Eavesdropping Festival, Cafe Oto, London
Photos & live concert video from Eavesdropping Festival, Cafe Oto, March 2024
The set was recorded by BBC Radio 3 and broadcast on New Music Show 10 August 2024
Extracts were also broadcast on Deutschlandfunk Atelier neuer Musik 21 September 2024
‘Violinist-composer Ellie Wilson plays a set which evokes both the very personal and landscapes and locations …her work braids together so many musical worlds’ - Tom Service (BBC Radio 3)
‘The weekend’s best moments mixed humility and adventure. Ellie Wilson’s set is full of personal resonances ... her grandfather’s reminiscences of the Second World War, field recordings from Epping Forest (which one of Wilson’s ancestors helped save from enclosure), electronics and improvisation on both violin and hardanger fiddle’ Wire Magazine
Photos (c) Dimitri Djuric/Eavesdropping
Podcast: Eavesdropping Festival preview
Podcast: chatting to Juliet Fraser (Eavesdropping) about violins, influences, musical genres, layers of history & moths
Hear me chat to Eavesdropping curator Juliet Fraser about my chance encounter with a violin at school, finding my own soundworld, exploring layers of history, musical genres and moths.
PODCAST (13mins): on.soundcloud.com/L8VcM
I will be performing works from my latest album Memory Islands at Cafe Oto Dalston, on Friday 22 March as part of the excellent Eavesdropping Festival.
GIG: tickets can be purchased at www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/eavesdropping-festival-2024-2/
Here's a tiny preview of what i'll be performing. There will be violin, hardanger fiddle, drones, glitches, improv, field recordings and the voice of my grandad.
PREVIEW (INSTAGRAM): tinyurl.com/2m5ee7wr
New single: Delta + Music Video
Music video for new single Delta
Delta is the second single from my solo album Memory Islands, released on Bigo and Twigetti 29 September.
Ellie says “Delta was created entirely on my violin with pizzicato chopped up and spread across drum sample pads, allowing me to play patterns that wouldn’t have fallen naturally under my fingers. It was inspired by my father’s recovery from a coma after a cardiac arrest (he thankfully made a full recovery). As his brain fired up, memories were replayed as if happening for the first time, then filed away in the right places. In Delta, I was thinking about the electrical pulses that transmit this information around the brain. Memories returned slowly at first but then the floodgates opened. It reminded me of a TV documentary I’d seen where a dried-up riverbed filled with water after a monsoon; the water found its way through all the previously carved chasms and cracks in the bed (not dissimilar to the grooves on the surface of a brain) and then into a large river.”
The music video was made by my brother Mark Wilson. He explains the techy stuff much better than me …
“The animation in this music video is the output of custom developed Python code. The application samples audio chunks of Delta in real-time and evolves and adapts the evolution and appearance of lines, intersecting triangular formations and background gradients in response to pre-defined grouped frequency band intensity thresholds. Due to an element of randomness in vector calculation, the line animation will evolve differently each time the application is executed, so this video represents one of many possible interpretations of the audio stream.”
Download/stream single: https://bfan.link/ew-delta
Album CD/DL/Stream: https://bfan.link/memory-islands
New Release on Accidental Records
A short piece for violin and electronics is released on Accidental Records.
A new work of mine for violin and electronics is released today on Accidental Records. The compilation called Antechamber Music features music by a fantastic selection of experimental artists and is available on limited edition cassette (with glittery tape!), download, and streaming.
The piece is an shortened version of an unreleased track Will I Dream? which gets its title from a quote from Peter Hyam’s sequel to the Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. The moment the onboard computer HAL confronts his digital ‘mortality’ – all memories erased. It has an unsettling sound world with lots of space between the notes to create a sense of void. Most of the sounds you hear have originated from the violin, manipulated through FX pedals (including the TC Helicon VoiceLive) and computer processed effects.
New Release - Dominion of the Sword: Henry VI and Richard III
EP featuring selected incidental music and speeches from Shakespeare’s Globe 2019-20 productions of Henry VI and Richard III
This time last year I was frantically writing music for Shakespeare’s Globe 19/20 productions of Henry VI and Richard III. Working long hours with a bunch of inspiring colleagues to create something I was proud to be a part of. It all feels so removed from the world we currently find ourselves in.
This new release is a celebration of what we acheived and has been specially created to support Shakespeare’s Globe at this difficult time, with all proceeds donated to their unique theatres and education facility. #supporttheartsUK
Photo: Sophie Russell (Richard III) and Jonathan Broadbent (Henry VI): (c) Marc Brenner
Dominion of the Sword: Henry VI & Richard III
elliewilson.bandcamp.com
Release date: 6 November 2020 CD I DL + Booklet PDF
This EP features a selection of incidental music along with speeches by some of the Globe Ensemble actors, plus a specially written booklet note by Shakespeare's Globe research assistant Hailey Bachrach.
The music was hailed as ‘impressive … this season’s most memorable’ (Fringe Review) and described as ‘melt[ing] seamlessly into the drama’ (The Guardian) and ‘tonally akin to a Scorsese film’ (What’s On Stage).
Folk songs Adieu to Old England and Dominion of the Sword rub shoulders with 1960s country-rock hit For The Good Times which becomes an ironically haunting theme song for Richard III himself, accompanying his murders as a symbol of his world’s growing desensitisation to violence; and closing number, When the Roses Bloom Again. These are stitched together with cinematic underscoring, creating a doom-laden, unsettling world as the plays become more bloody and horrific.
“By pulling songs from across time we sought to explore how Shakespeare’s vision of a troubled, chaotic England spoke not just to his time or to our own, but could represent the wide and messy history of the whole nation.”
Tracklisting:
1 Henry VI ‘Was ever king that joyed an earthly throne / Woe above woe’
Jonathan Broadbent (Henry VI - Part II, Act IV Scene IX / Part III, Act II Scene V)
2 Dominion of the Sword
3 York ‘Now, York, or never, steel thy fearful thoughts’
Colin Hurley (Henry VI - Part II, Act III Scene I)
4 Henry VI ‘This battle fares like to the morning’s war’
Jonathan Broadbent (Henry VI - Part III, Act II Scene V)
5 Doom Adieu
6 Clifford ‘Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies’
Nina Bowers (Henry VI - Part III, Act II Scene VI)
7 Adieu to Old England
8 Queen Margaret ‘What, were you snarling all before I came’
Steffan Donnelly (Richard III - Act I Scene III)
9 For the Good Times
10 Richard III ‘Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds!’
Sophie Russell (Richard III - Act V Scene III)
11 When the Roses Bloom Again
Globe Ensemble Actors: Nina Bowers, Jonathan Broadbent, Steffan Donnelly, Colin Hurley, Sophie Russell
The Globe Band (Bastard Feudalism):
Ellie Wilson violin, saw, vocals
Thom Ashworth lead vocals, percussion, guitar, mandolin
Jay Chakravorty piano, harmonium, guitar, EBows
Midori Jaeger cello
All music written/arranged by Ellie Wilson
Music recorded in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe, London, December 2019
Speeches recorded in actors’ homes 2020
Edited and mixed by Thom Ashworth
Mastered by David Lefeber
℗ & © 2020 Ellie Wilson
Shakespeare’s Globe is an independent charity that receives no regular government subsidy and generates 95% of its income from theatre tickets and other on-site activities. Due to the 2020 pandemic, it is losing nearly £2 million a month. They need support more than ever to get through this most challenging time.
This release has been specially created to support Shakespeare’s Globe, with all proceeds donated to their unique theatres and education facility. It is available from my Bandcamp page only. elliewilson.bandcamp.com
Shakespeare Sonic Stories
Check out these beautiful audio maps for Richard III and Henry VI
sonic Story: Henry VI
A wonderful visual representation of Shakespeare’s Globe 2019 production of Henry VI.
It includes excellent descriptions of my music like 'ominous’ and ‘menacing’ and is a great overview of the structure of the play and how my score weaves through it.
It was designed for Shakespeare’s Globe by Dr William Renel, Director of Research (Touretteshero) and was created for the Relaxed Performances, so that audiences with aural sensitivity were aware of the louder parts.
I love it!
See Sonic Story for Richard III below …
Sonic Story: Richard III
BBC Radio 3 Music Matters Interview
I was interviewed by BBC Radio 3 Music Matters last week about Shakespeare and Epping Forest
Listen to me chatting to Tom Service about writing music for Shakespeare’s Richard III and Henry VI at The Globe, and about my Epping Forest artist residency. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bmbw
Composer for Shakespeare's Globe
Super excited to composing for Richard III & Henry VI at Shakespeare’s Globe.
“Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And, live we how we can, yet die we must”
I’m super excited to be working with the incredible Shakespeare’s Globe as composer for Richard III & Henry VI, directed by Sean Holmes and Ilinca Radulian.
All three parts of Henry VI have been condensed into one epic production and will present the Wars of the Roses like you’ve never seen them before, and the menacing and bloody Richard III concludes Shakespeare's first tetralogy.
I will be writing music and performing the music. The run is from 21 November 2019 – 26 January 2020 in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Tickets here: Henry VI & Richard III
“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York”
Artist-In-Residence Epping Forest
I’ve been invited by City of London Epping Forest to be its Artist in Residence in 2019.
If you follow me on Instagram you may have recently noticed an influx of photos of trees, mushrooms and ponds. I am excited to announce that I’ve been invited by City of London Epping Forest to be Artist in Residence in 2019 - a whole year let loose in the forest to explore nature, local history and sound.
Having lived near the forest all my life, I'm in my element researching how people have shaped Epping Forest throughout the centuries: you can find Iron Age camps, medieval roads, a Tudor hunting lodge, an C18th grotto, pollarded trees, ponds created by WWII bombs, and maybe even Dick Turpin’s hideout!
Although most of my reading is online, it’s lovely to have some books to dip into. Some of the older ones I own belonged to my Great Grandfather, who lived on Smarts Lane in Loughton. I’ll shed some light on my family connections to the history of the forest in another blog.
Over the coming months I will be writing music inspired by the stories and the places I visit in the forest. If you want to follow my progress, please sign up to my newsletter and follow me on Instagram I Facebook I Twitter.
Forest Focus Magazine announces my residency on pages 5 and 13.
My project will be linked to Waltham Forest’s year as London Borough of Culture 2019, a Mayor of London initiative, and will integrate with an exciting new project called ‘The People’s Forest’ which is being curated by Luke Turner and Kirsteen McNish.
Want to visit Epping Forest? The London Overground connects London Liverpool Street to Epping Forest at Chingford and the Central Line offers access points to the forest from Leytonstone through to Epping.