The Piano Room: First Performance Version
Words by Julie Boden.
Music by Steve Tromans
You are able to read here the script from the piano room as it was presented at Ledbury Poetry Festival – just click on the link at the foot of the page. It is always scary to share a work in progress but there are many rewards to this too. Thanks to the Arts Council I am able to work on this with the composer and pianist, Steve Tromans and with the Dramaturg, Vanessa Oakes. Despite the overwhelming success of The Piano Room at Ledbury Festival and such a positive feedback from the audience there, Steve and I are keen continue our experiment and to push the boundaries of our art forms further. I anticipate that the opening of this will be completely revamped as I prefer not to begin with the hectoring voice of the imagined Education Officer. This piece and the list poem and paradelle may be edited or erased in the final work. The triolet, Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni is likely to remain as it is. ‘Breathing in, Breathin out’ and ‘Not salmon, new potatoes on a placeĀ?’ are part I and Part III of the sequence of poems, ‘A Septet for the End of Time’ written for the the Messiaen concert at the Town Hall, ‘Quartet for the End of Time’. The seven stages this poetry sequences follows were inspired by Jacques’ speech in Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It – hence Part I looks at how the infant would face the end of time and Part III is from the lovers’ perspective. The poem beginning ‘He tuned her roughly first’ is entitled ‘First Love’. This poem imagines the piano’s relationship to the piano tuner. ‘She Did Not’ was written after I attended a concert of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto at Symphony Hall and watched the sad eyes of a lady in the audience as the theme (now also well known for it’s inclusion in the film Brief Encounter) played. ‘Come the Night’ and ‘Let us Drink to Hippocrene’ are taken from the Amorous Organ poem. The final ballad, which was both spoken and sung, is the ballad of Guy’s Cliffe.
We anticipate that the final version will be a fuller piece with sections responding to more of Steve’s compositions on his CD The Jewel in the Lotus. Julie and Steve are also keen to follow up the Dream Angus link. Julie has filled more than sixteen notebooks with notes and poems inspired by THSH and many of these relate to specific piano concerts. Over the next few months some of this research will be woven into this new piece.
The letters in capitals are putting bits of the performance into context. The highlighted pieces are where both voice and piano play. Steve has composed some beautiful pieces for this sequence which, sadly without audio, are not evident here. Please do check on Julie’s website from time to time as she does intend to put some audio material here. In the meantime for more updates here are Julie and Steve’s web addresses: