‘The film was called [Project 87] because Jennifer Pike was
87 years old the next day. She drove up to the studio with her artwork and
equipment in the back of the car and I filmed the event on a little point and
shoot camera. Jennifer is a very special person who is a very gifted and
imaginative artist, performer and dancer with loads of unique ideas.’ (VW)
Last Monday we went to see Veryan Weston, Hannah Marshall and Jon Rose performing at the Blue
Coat School
(not the Bluecoat Arts Centre in town) with local boy Steve Boyland (who has
collaborated with Scott Thurston).
It was a brilliant exploration of the organ in the chapel
and was an experiment in half and quarter tones. I’ve got Veryan playing with
Hannah Marshall on the CD Haste. And he has worked with Jon Rose a great deal.
I don’t think all three have recorded together, and certainly not with Steve on
vocals.
Patricia (Farrell) performed with Veryan and Jennifer
Cobbing as recorded years ago here (and the visual text she made for it which
was performed at the first Bury Text Festival and in London with Veryan Weston on piano in 2005, ‘something I had secretly wanted when I devised the
piece but hardly thought possible’, as she wrote at the time, and which will be published by Veer soon). Go here and
scroll down the page for Patricia’s images as separate posts; go here for her explanatory prose.
After the gig we retired to The Coffee House (a pub, despite
the name!) and Patricia and I talked to Veryan about Jennifer (and many other
things). I also fessed up about one of the odder poems in A Translated Man.
Asked to write a poem for Jennifer Cobbing’s 90th birthday I was
put on the spot. Either I broke my self-imposed (and generational) rule to ONLY
write the poems of Rene Van Valckenborch or I had to stay in role. I chose the
latter, and remembered in time that I had a recording of Veryan Weston’s
brilliant Tassellations recorded –
magic! in Brussels
– at a building Van Valckenborch had written about in his ‘twitterodes’ (‘fixed
point or vortex/canopied ingress egress/the solidity of glass held by black
wrought ironwork a cage for shoppers musical instruments’). You can hear
Jennifer dancing on the CD and I decided that Rene Van Valckenborch was there
(that he is also clearly watching Kevin Ayres in the Waloon south on the same
testifies to more than his bilingualism). Thank God Veryan didn’t think that
this was the maddest thing ever. Hear an extract of Tassellations here.
Here is VanValckenborch's poem, written in French. (I would like to have been there with him.)
from background pleasures
from book two
with veryan weston
tessellations
for jennifer for luthéal piano
pike composition
cobbing
for
improviser
‘mostly
too quiet to
be heard’
we hear her
dancing in
brussels / rustles
a brush of heels
on floor gushes
printing vibrant scrolls (2003
March
the clavecin 14)
stop out the quills
quiver zitherly
the tap with a clap
or slap falls into frenzied
pentatones the harpe-
tirée stop pulled free
felt drops to
strangle an octave & lift it
this → (mute) (stone
↓)
moment (voice) (mask
↓)
jennifer (over) (monument
flattens like a kiss
the floor raising itself
to choreograph its tesserae
modestly pianissimo her
strings do not vibrate
against the quills
Watch Patricia Farrell and myself performing this part of ‘Background
Pleasures’ in the (visible) presence of Jennifer here:
Jennifer is now living in a nursing home in Bristol but we saw her last year at the opening of the Bob Cobbing exhibition at Liverpool John Moores organised by Rosie Cooper and William Cobbing. She seemed well for a woman (artist) of 94.
There is a further post about Veryan Weston here.
