In 1999 Kate was commissioned to write a music-theatre piece about the choreographer and dancer Bronislava Nijinska with music by Errollyn Wallen.
The piece was work-shopped but never staged. Fascinated by the subject, Kate has now written the piece as a two-woman cabaret for herself and accordionist Karen Street, with a new score by Mike Westbrook, and entitled THE NIJINSKA CHAMBER. The album, produced by Jon Hiseman, and with Russian coaching by Leo Feigin (of Leo records), is already mostly recorded and will be completed before the end of the year in that pocket of time between Christmas and New Year.
This recording, made with financial support from Airshaft Trust, will be released on Voiceprint early in 2006 with live performances to follow.
Francois Raulin is commissioning a series of pieces, musical portraits of women, from a number of contemporary composers, mostly French including Louis Sclavis, Marc Ducret, Andy Emler, and Alain Gibert. The works will be for improvising pianist (Raulin himself) plus Harmonie (wind band). Mike Westbrook will contribute a piece dedicated to Bessie Smith. Performances will take place in the 2007 season.
 |
This was our third visit to La Brousse. We went first as a Duo in 1997 then as a Trio in 2002. Twelve years ago Michel Gayout and Hèlène (known as LN) moved from a state-of-the-art houseboat on the Seine in Paris to a run-down farm deep in the Charente countryside. They gave up a successful metropolitan life as artists and designers, to pioneer a new life far from the media crowd. The decline in agriculture in certain areas in France left many abandoned farms ripe for conversion, and the Brits moved into the nearby Dordogne. Michel and LN bought La Brousse for very little. All the expense (and a great deal of effort) has gone into making it habitable and economically viable. This work continues today and is likely to go on for a while yet.
La Brousse, full name La Hameau de la Brouse, consists of a house, cottages and farm buildings, raised among fields and woods on a limestone escarpment. Deep caves beneath reveal where stone was excavated for the building, not only of La Brousse itself, but as far afield as Angoulême. One of Michel’s many projects is to convert these vast caverns into a gallery. From the first, Michel’s idea has been to create a home for the arts, a place where artists can stay and work, eat communally if they want to, and where there are exhibitions and performances. The audience is drawn from all over the region. It’s a sophisticated and up-to-date audience too, for there is nothing rustic and backward-looking about events at La Brousse. Contemporary art is not the prerogative of the cities, and for performers there is something liberating about working out in the countryside that produces some of their best work. So we’ve found anyway.
Every time we go back there are changes. LN’s kitchen garden is overgrown but now there is a flourishing market garden leased to friends in return for the supply of fresh vegetables to the La Brousse kitchen. A ceramic studio has appeared. More of the outlying buildings have been turned into accommodation. La Brousse is now fully booked, and not just by artists, throughout the summer months, and is popular out of season too.
Michel met us at Angoulême off the train from Bordeaux where we’d spent an enjoyable couple of days playing ART WOLF in a concert and at two sessions in a local school. Angoulême, that beautiful town, is for us full of memories of past triumphs in the Opera House in the days before World Music edged out the Jazz Festival. MAMA CHICAGO in 1979 marked the beginning of our love affair with the French jazz scene and started our golden age of touring in France. These were years in which we criss-crossed the country in a mini-bus and played many of the festivals. Our most recent gig in Angoulême was with OFF ABBEY ROAD in 1990. Things change, and now Angoulême appears on our tour schedules simply as the nearest station to La Brousse.
A half hour drive out into the country packed in Michel’s car and we’re there. After a wander, an encounter with a donkey, and a late lunch, I went with Michel to the concert room. This room is a lofty, stone-walled space that has always been used for performances. Until now. Michel and LN are now planning to use this for their own studio and living accommodation. Future performances will take place outside and, one day, in a concert hall in the caves under the cliff.
At our request Michel had hired a DVD player and projector so that we could show Caspar Wolf’s paintings. Even when we two technical incompetents had got the thing working, it was impossible to tell in broad daylight how extremely effective the projection of Wolf’s Alpine images would prove to be. An excellent Yamaha grand was already installed in the room. Of the quartet’s other modest requirements (four music stands and a small PA for vocals) there was no sign. Stupidly I had omitted to ask for them. With no PA disaster threatened. In the middle of nowhere, late on a Saturday afternoon, prospects looked bleak. But there was just a chance.
We repaired to Michel’s office, an Aladdin's cave full of computers, desks piled high with papers, leaning towers of books and magazines, pieces of sculpture and other art works, and walls of LPs. A phone call to Kent Carter,
a distinguished ex-pat American bass player who lives not far away, secured the music stands but not the PA. Then Michel called another locally based musician, Austin, a guitarist and singer, who just might have the equipment we needed. After a long conversation about the weather, recent gigs, and other general topics, Michel worked his way round to mentioning our little problem. To our relief he had a small PA and, yes, we could borrow it.
We set off on a half hour drive to Austin’s place. The car was full of huge quantities of jam which LN had made and was due to take to market next day. The drive took us through countryside that varied between rolling patchwork fields and woods and prairie-like expanses of industrial farmland. We passed ancient hilltop chateaux and villages apparently untouched by time, and crass modern developments including a gas station with a sign at the exit that said ‘See You’ as well as ‘à bientôt’. At the end of a track was Austin’s place,- a tumbledown stone house surrounded by rubble and by all kinds of objets trouvées encrusted with the small erratically formed coloured glass sculptures that he makes by melting down bottles. From the open doorway the music of Mozart issued gloriously over the landscape, powered by the PA system that we were to borrow.
The place resembled nothing so much as an archaeological dig. Indeed Austin is excavating the area with power drills, tearing into the limestone. He is trying to get back to something more profound than just the foundations of his house. the coloured shards of glass that fill every nook and cranny are like relics from the fiery furnace of the Ancient Babylon that he keeps talking about. When Michel, with a twinkle in his eye, teased him about the large black wooden crucifix that dominates the outside of the house - ‘would not red be plus gai?’ - Austin wasn’t having any. What he’s building there might be obscure to the rest of us but it’s serious. As Jon Hiseman might say ‘seriously crazy’. But Michel and LN too, and no doubt the other artists and musicians living on their own building sites in the middle of this beautiful country, are having to strip away the non-essentials of contemporary life to get back back to some reality, a foundation on which to build their vision. ‘What are those golden builders doing?’ William Blake might have asked.
The two powered speakers, mixer, microphone, stand and bag of cables were loaded up and driven back to la Brousse with no harm to the precious jam. We set up the system in the concert room and managed to get it working after a fashion. Fortunately Austin was on hand later to make adjustments to the system whose idiosyncrasies only he was familiar with. Michel had invited him to supper and the concert.
Around 10 o’clock the performance began, the raison d’être for all this trouble and preparation. With the first piano figure of Art Wolf Sketches I felt locked into the collective creative process, completely focussed on the task in hand. The album of ART WOLF was a starting point, and each ‘live’ performance has become a great adventure. A sympathetic acoustic, a ‘hip’ audience, and the magic of La Brousse all had their effect. Kate, Chris and Pete were on superb form. Kate’s rendition of the French versions of the texts, made by Lucienne Droz, communicated with a captivated audience. The saxophonists spurred each other on to ever greater heights. What a band!
By the time we sat down to breakfast next morning, LN had already taken her jam to market, leaving some samples of her skill on the table, pear and carrot and other surprising combinations. Delicious!
Soon it was back to Angoulême, au revoir to Michel, the TGV to Lille, and Eurostar to Waterloo. Although we don’t know for sure when we four will meet again, I can report that after this whirlwind French trip ART
WOLF is in fine fettle and ready for anything. We are grateful to our friends in Bordeaux, and to Michel and LN. It was good to be reminded that there is a corner of South-West France where art is important and we are fortunate to be part of it. And, apart from anything else, La Brousse is the only place we know where in May and June the nightingales sing so loud they keep you awake all night.
Mike Westbrook
These are excerpts from the November 2005 edition (Issue 74) of the Smith's Academy Informer. To subscribe to the full paper edition, please write to us at the subscription address below.
