SKU: FL.FX070839
SKU: HL.1115715
ISBN 9781705179741. UPC: 196288105640. 9.0x12.0 inches.
Thinking I Hear Thee Call by Cheryl Frances-Hoad is inspired by the life of Florence Attridge, an Essex woman who, whilst working at the Marconi factory in Chelmsford during WWII, helped to make secret radio sets for spys. In this piece for soprano, speaker and electronics, we hear Florence recount her experiences, whilst, in another, secret location, in another time, a spy goes through the radio's (complicated!) set up instructions one last time before going on their first reconnaissance mission. The electronic element takes sounds that are associated with Florence's life and the history of Marconi, including morse code and Absent, the first song to be broadcast from the factory. The text for Florence's part was written by Frances M Lynch based on research by Patricia Fara, and the speakers text comes from the official manual for the The British Type 3 Mark II Spy Radio. The work was commissioned by electric voice theatre and first Performed Online during the Covid-19 Pandemic, Aug 24th 2020 as part of the 'Echoes from Essex'. The project was supported by the Arts Council Emergency Response Fund (National Lottery). The performers from electric voice theatre are: Frances M Lynch - Soprano (Florence Attridge) Margaret Cameron - Speaker (Spy). The performers recorded their parts individually in their homes and the final work was combined with the composer's electronic track and produced by Frances M Lynch & Herbie Clarke at Birnam Studios, London.
SKU: HL.48025042
ISBN 9781705154212. UPC: 196288021711.
The work, which the composer counts among her favourite pieces, was inspired by the life and work of Marguerite Duras. In her play of the same name, a Flemish woman goes to Saigon at the beginning of the 20th century, marries a civil servant and has two children.After her husband's death, she also works as a piano player at the local 'Eden Cinema'. Eden Cinema, which is 'to be played like a traditional piano piece from the Romantic period' according to the composer, sounds poetic, but also cool, funny and extremely modern. Motif repetitions and ostinatos play a major role, as they do with Duras. In addition, quotations appear, literal ones from Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata as well as vague echoes of dance rhythms and commonplace music as used in silent film theatres. Thepreparation of the piano strings - metal parts on the high ones, rubber pieces on the low ones - creates a tonal patina and the impression of the past - 'in connection with Duras also recognizable as traumas sedimented in the subconscious, whose indistinct traces obsessively push to the surface' (Eckhard Weber).
