The most recent entries are posted below - please use the calendar and lists of categories on the right to find something interesting to read!
I’ve had an email from our producer, Peter Larsen, saying he’s just added some more elements (cello, violin and vocal harmony) to Martha Tilston’s track, with 2 of her musicians.
In typically understated Scandinavian style he was “mildly blown away by their musicianship” and how they “took the track from the universe of amazing, to even more amazing”‘.
Officially his favourite song… this week!
What a crazy Dane.
I think I speak for all of Ginkgo Music’s volunteers and contributing artists when I say that we were profoundly moved and excited by Barack Obama’s election victory last night. For many reasons.
I read in a UK newspaper last week that he intends to create 5 million new jobs in the green sector, and wean the US from its dependence on fossil fuel. I’m not religious - but if I were I’d say (with an apology to Mr. Dawkins): “Thank God”.
Perhaps under Obama the USA will now take leadership in calling an end to our war on nature, and establish sound environmental management of this rare and beautiful planet, that we may continue to share it with the millions of other species of plant and animal who have survived and arrive with us at this moment of renewed hope.
This ‘natural growth’ forest, is the remains of the ancient forest that once covered most of the hills and glens. Walking through the patches of sunlight we fell silent. Giant ant nests, butterflies, blueberries and the springy sphagnum beneath our feet, cast a spell. Tolkein fans thrilled to the Elvin nature of the place. The vitality and texture of the soft green vegetation on the forest floor gave an almost ‘mist like’ quality. The light filtered gently through leaves, flickering like water. Unlike the plantation forest, trees here grow far enough apart to make walking easy and a pleasure, while bracken, moss, and other vegetation receive sunlight to grow and provide a habitat for the fauna to thrive. This is crucial for the maintenance of biodiversity. We believe beauty inspires us, not only to protect this planet’s biodiversity, but to give us something important in our lives.
The team look through a high powered telescope - not for hunting purposes - but to see the many red deer herds that live up on the hills. Deer descend into the glens in cold weather, but the ticks and midges (which Scotland is famous for) keep them up on the high ridges in August. One female was standing outlined against the sky on the ridge and framing her were two sets of magnificent twelve point antlers - the two great stag owners of which must have been sitting just beyond the horizon line. It was a wonderful and evocative sight. Shifting the lens slightly our guide, Jim Cornfoot, found a herd of young males, all sitting peacefully, their graceful antlers like natural crowns. Edwin Landseer would have reached for his paintbrushes. What was most amazing to us was how, with the naked eye, we simply could not see any sign of the deer at all. Without Jim’s knowledge we would never even have known to train our binoculars on the hillside - mistaking their shadows for naturally occurring bumps in terrain.
Our guide, Jim Cornfoot, who generously and graciously gave us his time as a donation to Ginkgo Music, has lived and worked in the area for many years. He spoke passionately about the area and about the skills needed to preserve and rejuvenate the biodiversity of the Cairngorms National Park. He showed us how the areas where deer and goats (which have gone wild, having once been released to act as ’sheep goats’ – keeping sheep away from dangerous cliff edges with their presence) are now beginning to re-forest. Small clumps of beech, alder and rowan are growing back, right the way up the hillsides on the lower hills. It surprised us – we’d thought the altitude was the reason the forest didn’t grow, creating the ‘traditional highland’ barren hillside.
Irma, the gorgeous Cuban looks out over the loch. If you look behind her head you can see the traditional way the hillside’s heather is cultivated – burnt off in patches during the last of the winter snows – so the patches of snow stop the flames. Whole sides of mountains are pink, while the velvet green sweeps downwards with its soft enveloping texture across the valley floor. Thus, the baby grouse get new low growth to feed on, while mummy and daddy grouse can build their nests in the older, higher growth – out of sight of foxes and humans with guns. Although forest would have grown here originally, this heather moor maintenance is hundreds of years, if not millennia old. But this traditional method is now being challenged and displaced by newer, and less effective measures. Grouse shoots are finding not enough prey, and are erroneously blaming wild birds of prey – including the magnificent (reintroduced) osprey (a fishing eagle). In the past it was gamekeepers and shepherds who were thought to have contributed to the near extinction of these birds in this area.
Mthoko, a Zulu by tribe and nature, conjures clouds using a mixture of traditional South African dance (using his wellies as a drum box) and T’ai Chi. His favourite part of South Africa is the Dragonsburg, so he felt very much at home in this dramatic, regal environment. Luckily, he was less successful at conjuring rainclouds, and we marvelled at the azure blue sky seen above the craggy hills that tumbled one after another across the glen. The weather is notorious in the Cairngorms. The morning had started ‘dree’ or grey, rainy and misty, and by midday we had brilliant sunshine. Thus we knew the place loved us as much as we loved it. However walking the hills is no joke – if you go, make sure someone knows your exact route, that you have proper kit, supplies and a compass. A compass you know how to use. Every year people are lost out on the hills. Rescuers scramble from nearby villages and risk their own lives looking for them. There are so many ways our behaviour can impact a rural or wilderness place, and all those who make their lives there. Including the humans.
Small jewel flowers, like this beautiful yellow specimen, grow amongst cushions of sphagnum moss along the Findhorn River valley. A wild version of the ‘pincushion’ (scabious) you may grow in your gardens, and bright purple members of the violet family were also flowering. Butterflies flitted about the place. We tried to keep our great city feet off the flora, the fauna usually got out of the way quick enough. We sighted many red squirrels, the native squirrel species of the British Isles, long since extinct in most other parts of the country. It was quite adorably cute. Yes I know we shouldn’t anthropomorphise animals (apparently it’s bad for some reason – oh yes, human egos) but they did not disappoint and on the ‘Beatrix Potter Scale’ (a scale for measuring cuteness) they scored a top eight out of eight. The local cattle varieties, whose calves looked like a cross between a teddy bear and a cow, scored a six point five.
By the side of the loch, peace and quiet. Babchicks, and grebes with their astonishing amber eyes, show us that it is not only in Ecuador that beautiful and exotic looking creatures can live – if we let them have their habitat. The beech has small delicate leaves that flutter in the wind. There are both a ‘weeping’ and an upright variety. Ants ‘farm’ white fly in the branches (occasionally dropping off onto horrified city ginkgo members’ shoulders or arms). ‘Old man’s beard’ and other lichens create the illusion of coral reefs over the boughs and branches, in the ‘underwater’ quality of the green-tinged, leaf dappled light. Branches and trunks are covered in thick green velvet moss, as though some mad artist has sewn them soft green suits. Birds call and sing. A woodpecker hammers. The waters of the loch are glimpsed through hanging green pennants. We want to lie on the soft mossy floor and sleep.
This is a traditional and beautiful view of this area of Scotland. A view down the glen, with the Findhorn river and its dark amber waters. This is not pollution, but the leeching out of the peat moors along the way. It is this fine water that gives the many different Speyside Malts their distinctive and delicious flavours. Neil – a team buddy – handed out whisky and water before dinner. As with many aquried tastes, some found it unpleasant, although many of us had our eyes opened to the divine nature of the drink and finally ‘got’ why people make such a fuss about it the world over. The trick seems to be – drink with water so you get the flavour, rather than just the alcohol kick, and drink with a soft water – like the water it was made with in the first place. We were lucky our soft mineral water flowed free out of the tap. But all of us loved the deep whisky colour of the Findhorn. With the blue sky reflected in it, dotted and framed by granite pebbles and boulders sparkling with pyrites, it was a glorious sight and sound.
The Ginkgo Team originally went in search of ospreys, but they had already ‘left the nest’. Some of us were worried there was not much else to see or do – we couldn’t have been more wrong. Simply being in that beautiful place was a balm for the soul, mind and heart. This is why we think city people need wildernesses to be not only protected, but also ‘regrown’ wherever possible. Despite the lack of osprey sightings the Ginkgos had a great time in the Cairngorms National Park, hosted by the wry and dry (as wry and dry as a fine malt we may say) Ian Bishop and his wife Liz in their superbly comfortable, warm, clean, and spacious Green ‘hostel’. www.slochd.co.uk. We can only thank them, and guide Jim Cornfoot whose passion and love of the area inspired us. Lock up your whisky - We will be back.
We’re delighted to announce that The Nextmen have been given the go ahead by Universal Music to record a new acoustic version of one of their songs for Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador.
The Nextmen, aka Dom Search and Brad Baloo, have been producing, mixing and DJ-ing all across the world. Influenced by their eclectic DJ sets, their current and third studio album, ‘This Was Supposed To Be The Future’, revels in everything from reggae, dancehall and hip hop to funk, soul and rare groove.
The Nextmen were recommended to me by palaeoclimatologist Professor David Beerling back in June at the Hay-On-Wye Festival of Literature. David, whose book The Emerald Planet examines the role evolving plants had in shaping the atmosphere during the last 3.5 billion years, gave a brilliantly lucid and beautifully illustrated talk entitled Fossil Forests and Climate Crisis, following which I asked him, over a jug of Pimms, who he would like to see on our Ecuador album. The rest, as they say, is history… or soon will be.
Mathematicians have demonstrated that the beat of a butterfly’s wing will alter the timing of a hurricane on the other side of the planet six months later. Songwriters and singers have an advantage in that, under the lens of a melody, the smallest detail can be magnified and reverberate in a listener’s head. The things we think, the things we say and the things we sing make a difference.
As an organisation committed to halting deforestation by creating projects linking music and ecology, one of our goals is to stimulate new music writing that understands, illuminates and transforms our relationship to nature. A growing number of poets are addressing ecological issues - does ecopoetry provide clues for songwriters and lyricists? If you want to explore this idea here are a couple of recent collections:
Both of these are available from the Ginkgo Music online shop: www.ginkgomusic.com/shop
We agree with what Bloodaxe write on their website: “As the world’s politicians and corporations orchestrate our headlong rush towards eco-Armageddon, poetry may seem like a hopeless gesture. But its power is in the detail, in the force of each individual poem, in every poem’s effect on every reader. And anyone whose resolve is stirred will strengthen the collective call for change.”
Have a read.
Two years ago I joined the Ginkgo Music team to produce a 14 track CD with different acoustic artists.It took some time to get the Ginkgo vehicle into the right gear but I think we’ve gathered a first class line up.
One of the things I’ve found particularly satisfying on this project is the fact that the music is so performance driven. I remember our first recording session with Kate Walsh. She sat down, played the song four times and that was it: a real rock’n'roll moment dressed in singer/songwriter clothes (if that makes sense to anyone).
And Devon Sproule, who generously came all the way from O2 venue (where she was supporting Lucinda Williams) to record her track. I should mention we later added pedal steel guitar player BJ Cole on Devon’s track who agreed to give his time and playing in support of our cause. He also entertained me with tales from the road and I discovered he worked on some of my favourite David Sylvian records (David Sylvian and I once shared the same hair style).
Dobet Gnahoré and her guitarist/husband Colin came over from Belgium and we worked in more detail on this track adding percussion and even some backing vocals. Being a guitarist myself I couldn’t help noticing Colin didn’t make one mistake the whole day (how does he do it?).
Cibelle is another artist I was really excited to work with. We recorded her track really simple, voice and guitar. I love the recording we’ve done, it sounds really intimate and fresh. Great voice.
Who else can I mention? Martha Tilston, Nathan Ball, Alan Lacroix, Morgan Szymanski, Valentin Gerlier, they’re all great. I’ll write more about them next time. Right now I am looking forward to the session with David McAlmont who is someone I’ve thought very highly of for some time.
Best
Peter Larsen (producer, Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador)
About two and a half years ago I was teaching a piano lesson at the Conservatoire (Blackheath). My adult student (who seemed to have plenty of talent but very little application to his piano studies) showed me some publicity material for a project he was setting up. The project sounded great, but I noticed that they had no website so I offered to help, as web programming is another string to my bow, as it were.
Dominic gave up his piano lessons and I joined the growing team at Ginkgo Music, making lots of great friends and discovering some amazing music that I may not have otherwise found. Anybody that knows me will know that it’s not often that I say things like that - but this music is genuinely high quality stuff, whilst still being open and engaging.
Two years down the line and I’m in another piano lesson - or at least I’m in my teaching room at St Dunstan’s College waiting for my pupil, who is late. Whilst waiting I pull out my headphones and grab a sneaky listen to a track our producer Peter has sent me that morning, entitled “This is the Waltz” by Valentin Gerlier. I’m completely entranced, so when Georgina arrives (rather late and a bit out of breath) I just smile and offer her one of the headphones… “Coooool!”, she says and I tell her about the project and what I’m up to. I trained at the Royal College of Music as a composer and orchestrator and I’ll be adding some orchestral touches to some of the tracks on Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador - an exciting project for the summer! I’ll keep you posted how it’s going…
Ben
Recently Martha Tilston recorded for us a beautiful new song inspired by Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador and our mission to halt deforestation. We thought is was stunning, but she was not finally convinced (ah… perfectionists!) and so very generously Martha yesterday returned to our producer’s studio yesterday to record a new version of Good World, an equally beautiful song originally recorded for her last album ‘Of Milkmaids and Architects’. Thank you, Martha!
We can also report that last week classical guitarist Morgan Szymanski recorded Prelude No.1 by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It was our producer Peter Larsen’s first experience of working with a classical musician and it went swimmingly, by all accounts.
Marvellous news on the recording front:
David McAlmont emailed me some lyrics recently - he has written a song for Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador. The song is written from the point of view of a Mountain Tapir in captivity, remembering the sounds of the forest. The Mountain Tapir, currently an endangered species owing to deforestation and habitat destruction, is a Latin American mammal with a very strange snout. David has been exploring lyrics that are focused more on storytelling than on personal feelings, and we can’t wait to hear this new song.
We are also in discussion with Ecuadorian singer Margarita Laso who has agreed to record for the project and is very excited. Margarita is the first Ecuadorian artist on the album, and one of the things for us to work out is how to record her (all the songs to date have been recorded by our producer Peter Larsen at his studio in South London). Many thanks to the Ecuadorian Embassy who put us in contact with Margarita. Welcome, Margarita.
Mexican classical guitarist Morgan Szymanski recently came over to Ginkgo HQ to play us a Prelude by Heitor Villa-Lobos, a Brazilian composer much inspired by the Amazon rainforest, which he will be recording for the the album. Morgan has been winning awards for his playing and was recently featured in Gramophone Magazine’s “One to Watch” slot.
Meanwhile, last week a few of us from the Ginkgo team were at the wondrous Hay Festival in Wales, where many of the authors appearing this year were environmentalists. Amongst those I met to discuss the project, one of the high points was meeting palaeoclimatologist Professor David Beerling over a jug of Pimms. His account of the role plants (yes, forests in particular) have played in sculpting planet Earth’s atmosphere was the most lucid and beautifully illustrated I have seen. You may recall that Ginkgo is the oldest surviving genus of trees - Ginkgos developed before dinosaurs (around 200 million years ago). Here at Ginkgo we have a soft spot for palaeontologists…
Last Sunday some of the Ginkgo Music team went to see Cibelle’s gig in Stoke Newington, reviewed in The Independent this week.
She recently recorded a minimalist version of ‘Instante de Dois’ (a song from her last album The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves) for Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador, and at the gig it was the second song in her set.
She had glittery blue eyeshadow over one eye in a Ziggy Stardust kinda way, and must have a brain the size of a planet to support that beautiful voice whilst weaving in and out of the mix various futuretastic gadgets making electronic washes and sounds, backing herself on vocals, adding in plastic children’s toys AND playing guitar… humbled I was!