star Kishore Kumar and countless others.

I stole this from Ergo Phizmiz's blog...but he doesn't mind really...

Photographs of GARGANTUA by Rebecca Vaughan

The post below is taken from the Gargantua blog, but I had to share these photos.

Rebecca Vaughan kindly popped in and took these rather tasty photos of GARGANTUA: An Excessive Entertainment by Ergo Phizmiz & Friends. Many thanks. Delicious.