Songs for Swansea

 
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Commissioned by the Swansea International Festival for soprano Céline Wasmer and Sinfonia Cymru.

This site-specific installation was composed in collaboration with Welsh poet Lydia White for the amazing collections centre at the Swansea Museum.

The performance combined live songs and instrumental music, recorded samples of current-day Swansea, spoken poetry, and installations of written text. It was a mobile work, meaning the musicians and the audience moved around the collection as the performance took place.

 

The work was inspired by the museum’s eclectic and un-curated collections, which house a huge variety of objects not currently on display in public galleries.

One interesting example referenced in our work was a collection of  feathers painted by ‘Cape Horners’ during their travels at sea (pictured right). Swansea’s historical involvement with the copper trade forms an important context for Lydia White’s texts, written specifically for the project.

The music for the installation quotes various melodies from Edward Jones's Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1784), as well as popular hymns and tunes associated with Swansea and the museum’s collection.

Listen (extracts from live recording):

Cape Horner’s painted feather, Swansea Museum Collections

Cape Horner’s painted feather, Swansea Museum Collections

Artwork from Edward Jones’s Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards

Artwork from Edward Jones’s Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards

 
Manilla, Swansea Museum Collections

Manilla, Swansea Museum Collections

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