Wednesday 30th August

Arrived at 7.45am, before the students arrived, and as they trickled I taught each one of them the tune Mads and I had worked out yesterday.  Our idea had been that as the addition of the washboard added a humorous touch, this musical idea would be just right for the Chaplin symbol at the end of the picture.  When everybody more or less knew what they were playing we worked out how we would start and end this section, and put a few solos in the middle.

Also arriving today was Steven the photographer who had taken the photographs of Bjorn's glass-frieze picture and was going to be responsible for cueing the slides in the performance.  To help him understand what we were doing and which slides should be where and when they should change I started at the beginning of the whole composition and talked through the execution of every idea with Steven and the students, rehearsing the beginnings and endings of each section, and any slide changes.  This took much longer than expected, but then again the composition was now quite long (about 20 minutes) and had many interweaving ideas.

Finally we got up to where we were yesterday, and then we very quickly explored a couple of new symbols before ending with our Chaplin idea.  The students decided that the music should fade out on the Chaplin motif so that it ended in the gradual way it begun.

After break, we played through the piece once, with me cueing the slides for Steven, and that was the end of my morning with the students.

When the students had gone I worked with Steven for a little to discuss the slide projection that would accompany piece.  We ran through the slides and I agreed the cues with him.

Later on, upon arrival at the hotel, I produced a detailed cue sheet for him and also notated a graphic score of the piece to use as an aid for working through the composition without the music when talking with Helene & Henrik.  (I had arranged to have this meeting with them before tomorrow morning's concert.)