War Correspondents from Helen Chadwick

Dear Friends,

 

This album of 23 songs is now streaming wherever you stream or download your music. https://linktr.ee/Helenchadsongs

 

Where do ideas come from? 

 

Out of the blue? From left field?  

 

For me, sometimes by or even in water. There's tradition in that: in the high Potosi region of Bolivia which I visited with an ethnomusicologist in 1992, new tunes are collected at certain times of year from the sirens who live at the waterfalls. 

 

Where do you get your ideas from? 

 

How do they arrive? 

The idea for WAR CORRESPONDENTS? It came like this....slowly but surely

 

It was 1994. I was in Chile the day before a Royal ShakespeareTheatre company ​team arrived to tour a show I had done the music for. Director Katie Mitchell and I were joined for an explore that day by photographer Jon Spaul​ who was also working out there. ​

 

During that day Jon discovered that I was about to go to Georgia for the first time​ and he told me that had photographed Tbilisi. On my return I went to see ​Jon's A3 black and white photos brought down from his attic​ dark room​. We drank tea and ate Kipling cakes as we looked through them. I was very excited to be going. 

 

Underneath those photos he had without realising it brought more black and white A3 images, but this time of Grozny during the recent first Chechen war​ - a terrifying record of the destruction. Jon talked ​quietly about the immense danger for himself and two other photographers. It became impossible to work there and get that story out. 

 

It was Jon's unassuming presence alongside his devastating images and experiences that stayed with me​.​ 

 

Over time the idea dawned on me to create a new song cycle and a performance from interviews with journalists about their experiences​, beginning with Jon. And what a privilege it has been to meet and listen to so many journalists doing such extraordinary work. 

 

​A​ single idea ​can seem insignificant but its waves can last and last and transform and resonate​ down the years. 

 

Helen Chadwick

 

CREDITS: 
Photograph by Simon Richardson of Barbara Gellhorn and Victoria Couper during a development week at the National Theatre Studio.