The Graham Fitkin Band and a sugar rush

I'm drawing the composer/pianist Graham Fitkin rehearsing his band at Kings Place in London. I try not to trip over anything and end up being the thing that can be tripped over.

There are musical fragments, moments of dynamism, longueurs during sound checks.

Last time Graham gave a concert here he finished his piano solo with apparent poise then left the stage to succumb to norovirus. There is no such problem today.

Graham never wrote anything for harp until he met his partner Ruth Wall, the harpist. Now there are two amplified harps centre-stage.

I don't know how to describe his music, which includes a string of prestigious commissions. Phase-minimal-troubadour-jazz-electric-acoustic-bouncy-mellow gives you completely the wrong impression.

New, that's what. New.

It's a last-minute concert with a full house. Graham has made meringues with Cornish cream which band members distribute to the audience after the interval.

Then Graham hands out party poppers which we're allowed to let off ad lib and on the beat. It's celebratory and we're sent home happy. Scroll down for more pictures.

 

Meringue in the hand of another gifted pianist,
Justin Snyder

 

 

 

Air, floating and Graham Fitkin

The model is Gorgone,
draped in gauze

Some composers serve up meringues. Airy confections that disappear. Delibes. Walton on occasion. Anyone involved in the score of La Fille Mal Gardée. A musicologist just said Saint-Saens. Hmn.

By contrast, the composer and performer Graham Fitkin is making real meringues, ones you can eat, to share with his audience after his next concert with the Graham Fitkin Band (Kings Place, 11 December 2012). I am not aware of any other composer who does this.



Graham has composed the music for Not Until We are Lost, a show by aerial theatre company Ockham's Razor which is touring England until spring 2013. And I'm already thinking about airy things and suspension because I drew Japanese rope bondage for ten hours over the weekend; it involves people floating in ropes.

Ockham's Razor members



Un Re in Ascolto, an opera by Luciano Berio, was worth the admission price for the harness suspension of the chorus alone.

Sentences can also be suspended, both in court and thus...

Financial Times gig and a dangerous squat

Occupy squatters at the Cross Keys, a boarded-up pub in Chelsea, have just been thrown out by a criminal gang with knives who hold raves in squats and don’t read my blog, or they’d know that bailiffs are due any day. Two male squatters were beaten up. I go to draw somewhere marginally safer: a gig at the Financial Times office.

To get there I walk past the aggressively opulent frontage of law firm S. J. Berwin. It’s a relief to reach the unglitzy, boffiny engine-room that is the newspaper. 

Mary Wilson (vocals/violin)

Peter Whitehead is celebrating 25 years as an FT journalist by holding a charity folk/rock concert with friends and a colleague. They sing and play to a congenial audience in a conference room with the passionate sincerity of non-professional musicians. 

I use conventional pens, quills, a bamboo pen and a few inches of hemp bondage rope.

Afterwards I take the stairs and find a sight which makes a freelance home-worker weep [left]. Last time I had access to something like that the techies wore Fairisle jumpers, corduroy trousers and beards. 

The day before, I borrowed a Cross Keys squatter to model for the life class I go to. She took charge of her life at the age of 13. Now 18, she is confident, well-spoken, absurdly grown up for a pretty fairy and can do things I can’t – smoke, rifle through skips outside supermarkets for food, not feel cold in flimsy clothes, go out in socks but no shoes. She has a pungent insouciance. 

One of the squatters who was beaten up by the gang, Arthur, is quoted in the Financial Times of 5 November 2012 (Chicken with wine sauce from a skip on lunch menu for pub occupiers). He says he sees ‘a choice between wasteland and trespassing.’

The life drawings
are of the squatter

Peter Whitehead and nine other musicians perform songs by Lori McKenna, Sam Baker and Mary Gauthier on his CD Lori, Sam and Mary. Sales benefit the Down’s Syndrome Association. Peter’s wife Grania Langdon-Down is descended from the doctor who gave his name to the syndrome. Details: http://peterwhitehead.yolasite.com/  

At the gig he was joined by Simon Botham/percussion, Heidi Felton/cello, Derek Huff/keyboards, Richard Lloyd/guitar, Martin Nielsen (also of the FT)/guitar and Mary Wilson/violin and vocals.