Tag: video

Categories
Poetry

‘A Natural Virtuoso!’

I went to the National Poetry Library in London earlier this year. I was on a mission: to find out which magazines published similar poetry to mine. For the next two hours I looked at everything that was available. All, bar one, had absolutely no poems about music — not even remotely! In my first poetry book ‘Soaring Higher’ (see ‘books’ page) there are six full length poems with such tasty flavours!

This poem is about a musician — and no ordinary musician at that — but a Virtuoso. “But what is a Virtuoso?” I hear you cry. According to Grove Music Online:

“Virtuoso ( It., from Lat. virtus : ‘excellence’, ‘worth’ ) A person of notable accomplishment; a musician of extraordinary technical skill. In its original Italian usage (particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries) ‘virtuoso’ was a term of honour reserved for a person distinguished in any intellectual or artistic field: a poet, architect, scholar etc. A virtuoso in music might be a skilful performer, but more importantly he was a composer, a theorist or at least a famous maestro di cappella. In the late 17th and 18th centuries a great number of Italian”

“A Natural Virtuoso!”

“Just a few words I’ve penned over tea

That I hope will warm your heart and bless

Who in all the wide-world could it be?

An appreciative music lover no less…”

A piece of music that requires virtuosic technique is J. S. Bach’s famous showstopper: Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Fragments of the Toccata are included in a video of myself performing the poem.

For the full poem click here: A Natural Virtuoso!

This video is one of eighteen poems available in my VideoBook. Click here for more details: Soaring Higher (videobook)

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