SOUNDING THE DEEP MARCH 2012 17 Hull Philharmonic Orchestra PERFORMERS HULL SCHOOL OF UNIVERSITY OF HULL CRANBROOK STRING QUARTET LINCOLNSHIRE YOUTH PERFORMANCE ARTS – Tutor: Rob Mackay – Sound Diffusion Tutor: Helga Penny CELLO ENSEMBLE HULL COLLEGE LAPTOP MUSICIANS Violin: Conor King, Kieran Ly nch Musical director: Glenis Malkin DANCE Niall Thomas Viola: Rachael Windass Staff: Joanna Lidgett Cello: Felicity Green Leader: Penny James Tutors: Sarah Roe, Lisa Chapman Macon Holt Charlotte Lincoln Costume: Yvonne Roe Ben Fowler EAST RIDING SENIOR Maia Howell James Danville Tom Wright PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE Emilia Pearce Daniel Hayhurst THE ALBERMARLE Tutor: Christopher Sykes Rosie Spinks Grace Lilley WIND QUINTET Laura Bradford Beth Read Amy Lumb Louis Clark Emma Gorst Jessica McAndrew-Woods Tutor: Gary Oglesby Lottie Dodd Harriet Grainger Maisie Moran Flute: Katie Newton Katie Dodsworth Harvey Adcock Kimberley Palmer Oboe: Ruby Orlowska Sarah Massey Madeleine Dwyer Michaela Robson Clarinet: Peter Goodwin Ruairi Sinkler Molly Welling Vicky Smithson French horn: George Maynard Matthew Taylor Grace Wilson Emily Start Bassoon: Katherine Carter Benjamin Wadsworth Sophia McGill Rebekkah Thompson EAST RIDING STRING DECTET Mollie Zalas Rebecca Walker Tutors: Patricia Mitchell, James UNIVERSITY OF HULL Matthew Tudball MUSIC O’Doherty, Christine Quick Soprano: Yumin Lim, Alexandra Hazard Georgina Lambe Tutor: Phil Codd Violin: Qianyi Liu, Jacob Phillipson, Piano: Graziana Presicce Alexandra Burkitt Danny Hardwick Grace Sansom, Xiao Yuan Wang Gaia Pitt-Judd Sam Hargreaves Viola: Chloe Salvidge, Philippa Latham Lewis Brown Ash Foster Cello: Bryony Owen, Sophie Walker William Cherry Matt Guy Bass: Jonathan Taylor, Frances Tibble Johanna Valkamo MEDIA Rebecca Seamer Tutor: Susan Jarvis Chris Duncombe Jamie Baker Jason Bennett Richard Hallworth PRODUCTION MANAGER HULL PHILHARMONIC Graham Henderson Musical Director: Andrew Penny SOUND SUPERVISOR Project Manager: Andrew Pate Administrator: Yvonne Lyster Barwick Andy Nurse PUBLICITY LIGHTING SUPERVISOR Mapa Tim Mitchell GRAPHIC DESIGN PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Identikit Henry Wadsworth PRINT Chas D Pullan The St Hugh’s Foundation Established in 1992, the Foundation takes its name from the former headquarters of Lincolnshire & Humberside Arts. Although small in scale, it has a distinguished record of encouraging and supporting innovative development projects that have made an impact in and far beyond the region of benefit. The Foundation aims to encourage innovation in arts practice, policy and management in its area of benefit by enabling applicants from Lincolnshire, East Yorkshire and the City of Hull to make their own impact regionally, nationally or internationally through new work in any of the art forms. The current Arts Awards programme, introduced in 2010, has three objectives: • To invest in developmental creative projects that will evolve and grow over time. • To help to address regional needs for innovation and change that can be clearly identified in arts practice, policy or management. • To back projects which are well-conceived, carefully planned and well-managed. www.sthughsfoundation.co.uk SOUNDING THE DEEP Sounding the Deep was commissioned career with the secrets of the ocean JAMES GOWER – SOLOIST in March 2011 by the Hull Philharmonic depths. However, it wasn’t until Beebe DESCENT Orchestra as a work for orchestra and was in his forties that he made his James was born in Newport, South Hull College bass voice for performance in March first ‘helmet dives’ off the Galápogos Wales and studied at St John’s College, 2012 as part of the Cultural Olympiad Islands becoming the first scientist to Cambridge and the Royal Academy of celebrations in the city of Hull. photograph and investigate the world Music. He is currently studying with Cathy A LECTURE BY WILLIAM BEEBE of the coral reef. It was shortly after Pope and Robert Lloyd. Hull’s landmark Millennium building, these initial studies that he began to James made his English National Opera World premiere SOUNDING THE DEEP The Deep Submarium, celebrating consider how man might investigate debut performing Lord Krishna/Parsi I The Wonderer its 10th anniversary in 2012, initially the deep ocean beyond the limit of Rustomji Satyagraha by Philip Glass and II The Kingdom of the Helmet inspired the title and its subject matter. unaided human capability. joined the ENO Young Singers Programme III The Birth of the Bathysphere for the 2007/2008 season. The composition tells the story of With President Roosevelt’s personal IV Descent into Perpetual Night such exploration in the words of a support and the young and wealthy He has performed as an associate artist V Half Mile Down remarkable zoologist and explorer, engineer Otis Barton he designed and with Welsh National Opera, and with Composer: Nigel Morgan the American William Beebe (1877 – built a ‘bathysphere’ to go to depths Glyndebourne Festival Opera were he performed Pinellino Gianni Schicchi, Libretto: Nigel Morgan and Phil Legard 1962), the father of ocean ecology and beyond man’s previous experience. the first man to descend ‘a half mile (broadcast on BBC TV and performed at Soloist: James Gower down’. Beebe (pronounced Bee – be) Beebe’s story of this personal the Proms) and among others has also Piano: Andrew Broome and Peter Sproston was the David Attenborough of his journey into the unknown is told in performed with Glyndebourne on Tour, Double Bass: Laura Fox day, a remarkable scientist, writer, wonderfully poetic, indeed rhapsodic Cambridge Touring Opera, and Opera Up Percussion: Laura Bradford and Christopher Sykes and communicator. Friend of movie language. His writing is testament to Close. stars and presidents, he was a best- an age when the word rather than The Hull Philharmonic Orchestra James has a wide oratorio repertoire and selling author and ‘must-hear’ lecturer. the image was the most effective Leader: Patricia Mitchell is in demand throughout the country. Indeed, in Sounding the Deep, Beebe is medium of communication. In the Engagements outside the UK have included Conductor: Andrew Penny portrayed by the bass soloist giving one intense darkness of the undersea Israel in Egypt, Pagano I Lombardi and Silva Signed presentation: Yvonne Lyster Barwick of his celebrated lectures – probably a world technology simply didn’t allow Ernani at Dortmund’s Konzerthaus. first for a musical composition. Beebe to ‘show’ his discoveries INTERVAL through photography. The libretto, taken entirely from Beebe’s book Half Mile Down, traces SHOALS Beebe’s fascination from early in his DEEP SEA DIVER SHOALS for two voices and piano On the perimeter of the orchestral estuary that is Sounding the Deep lie six mysterious shoals. Partially hidden islands of music and sounds inextricably University of Hull linked, they are about to be revealed. Their evocative titles come from words and BLAZE 1 THE SCENARIO phrases found in Robert Francis’ poem Deep Sea Diver, said to have been inspired The East Riding of Yorkshire Percussion Ensemble The solo bass voice is the zoologist and explorer William Beebe giving one of by the very exploits of William Beebe. But these Shoals don’t belong to Beebe’s his celebrated public lectures. He comes on stage and gives a short spoken era; an era when the natural world was still regarded as largely undefiled by NEVER DAY AND UNDER NIGHT introduction based on a series of slide-projected photographs. These slides give human exploitation. The music and soundworld of Shoals sing out in a worldwide for cello & double bass ensemble the audience a brief synopsis of his career as zoologist and proto-ecologist. chorus of concern for the fragile ecology of the oceans. Lincolnshire Youth Cello Ensemble They include images of the Bronx Zoological Gardens (where he was the youngest ever director), British Guiana, Malaysia and the Western Himalaya. The six scores for student ensembles bring music, sonic art and sound design BLAZE 2 He then summons on stage his pianist and they begin together to tell the together in an uninterrupted sequence. Like those creatures new to science, still WEIRD WATER LAND story in song of The Wonderer, a sculpture in the San Francisco Explorers being discovered in our deep oceans, this new music is unusual and strange. Its Club that so inspired Beebe’s work. shapes and colourful forms may challenge your ideas about music. Nevertheless, for wind quintet be intrigued by the way music and sound can, through the agent of new Kingston upon Hull In the concert version Beebe is joined by the orchestra to introduce his technology, work in partnership to produce vivid aural oceanscapes. BLAZE 3 audience to his dream of descending to the largely unknown world beneath the waves. The second movement tells of Beebe’s exploits TO THE DARK UNSEEN as a helmet diver where ‘just below the surface I found a new for string dectet world’. In the third movement Beebe explains about the ‘birth of the The East Riding of Yorkshire bathysphere’, the craft in which he planned to descend a half mile down. In the fourth movement the libretto brings together part of BLAZE 4 the actual transcript of his commentary during his record-breaking INTO THE GREEN INVERTED DAWN dive with his own and later reflections on this experience. for string quartet Kingston upon Hull In Descent into Perpetual Night, and with the aid of a on-screen Laptop Musicians and Sound Engineers from the University of Hull depth counter, Beebe takes us into the extreme darkness and isolation of 3000’ plus and to a point where the cable tethering BLAZE 5 the bathysphere reaches its end. Throughout this movement the voices of Otis Barton and Gloria Hollister comment on the progress of the bathysphere on screen in teleprinter–type SOUNDING THE DEEP Second performance text of their voices on the telephone line connected to the bathysphere. In the fifth and final movement, as Beebe waits for the ascent to the surface, he reflects on the comparisons ASCENT between explorations of the ocean depths with that of space Hull College itself..