In case you hadn’t noticed, this year sees both 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his momentous On The Origin of Species, and earlier this month I had the pleasure of attending many of the events at Cambridge University’s Darwin Festival 2009 as a volunteer. Each day of this six day festival took a different theme, distinguished academics at the forefront of research into evolutionary biology and other disciplines giving presentations and taking part in panel discussions. Luckily they put me on babysitting the audio-visual system so I got to sit in on most of the presentations. Given Ginkgo Music’s mission to safeguard the future of this planet’s forest biodiversity through projects linking music & ecology we had to be there, particularly when a number of events were devoted to Charles Darwin’s impact on the arts.

Many highlights, and several themes I’d like to pick up on in the coming days. Here’s one: recent research presented on the origins of human cooperation. A commonly held assumption has been that early humans initially developed cooperative behaviour in order to fight it out with neighbouring tribes and so gain dominance over local resources. Professor Sarah Hrdy of the University of California presented evidence suggesting that almost the opposite may have been the case - that the initial driver for cooperative behaviour was the cooperative rearing of young or, as she put it, ‘alloparental provisioning’. Bringing up baby. Whilst an Orang-Utan mother may be in unbroken contact with her baby for up to 8 years and can therefore rear only one youngster at a time, early humans and hunter-gatherers had the advantage of being inclined to pass baby to aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings and friends - and mothers could therefore rear more than one child at a time. I find something tremendously hopeful in the implications of this understanding of the way human beings evolved cooperative behaviour. It lays less emphasis on competition, fight for resources and ‘winner takes all’, more on community, and indeed, leaves space for culture to have its impact on our survival because culture mediates the way we cooperate. If it is true then perhaps we don’t have to accept the idea that we are hard-wired only to compete blindly for domination of local resources and shake spears at each other, but first and foremost to figure things out cooperatively. I will be following this line of research with interest.

In the next installment: Sir David Attenborough’s speech at the Festival Celebration Dinner, King’s College.

So, this week I’ve been mostly trying to get us to Ecuador. The plan, the dream, the vision, etc is to take our splendid, young and totally-up-for-it sound & film crew from Bournemouth University deep, deep, deep into the forests and then leave them there to be consumed by bugs and creatures and mulch. Hmm… that’s not right, although there’s probably a movie idea in there somewhere, with a series of ever-more-preposterous sequels no doubt. But ack-chew-leigh, we want to record the sounds of the forests for possible, indeed probable, inclusion on the album and the sights for our promotional film, which is certainly taking shape in terms of interviews with our contributing musicians. Now, here’s the even more interesting bit than the last interesting bit; we want to take Vivienne Westwood with us! Yes indeedy. Dom and I saw Vivienne talk at a discussion on Arts & Ecology at the RSA a few months back and were both totally blown away by VW’s passion for the rainforests; imagine the awareness we could raise with her support. We might even get to meet Ecuador’s president. So we’ve asked, and we wait. And then we thought it would be great if Virgin Atlantic could help get us there; Sir Richard Branson has committed $3bn over the next 10 years to fight global warming and we’ve heard a little rumour that he’s a bit interested in music (he had a shop or something), so the perfect choice, non? And then right, get this, I’m chatting with my friend Mandy over Skype (we both wore masks, but don’t ask) and she mentioned that at Virgin Atlantic’s 25th birthday celebrations, who should be on the guestlist but none other than Vivienne Westwood! I allowed myself a small squeal of delight. Are the planets aligning on this? Fingers, toes and everything-else-crossable crossed. I’ve also sent a proposal to Radio4 this week as I reckon our journey would make for marvellous, arresting and inspiring radio, And finally, could I just give a grateful shout out to Anna Francis at Mango PR who has offered to help us out with getting ground support from tour companies in Latin America. I’m constantly heartened by the level of generosity shown to us at Ginkgo Music; humans are alright.

Just started humming a Michael Jackson song in the kitchen and my b/f said ‘That’s my favourite Michael Jackson song.’ So I asked him what the song is called - Human Nature: “Why, why? Tell them that it’s human nature”. I’ve had it in my head all these years without knowing its title or that it came from Thriller. So I Googled the guitar chords and had a go at playing it - it is beautiful and sad and his voice is astonishing. RIP Michael Jackson.

Several of us in the Ginkgo Music team will be going to Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London on the 30th July to see a new chamber opera about the relationship between Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle during its historic five year voyage of discovery. The opera is called The Weather Man and Opera North’s blurb says: “As Darwin developed his theory of theory of natural selection, FitzRoy became an ardent creationist, and the two friends found themselves divided by the 19th Century’s greatest intellectual faultline. This fascinating new chamber opera by composer Paul Clark and librettist John Binias explores the opposition between science and spirituality through spoken voice, baritone, and string quartet.” I’m really excited about it! If you are intrigued by contemporary music responses to Darwin you may also be interested in the Darwin Song Project.

Last night Ginkgo Music and Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador had their second mention on radio. Multi-talented Josie Gallo, film & TV editor, radio presenter and member of the crew helping us film the artist interviews for our promotional movie, was presenting a pre-Glastonbury warm up show on Frome FM and kindly gave us a mention. Her radio rocks! Or something.

Oh Lordy, at last

Jorge Drexler’s producer is sending us a song tomorrow(ish), so they have something for us. Phew!

Plus we have a string quartet recording the backing track for Vania Bastos ‘The Rain Makers’ on Friday the 3rd of July; Ben is hard at work as we speak on this.

So we may have ALL recorded material in end of week commencing 6th July - how cool is that?

I’ll keep you posted

Ooh look! While having a bit of a rummage around the internetty thing, I came across an article on Morgan Szymanski in November 2008’s edition of Classical Guitar magazine. Lo and behold, we get a mention: http://www.morganszymanski.co.uk/content/news/featured-artist-classical-guitar-magazine-november-2008/

Thanks very much to Valentin Gerlier, whose track This Is the Waltz adds a bit of 3:4 to the mix on Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador.  He’s name-checked us with considerable enthusiasm on the front page of his site http://www.valentingerlier.com

For Tropical Forest Project: Ecuador Brazilian producer Ricardo Severo has written a powerful and incantatory song for Vania Bastos called Os Fazedores de Chuva (”The Rain Makers”) inspired by an ancient Inca myth about Inti-Illapa, the Weather God who drew the rain from the Milky Way.  With no direct reference to the myth in the song, it ties in beautifully for me (scientist) with recent work suggesting that chemicals released by equatorial forest trees cause rain-clouds to form.  Clever trees.  We’ve been struggling to work out how to approach the recording.  Ricardo’s piano-based first recording begins with isolated notes suggesting raindrops.  Now step forward Benjamin Rous, Ginkgo Music’s very own web technician, whose day job is musician & composer with an interest in Schoenberg.  Out of the blue Ben has been inspired to write parts for a string quartet, or perhaps two violins and a cello.  I can’t wait!  The challenge is to get the recording done asap so that it doesn’t impact on the completion date.  I’ll keep you posted.

Had our film crew over for dinner on Tuesday evening; four wonderful, excited, interested and fun students from Bournemouth University who that very day had been recording our interview with Morgan Szymanksi, the Mexican classical guitarist who recorded a beautiful track for us last year. I made my famed mackerel dauphinoise, served with a whole heap of rocket’n'balsamic and all washed down with treacle tart and vanilla ice cream. Dominic had already met the guys’n'gals before (Will, Kat, Josie & Carolina) but this was my first time, and plying them with good food, plentiful wine and high-level (yeah right!) conversation made for a splendid evening all round. We’re hoping to take them to Ecuador in August to get some great footage of the forests and to film some more interviews. Margarita Laso, from Ecuador, has recorded a track for us but we’ve never actually met; lots of phone calls, emails, phone calls and yes more emails, and a superb result, but no actual face-to-face “hey how ya doing?” kinda stuff. Maybe she’ll cook us something nice…