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Musical Composition in the Archive

As part of our efforts to get the Epstein Archive out to the public and show you good people what’s down here, I’ve been meeting with a group of composition students from Birmingham Conservatoire. The plan is to have 10 or so students spend some time in the archive, find some source or sources of inspiration from it and write an original piece of music which will be performed at a special evening event at the gallery in June next year.

 It has been great meeting everyone and most of the students have now been up in smaller groups to have a look around the gallery and archive. What interests me the most is seeing where everyone falls subject wise: there has been very little cross over so far and, even if there was, it would be interesting to see two different perspectives on the same object/subject matter. As always, Theo Garman is a popular character because of his painting, his personality and, of course, his tragic illness and death. Sally Ryan interested one of the students, which is great as this would help give a voice to an important and underrepresented character.

 The students will, as time goes on, contribute to this blog and offer their own insights into the project and how their compositions are going.