The Piano Room

Poet, Julie Boden and the composer and pianist, Steve Tromans launched The Piano Room ( Part 1: Room of the Half Dream) at the Burgage Hall, Ledbury on Saturday, 11 July. Festival Director, Chloe Garner says:

‘The audience were entranced, moved, provoked and inspired! A powerful performance. And a rare and precious opportunity to experience an exciting new collaboration in progress.’ (Chloe Garner, Festival Director, Ledbury Poetry Festival)

The seeds of this idea began when Julie first walked into the piano store back stage at Symphony Hall at the beginning of her residency here. Most recently, supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Julie has been awarded a grant which enables her to work on the Piano Room project with Steve Tromans (composer) and Vanessa Oakes (dramaturg). Julie and Steve will be working on this piece and conducting workshops and colloquiums around the region in the autumn. If you would like to see the final piece in the performance it is being scheduled to take place at Symphony Hall in February 2010.

In August Julie will spend a night alone in the piano store developing ideas and creating new pieces for the final work. Some years ago Steve spent the night in the piano store recording his solo piano work to date and improvising new pieces before departing the next morning for his sabbatical in Mongolia. After his travels to Mongolia and Italy he returned to the UK to work in collaboration with Julie for the Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2009, which marked the launch of the project.

‘I’m interested in the relationship between poetry and music,’ says Julie, ‘be it libretti, lyrics, ekphrasis or the music of language itself. The Piano Room is a magical place; an ordinary store room unfolding its extraordinary secrets.’ Steve, who has won great acclaim for his major four-part musical setting of each of the key works of the Beat Generation says, ‘For my other poetry/literature-based works I was forced to work in retrospect, crafting my music around an already extant and established text rather than working with a living poet.’ This project enables both artists to explore the process of collaboration, to push the boundaries of their own art forms and to include the public in this process before presenting a final, Piano Room: Stage 1 event at Symphony Hall in 2010.

Some of the poetry in this new composition are included below but there are more surprises in store at the piano store.