May 2025: as will have been apparent over the last few news items, Late Music York have been a great supporter of my work in 2025 and many previous years as well as the instigators of several important projects. This opportunity comes courtesy of a joint project between Late Music, students from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and Music on the Edge (in the shape of Trio Agile – Susie Hodder-Williams, Chris Caldwell and Richard Horne).
When Chris Caldwell asked me to contribute to Late Music/Music on the Edge’s ‘Agile’ project with the Northern School of Contemporary Dance it didn’t take me very long at all to decide on revisiting Black Maria, the ballet score I composed in 2007 for a production at Sadlers Wells choreographed by Susie Crow with video projection by Zara Waldeback. Black Maria (‘black’ as in ‘witch’/’magic’) is a novel for children by Diana Wynne Jones to whom I happen to be related (she was my mum’s elder sister). Diana’s novel is set in the seaside town of Cranbury that is ruled over by Aunt Maria, a not particularly benign witch, whose coven is run by the women of the town (the Mrs Urs). Into this strange world comes Mig and her family (Mum and brother Chris) who immediately rub up against Aunt Maria’s version of reality; a complex and chaotic series of events ensue involving mind control, telepathy, being buried alive, time travel, shape-shifting, green boxes, wolves, orphans and love stories.
Whittling Diana’s plot down to an 80 minute ballet was hard enough but for the Agile project I set myself the challenge of ‘miniaturising’ the 40 minutes of Act 1 to fit the 5 minutes duration of the commission! I have managed to preserve the main events of the narrative through a series of ten 30 second sections but, beyond this, I have ‘fast forwarded’ through material, truncated phrasing, avoided most repetition and eschewed all transitions. The result is a kind of mad-cap intensification of the original ballet in which ideas rattle by in a medley that, I hope, captures something of the colour and eclecticism of the original score.
If all goes well with the 3rd May premiere then I plan to take the same approach to Act 2. Completing the piece, entitled Aunt Maria’s Dancing Master, came down to the wire but I am hoping the dancers on the project will feel able to improvise to the score and, to this end, I have dredged up some publicity photos and literature from the original production to provide inspiration. It was been great fun revisiting a piece written almost 20 years ago that remains one of my proudest achievements because of the quality of the music and the success of the collaboration. I am sure the Agile project will do Aunt Maria proud.