Raveningham Sculpture Trail

‘Homecoming’ is an installation at Raveningham Sculpture Trail 2021. It is a collaboration between Norwich-based artist Laure Van Minden and trumpeter Chris Dowding.

The installation is based around phrases collected by Laure at the care home where she works. I chose some of the phrases, and made them into short poems. I then translated the letters into musical notes, using an alphabet system invented by the Devon-based composer Hugh Nankivell.

My aim for the project was to only use trumpet and Ableton Live, including laptop synth. I recorded the tracks over two weeks in February 2021, during lockdown.

I mixed the tracks myself, and then they were mastered by Norwich-based musician Paul Keeler. I made a cover from photographs I’ve taken of a different care home, near my flat.

‘Homecoming’ was at Raveningham Sculpture Trail from 31st July to 5th September 2021. The pieces were available to stream to headphones, and were also playing on a speaker at the installation.

I have made some CDs of the project, featuring the seven pieces, which will be available in the gallery at Raveningham, alongside Laure’s artwork. The album is available to download digitally or as a CD on my Bandcamp page here are well:

https://chrisdowding.bandcamp.com/album/homecoming

I hope you enjoy listening to the tracks. ‘Homecoming’ is the second project I have done with Laure. From September 2020 to August 2021 we have worked on the ‘Black Lives Matter’ project, in which I made two tracks a month for the year, from the names of people who have died or been attacked in relation to the BLM movement.

Laure responded with artwork, and ‘Black Lives Matter’ was a subscription project on Bandcamp. We sent out two postcards each month with Laure’s artwork to subscribers, who also received the recorded tracks on Bandcamp, as well as exclusive access to alternate versions. The tracks and postcards are now available individually and will be available in January 2022 as a double cassette release (and download) on Bandcamp, with an album launch at Cafe Oto, London. We are playing our first live performance of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ project at The Undercroft, Norwich on 29th October. The tracks from the project and the postcards are available here:

https://chrisdowdinglaurevanminden.bandcamp.com/

I hope you enjoy any music and artwork you check out!

Chris Dowding, July 2021

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This post was written by chrisD