Tag: London

Categories
literature Love Music Poetry Wagner

Wagner Special – Delivered

Wilhelm Richard Wagner

Saturday 14th June 2025, 10:30 — 12:00

Debunking Wagner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Richard_Wagner

?What myths have you heard about Wagner.

Ring:

‘Synopsis’

Royal Ballet & Opera video:

Rhingold ⬆️

Chapter 1: The Rhinegold

Chapter 2: The Valkyrie

Chapter 3: Siegfried

Chapter 4: Twilight of the Gods

Rhinemaidens:

Woglinde = Dance

Wellgunde = Music

Flosshilde = Poetry

Alberich – Elf, renouncing love

A representation of love: Stendhal‘s book titled Love

?What do you think about Alberich.

The following scenes in Chapter 1

Alberich’s repentance from sin. [Could Wagner be a Christian!?]

Wagner’s libretto — Stabreim

Groves Music Dictionary

Stabreim is a form of poetic verse

Iambic: Stress every second syllable

Shakespeare

Hamlet — “To be, or not to be: that is the question:”

Macbeth — “Double, double toil and trouble

Iambic Pentameter — 5 stress’ with a sentence of 10 syllables

e.g. Sonnet 18

Shakespeare & Goethe known to Wagner

Henry Cuyler Bunner, American novelist and journalist, on Goethe:

Shake, Mulleary and Go-ethe, poem

My poetry books:

  1. Soaring Higher
  2. The Tara Brooch
  3. Wagner’s Ring*
  4. Blazon

*Wagner’s Ring started. Not completed at the time due to Shakespearean Tudor anachronisms. However, someone said I “can still do it.” Decided on couplet paraphrase, instead — AA, BB, CC etc. Next, Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, publishes his couplet version of the Owl and the Nightingale. Took my copy to the stage production at the Southbank Centre.

Read my incomplete paraphrase of Wagner’s Ring, Chapter 1: Rhinegold, Ii

Open mic:

Nick

Angela

Closing small talk.

Played during the opening of my reading ⬇️. Ten-stringed lyre.
"From left to right by nature’s design
Flows continuously the ready river Rhine
Lighter turquoise evenly spread
Becoming darker towards the bed
Near the floor the water dissipates
Leaving an increasingly breathable state
This vaporous man-sized space
Moves continuously and at a pace
Across the floor of the riverbed
Where no man can naturally tread
Are rough rocks and undercurrent tides
And vertical caverns unimaginably wild."

Categories
Fine Art

16th Annual Exhibition

Don’t miss it!

Categories
music Poetry

“The Known Great Composer”

A few years ago I was online scanning the concert listings at a world-class venue in London. On this particular occasion I was looking for small scale music-making. The Baroque era is a favourite of mine, and I chose a recorder and theorbo programme.

On the day of the concert I was early, and so decided to spend some time in a book shop. Afterwards, I went to the concert hall and started my packed lunch. Before I could finish it was time for the concert to begin.

During the concert sometimes the instruments played together, sometimes they played solo. For one recorder solo, the recordist played two recorders simultaneously! When the theorboist played solo pieces, one of them was introduced as a passacaglia – which, to my amusement, collected philistinic giggles. If only the pictures of musical aristocracy on the walls of the concert room had ears of flesh!

This poem, The Known Great Composer, is about the concert. Head and shoulders above, one composer and his music made my whole time in London memorable. Memorable for the right reason – music.

No prizes, but if you can guess the Great Composer I don’t mention, you are a winner! Clue: Imagine the accompanying music in this clip being played two octaves lower on a solo cello…

First verse

“The Known Great Composer”

“The window blinds close

The stage lights are adjusted

Two musicians walk on stage

And we welcome them warmly…”

On the way home, I happened to see someone I knew. We talked for a while, and I expressed that I would be writing a poem about the concert. By this time, my mind had already begun putting the poem together.

Furthermore, before arriving home, I visited a local art gallery and talked more about poetry to the exhibiting Artist, referencing the couple of books I bought earlier that day written by the Poet Laureate.

Categories
Fine Art

Art Exhibition – Revisited

The recent art exhibition at the Anna Lovely Gallery was open for two weeks, ending on the 3rd April 2022. The Artists showing were selected from the 2021 Summer Open Exhibition. On the penultimate day I made footage and added fitting music by Mussorgsky called ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Categories
Fine Art

Art Exhibition

There will be an art exhibition taking place in Sydenham, London starting this weekend. The private view will be the Friday evening before the show officially opens. All are welcome!

One of the pieces I will be exhibiting is titled: St. Conan’s Arrow. This piece of fine art started life as an image captured with my Nikon DSLR on a photography tour that included St. Conan’s Kirk, Lochawe, Scotland. Please click here for the church’s website. On their site you will discover fascinating information about this ‘Hidden Gem’. Put this destination on you itinerary the next time you visit the Argyll and treasure the experience!

When I visited, I witnessed how unique this location, architecture and spiritual atmosphere really was. And, as one does, I took many photographs; I was in my element. Capturing as much as I could, whilst obeying the holy reverence that, to me, was so very evident.

About the Art

One of the many architectural features of this ecclesiastical structure are the flying buttresses. The image below is a manipulation of just one composed photograph of an aspect of the church building. In this geometric abstraction created in Photoshop, you will be able to see the flying buttresses – but only if you squint! The green colours and shades are the surrounding deciduous foliage. The entire image has been enhanced, going through various stages of post-processing.

Title: St. Conan’s Arrow

Specifications and Adjectives

  • The next generation
  • Photoshop created
  • Award-winning laboratory
  • Crémé de la crémé
  • Church art
  • Apotheosis
  • ne plus ultra
  • Emotional
  • Culture
  • Metallic photographic paper
  • 6mm acrylic facemount
  • Size: A1 (other sizes available)
6mm acrylic facemount

Also on display will be three other A1 pieces from my Well-Tempered Church Catalogue, namely:

  1. Inexplicable Fancies
  2. Paul’s Journey To The Other Side
  3. Testament Of Expression

I have applied many hashtags to the pieces from the catalogue, but here are just three: Christian, Intelligent and Exquisite – in that order. When I look at my art I have an encounter: my vision senses quick rays of brightness that invades my being; I feel them somewhere internally – it’s a kind of love affair between my art and myself. The art, my art, changes me.

Anna Lovely Gallery

Last year, 2021, I displayed one piece in the Open Summer Exhibition which took place in September that year. There were over one hundred Artists displaying one piece of their art. After the exhibition I went to the gallery to collect my piece. To my joy and astonishment, the gallery owner informed me that my piece was chosen as best in category(!) Not only was I not fully aware that I was entering a competition, but a category had been created just for my piece of art! What a surprise and a delight! The category was: Digital Print. Questioning the boundaries of art…? Possibly. Inventing a genre of art beyond what has already been established…? Evidently so, but not intended from the outset. Raising the odd eyebrow or two…? Well, they certainly amaze me – and I’m the Artist!

Although my art has been placed in the Digital Print category, which applies to two dimensional media, these pieces have a second media: the facemount. The facemount is additional, and part of the art, effectively transforming the piece into three mentions. Therefore, I place the art into another category: Multimedia.

How about other people’s reactions to the pieces? When I showed someone an A4 size version, they took it into their hands and just looked… and for quite a while. What will your reaction be when you encounter these pieces in real life? Allow nothing to separate you from them except air for the full effect.

And so, here are the Selected Artists from the 2021 Open Exhibition showing in 2022 from this weekend for two weeks.

Further details can be found on the gallery’s blog: Anna Lovely Gallery

The price value of art.

Categories
Fine Art

The London Metropolis

Iconic.

Early morning on a bright sunny day.

Sun potion and height just right; weather conditions top.

First class vantage point.

The photograph. The shot.

London looks happy… and so does the rest of the world!

Dream, London, dream. If I had a dream / I would dream of…

The London Metropolis

Categories
Videography

Alison – Daughter of Alice

An art house photography production that could be in the style of Lewis Carroll. Amongst the different hats he wore were: Photographer and Author. The title of this video, Alison — Daughter of Alice, is my original idea, and taken from Carroll’s two books starring Alice. My thought here imagines Alice as having not a son, but a daughter — hence: Alison. And, just to put the cart before the horse, I wrote a poem about these images before making the video — the poem includes a line about the Alison / Alice relationship and adventures.

All the photographs include reflections and have been processed to high-key. The music had to be heavenly, and so I chose Karl Jenkins’ In Paradisum, making the video uniquely atmospheric. As with the Penge video I posted two weeks ago, the music here was recorded and mixed by myself. The finished footage was processed to the lowest quality at high resolution which, paradoxically, had an enhancing effect giving the video an ethereal quality.

The images in this video are from the Anerley and Penge area of South East London, England.

Click here for the Alison — Daughter of Alice video

Categories
Videography

Penge

Penge is my home town in the suburbs of South East London, England, and comes under the London Borough of Bromley. It is where I went to Secondary School, Sea Cadets as a teenager… and fell in love — many times!

After leaving Secondary School, I moved away from the area and lived in different locations. I returned to the area in 1990 and moved into my current Penge address in 2002. It was here that I completed my three-year Photomedia BA (Hons) degree — and this was only the beginning…

Since then: explosions in my artistic output, writing and publishing two paperbacks, narrating and producing two audiobooks, creating and producing a videobook, and the beginning of music composition.

The Penge Video

This video contains photographs of Penge: landmarks, parks, flowers, abstract sequences, skies, perspective photographs, signage, street art, nighttime scenes and music.

The music is my recording of W. A. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, second movement, and recorded at home. To be more precise: I recorded the piano solo on my Broadwood acoustic piano, orchestral instruments on my Yamaha electronic keyboard and edited the recordings on my computer.

click here: Penge