In yesterday’s workshop at the Artizan Street Community Centre, E1, we de-constructed a chicken casserole…in song-form.  The discussion had turned to the latest food trends in the capital, and elderly local estate resident Trudy O’Brien recounted her own gastronomic ‘snapshot’: namely, she ordered a chicken casserole at a nearby café, and didn’t quite get the homely stew she was after.  This triggered a new snapshot song – composed by the group in the ensuing 10 minutes – that involved each of them taking on the role of an ingredient in Trudy’s casserole, coming together singing the refrain “Where’s the chicken…?!”

Bonkers?  Yes, absolutely!  Every bit as bonkers as the graphic-equaliser-London-skyline song from Fellows Court Community Centre last weekend, and the smartphone-zombie, CCTV and ‘soundscape’ performances from the Barbican workshops, to name just a few: delightful examples of the creativity that can bubble up when you’re nudged gently out of your comfort zone at a Snapshot Songs taster workshop.

When The SHM Foundation first proposed the idea of a zeitgeist-themed song-cycle, one that built upon and updated the traditional song-cycle form, the first big challenge was: how do I go about capturing the ‘zeitgeist’, and what on earth is it anyway?  I quickly abandoned the idea of trying to be too all-compassing with it – and opted to deconstruct it into a handful of ingredients, or ‘snapshots’, dipping in and out of the rich stew of modern London life.  It’s turning into a very interesting journey!

Songs so far that have a place in the cycle include adaptations of modern poetry from the likes of Mat Lloyd (“This City”) and Luke Wright, alongside new commissions from the Barbican Young Poets group, who are tackling the challenging subject of mental health and suicide.  I’ll be transforming the tweets of the late, great Ivy Bean (the world’s oldest tweeter at 104) into song. We’ll have stories of mobile-phone abandonment and wild goose chases with sat-nav.  The members of Only Connect will be singing – and rapping – about “The Next Big Thing”, and exciting collaborations are in the pipeline with FutureBand and Body & Soul.  And, naturally, I’m looking to develop some snapshot songs from the gems of zeitgeist ideas that are coming out of our workshops; all ultimately fleshed out into a full arrangement for soloists, choir, drummers and symphony orchestra.  It will hopefully turn into a magnificent musical casserole that we all find is to our liking!

The post “Where’s the chicken…” – a blog post by the Snapshot Songs composer Stuart Hancock appeared first on Snapshot Songs Blog.

Snapshot Songs involves over 150 singers, musicians and poets coming together to create and perform a collection of songs composed especially by the international award-winning composer Stuart Hancock. But how did this project come about?

The SHM Foundation likes to get individuals and organisations that wouldn’t normally work together to collaborate in new ways. We encourage our partners go beyond their comfort zone to create world class art events that expand our notions of what participation can be.

Award-winning composer Stuart Hancock became composer-in-residence at the Foundation after the performance of his Folk Song Suite by the Holst Singers at the Foundation-supported event Voices Now in the Roundhouse in 2011. The SHM Foundation asked Stuart to create a brand new song cycle that would reflect the complexities of London life today, and bring some contemporary freshness to this traditional form. Snapshot Songs was born.

Barbican-Guildhall Creative Learning has also been working in partnership with The SHM Foundation for some years now on new ways of engaging in cross-arts collaboration for large-scale participatory performance projects such as Disruption and Come and Play. The SHM Foundation were delighted then when they agreed to collaborate again and explore ways of working with a composer as the presentation partner for Snapshot Songs.

The Snapshot Songs community has now grown to include groups such as Body and Soul, Only Connect, Peter Ash and the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, The Silk Street Chorus, creative learning ensembles Drum Works, Barbican Young Poets, Future Band, and a large number of singers hoping to form the Snapshot Songs choir or bag a solo!

Keep coming back to this blog to see how the search for the capital’s best and most varied singers is going and check in on Stuart’s composition process. To find out where you can catch the next Snapshot Songs workshop or to book an audition, subscribe here.

The post The Story So Far appeared first on Snapshot Songs Blog.