Half the Sky: music of Lindsay Cooper
- Submitting institution
-
University of East London
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 6
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Ganz toi toi toi, Osaka, Japan
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- -
- Year of first performance
- 2015
- URL
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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUSTssNtySy2oFzypZKa1PIRm5SdRNseX
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Half the Sky explores the relationship between live performance and recorded sound through experimentations in arrangements to produce re-compositions. Combining performance, transcriptions and arrangements, it introduces the work of the English feminist composer Lindsay Cooper (1951-2013) to new audiences and performers.
Pieces originally written by Cooper for the English experimental groups Henry Cow, News from Babel, and for Sally Potter’s film ‘The Gold Diggers’ were transcribed and performed by the Anglo-Japanese band Half the Sky. The band included original recording members (Cutler, Krause) alongside younger musicians, and conformed to Cooper’s practice of having a gender balance in the band. The music was arranged specifically to include both eastern and western instruments.
Many of Cooper’s original scores are lost or incomplete, while some of her compositions were written for recording-only projects. To make these performable Cawkwell transcribed multitrack recordings, then rearranged them. The original members of Henry Cow had different recollections of how the pieces had been performed, and sometimes felt the definitive recordings (from which younger members learned the pieces) could be ‘wrong’. Reconstruction of these pieces was thus a negotiating process to arrive at new interpretations which interrogate the concept of the ‘right’ version.
Cooper’s compositions are extremely complex and require intensive rehearsal, so opportunities for audiences to hear these compositions in concert are extremely rare. By increasing the number of Cooper’s compositions that are formally transcribed and arranged, Half the Sky makes it possible for others to play them, passing on her legacy to the next generation of performers and audiences.
Three concerts in Japan, 2015.
Rock in Opposition festival in France, 2016.
Café OTO, London, 2017, 2019
Avantgarde festival, Germany, 2017.
Zappanale festival, Germany, 2018.
Canterbury, 2019.
Bonn and Munster, Germany, 2019.
Funding: Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Arts Council Tokyo, Arts Council England, Municipality of Bonn
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
