Moth x Human Dutch Premiere
Kamerorkest van het Noorden perform Moth x Human at Groningen Forum
Photos from my lovely trip to Groningen in northern Netherlands on 8 November. 🇳🇱
A huge dank u to Kamerorkest van het Noorden for reaching out to me a few months ago to ask if they could get the score of Moth x Human to perform as part of LetsGro festival at the stunning arts centre Groningen Forum.
Singing with Nightingales
A duet with a nightingale for Earth Day 2021.
Here's last night's broadcast for #earthday #singingwithnightingales. It's a beautiful listen from start to finish but this link drops you in straight at my little piece for hardanger fiddle called Unnamed/Unseen.
Produced by the Nest Collective and hosted by folk singer Sam Lee this free audio broadcast, live on YouTube, takes you on a journey into the woods of Sussex to hear the unforgettable song of the nightingale.
Colin Riley's Lost Engines (Ellie Wilson Remix)
A remix for composer Colin Riley’s Re-Place Project 2020.
Lovely to be asked by composer Colin Riley to remix a track from his album In Place. I picked Lost Engines, which is a celebration of our industrial heritage. It is built around a folk song called The Old Miner and I cheekily added a few extra things (drums & violins) to create a big anthemic feel. Have a listen …
Re-Place
Due to social distancing and self-isolation, our sense of place has taken a hit in recent weeks. But living in isolation has also started to make us all think differently, not just about the fragilities of our world but also about our need to be connected to it, and to each other. Normality may be something we don’t return to, or even wish to return to, and there is a growing sense that so many things might realign in the future.
With this in mind I’ve started Re-Place, a set of remixes of the songs from my 2018 project In Place and a chance to form a community of online creativity during this strange period we all find ourselves in. Nothing too serious. The idea is very much that any of the shared elements of the original audio can get mashed up into a new alignment. No rules. No expectations. A straight-forward celebration of our connectedness.
The remixes will be uploaded as they get created. Enjoy.
Colin Riley (Artistic Director, Re-Place)
In Place is a gathering together of feelings, associations, geographical details, regional identities, dialects, place names, personal memories, imagined routes, and historical connections featuring words by writers including Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris, Richard Skelton and Autumn Richardson. For more info about this fascinating project visit Colin’s website.
All the remixes can be found on Soundcloud
Iron Age earthworks in Epping Forest
The first in a series of blogs exploring the history of Epping Forest.
“The Past has a life in the forest. Nowhere is it easier to imagine the long pageant of history”
#1 Grimsbury Castle (Iron Age Hillfort in West Berkshire)
Loughton Camp is one of the most magical places in Epping Forest. One of two Iron Age earthworks in Epping Forest (the other, Ambresbury Banks, is situated a little further North), it is thought to have been built around 500BC and used by the neighbouring Trinovantes and Catuvellauni tribes to hold livestock and as a place of refuge. By the time Julius Caesar led the Roman invasion in 55AD, the Trinovantes were considered the most powerful Celtic tribe in Britain, teaming up with Boudica and the Iceni during the uprising against the Romans in 61AD. Although excavations have proven Romans were in the forest, the legend that Ambresbury Banks was the location of Boudica’s defeat has been dismissed by historians.
Loughton Camp is hidden off the beaten track in Great Monk Wood, on the edge of a high ridge approximately 110m above sea level. It is now densely wooded, but the 10 acre camp would have been built there as a great viewpoint. The banks would have been 3 metres high and the ditches surrounding them 3 metres deep. Image #1 shows how a hillfort built around the same time might have looked.
#2 Loughton Camp Map (drawn by BH Cowper C19th)
Fast-forward over 2000 years and Loughton Camp is also said to be where highwayman Dick Turpin had his hideout in the 1700s. Such was Turpin’s notoriety in the area that many Loughton residents built ‘Turpin Traps’, wooden flaps at the top of the stairs that wedged between floor and ceiling keeping them and their valuables safe - a sort of C18th panic room! Nowadays the forest is thick with trees right up to the edge of the roads, but back then they were kept clear to prevent robbers like Turpin from lying in wait to ambush unsuspecting carriages.
#3 Loughton Camp c1885
I find it fascinating to think of all the people who have stood on the site of this camp before me, their stories embedded in the spirit of the place. Even in the short period of 130 years the area has changed. See in photo #3 how open the space is, with lots of fox and rabbit burrows, versus in #4 how tall hornbeams surround the area cathedral-like today.
If you want to go and explore for yourself, here are the directions on the Epping Forest website
#4 Loughton Camp Dec 2018 with the family
