Ten weeks on from Mittwoch

A chat with Jean Nicholson at Birmingham Opera Company

I don’t usually do reviews on this blog; lots people do reviews; that's fine, and I’m grateful for their perspectives. So this isn’t a review piece. I’m just picking through the memories of a past event, because this event, like so many of the other activities I try to cover in Radio To Go, is marked by the people who pour themselves into making it happen. 

Now we’re deep into gloomy Autumn, it’s good to look back at Birmingham Opera Company’s stupendous summer production of Stockhausen’s impossible to sing / play / stage Mittwoch Aus Licht. It got a ton of coverage, of course, and there are bits of it to be found here and there on websites; links are below. 

I loved it. I remember the extraordinary womb-like feeling of sitting down in the dark at the start, and entrusting myself to the company. And when the lights came up again, the number of people wandering around smiling, open-mouthed. And just how many local musicians of all stripes were there. And being amazed and engaged. 

Oh, didn’t they just amaze and engage… 

In the middle of all this is the affable and formidable Jean Nicholson, BOC's general manager. Jean was kind enough – after a barrage of emails - to find time to chat late last month. Up until that point she had been wading through post-event administration.  

The Elysian Quarter and their transport

The string quartet in the sky – The Elysian Quartet in four helicopters, hovering over the Argyle Works, a stones throw from Digbeth on one side and Millenium point on the other– went out to a lot more people than those in the venue itself. 

"It was included in The Space – an initiative from the Arts Council and the BBC – which was planned for the Olympics and now extended. An online platform was created; our contribution to that was twofold. One of which was a trail to Stockhausen, with a dedicated website with lots of information, lots of blogs from people involved. There was also a film project: Eleven young film-makers made films in response to Mittwoch, and that was included on the Space. Three other  films were up there too: films which were edited highlights from the BBC's archive of Stockhausen. 

 A series of performances which were attended by…? 

"It was attended by two thousand, two hundred and forty seven people. In total - the live performances. 

I’m interested in the ripples which went out to a lot more people, one way and another… It flowed out. 

"The helicopter String Quartet was streamed live, on the Space… and two of the big screen sites, one in Birmingham and one in Coventry, also carried the stream, live. Quite late in the day, it also became possible for us to stream the whole performance live, from our website. The whole opera. One performance only. 

And that reached how many people? 

"About four thousand. But the complexity of rights for these is fairly tortuous. As a relatively small organisation, achieving full buy-out is fairly tricky to do. We did get an across the board agreement that one, free, streaming became possible. 

Would this have been easier if you were working with something that was long out of copyright?   

"No. It’s complex. The added complexity of a lot of classical music is that the rights are not merely in the composer – there is then the edition of the music. Rights are payable for the use of a learned edition of a work. If you want to do a Mozart opera, you might think no rights have to be paid. Sadly that’s not the case, unless you’re willing to go to the original source and copy it all out yourself. There is a right in the engraving – the person who inputs in to one of the music notation programmes – Sibelius or finale - and a right in the edition – two subsidiary rights beyond the intellectual property. 

Given the absolute truckload of admin and management work which all this entails… how rapidly does the company shrink back down after a performance like this? 

"Three days. But there is, around the core of us three, a further core of regular associates. We have a shorthand available, because so many of the people who come in and work with us on these projects, we know very well. That level of familiarity gives you speed and efficiency.

But there is a long extended half-life to your performance. You had the big bang – the week of performances – but there is a resonance afterwards, and that is still going on. 

Lots of camels were featured. Some drank champagne; not these two though

"It was a weirdly bewitching piece. …"

and the echoes and the extra dimensions… 

"It’s a challenge for what is possible. It wasn’t surprising to us that this was a piece that a major opera house couldn’t do. They do a different job. It’s a physical thing: it required two performance spaces. In a weird way, the piece comes to us – because that’s what we do. The skills you need to do it are… probably Graham Vick… but we know a lot of people, we have a lot of friends. There was a building that the Stockhausen estate felt would suit well; they liked the company. At that point, the skill was to put together a very fine, detailed rehearsal process. That why a standard opera house probably couldn’t do it – because you have to put all your resources into it. 

Stupid question: what happened to the stepladders? What about the cushions and foam mattresses? 

"The stepladders went back to scrap metal. The mats were recycled into the music train project that the Cultural Olympiad did. All of the mats went to the floor of the train. 

Picture from Birmingham Aviation Enthusiasts blog 

I noted a huge surge of pride and engagement with the event, even among people who didn’t attend. There were flurries of tweets and Facebook chatter around the helicopters parked up outside Millennium point. When you took the train into New Street, it started a buzz in the train itself. 

To me, people seemed quite proprietorial about the whole thing. And the post-event buzz was fascinating to follow. When you have an event that is so engrossing, and so engaged, that engenders such a sense of passionate involvement…what happens when it comes to an end? 

"Well, that’s not the end of the event for me. I’m not in that headspace. I’m approaching that now. That’s post-production. Richard (Willacy,  Associate Artistic Director) has only just been able to go on holiday now. 

What’s next? 

"We’ve been working on several ideas. The next really big event is a production of Mussorgsky’s Kovanschina, or The Kovansky Conspiracy, as I think we’re going to call it. It’s a really fabulous, big, Russian opera with a most fabulous story. A great, great piece to do. 

"In the run up to that we’re doing a series of much smaller pieces of the project; the first phase of that is going to be in March next year. We’re working on four Mussorgsky songs called the Songs and Dances of Death. They’re a bit macabre, but rather brilliant. So we’re doing some research and experimental work on the translation of those with Alastair Beaton. 

picture from Uzan Artists

"It’s just for a baritone and pianist, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Eric Greene, who sang ‘Life Is a Dream', will be able to come back and do that. It’s forty minutes, and we’re going to put more resources into distributing it and the whole digital project around it. So the idea is that over a four to five week period – actually the piece is made in the first week – and thereafter it will appear in various pop-up performances. So you could book it for your living room, if you’ve got a piano and you don’t mind somebody filming it. Or workplaces, or shops, or… 

"The idea is to do lots of lots of performances. The live experience in different places, different contexts. But you still get the top guy singing, which is rather fabulous. So that could happen in the Town Hall, it could happen in your living room. It will be both. Attached to that is the notion of participation: local people having the tools and the skill to develop online content. A lot of that emphasis is going into film. We did the first phase of this on Mittwoch, with the resources that came in on to the Space. 

"The Space is continuing past its first phase – there is a commitment from the BBC and the Arts Council to continue for at least the next six months. We will be working on that, people will be filming. We will working with editors… Graham Vick’s going to have a go with that, because he’s never made a film. We’re going to so some sound stuff – more podcasts – just to see what we can generate out of this one small unit of art. It’s challenging stuff. 

"There will be quite a lot of singing to do – so we will be doing some core Birmingham Opera Company vocal work. And we need men. We’ve been doing very well on the men front, but it is notoriously difficult to get men singing. Our rehearsals are open… but it is important that we get out there and encourage people to have a go and get singing….

Links:
Birmingham Opera Company would love for you to get involved
The Space
The Elysian Quartet and their video on The Space
Ex Cathedra

The impossible is possible. Soweto Kinch talks about The Flyover Show

Why does a double MOBO winner, known and respected the world over, come back to work on a day of music activities in a grotty underpass in an unpreposessing part of town, hauling some extremely major names in to play… five years in a row?

The Flyover Show is the most unlikely success story. Birmingham offers several festivals where the music and culture centres around reggae and the music that has grown from reggae – Reggae City, Simmer Down… and The Flyover Show. All of them are open, welcoming and friendly; none of them get the press coverage they deserve; all of them pull typically mixed Birmingham reggae crowds. But The Flyover Show has been going the longest. It’s even travelled abroad to South Africa, with a Flyover Show held this year in Soweto itself.

Soweto Kinch lives in Hockley, Birmingham. Feet squarely on the ground, informed, self-aware, articulate, open and positive, he sees The Flyover Show’s location in Hockley as an essential part of the whole exercise. And to achieve that end, he gives of himself to an extraordinary degree. 

“We get so much bad press.  The only time these areas get spoken about is as ‘high centres of unemployment, race riots, knife crime, gun crime… I really want to do a re-branding exercise, not just for the outside world, but for ourselves.”

Last year, at The 2011  Flyover Show, I watched him work HARD, in the middle of the afternoon, operating without a PA, while the generator was repaired. He was compere,  cheerleader and animateur, bigging up, encouraging, cajoling and celebrating, right in the thick of it down among the crowd. Then when the stage PA crackled into life, just in time for some of the name acts, he was up, jamming, supporting, gliding though music styles with grace and ease. It was deeply impressive stuff.  

This isn’t your regular music get together. It belongs to, and is explicitly part of, Hockley. So it’s a bit more of a community fete, only with added megastars. This year, Maxi Priest, Janet Kay, Julian Joseph, joining with Basil Gabbidon, Soweto himself, Lady Leshurr, Dec14Life, RTKal and more.

There’s, of course, a clear Jamaican flavour to The Flyover Show this year. Monday 6th August marked the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence, and celebrations are taking place across the country. Given that the West Midlands has the second highest concentration of UK Jamaicans, and that Hockley sits squarely between Aston, Lozells and Handsworth, that’s a further reason to continue to develop and promote the show in its very specific location. 

And given the passing of time, it’s now a generational thing. A couple of years ago, I put together an affectionate if slightly rose-tinted radio documentary, Handsworth Evolution, in which I talked with at the generations of Jamaican and Jamaican-inspired musicians who have lived and worked in Birmingham since the end of the war. Taking the late Andy Hamilton as the first generation, Steel Pulse, Ruby Turner and UB40 as the second generation, that places Soweto as part of the 3rd generation. And it’s clear he wants to encourage that same pride and creativity shown by the first three generations in the fourth generation. But of course it’s a long way from Calypso, Rock Steady, Blue Beat and Ska, to the present day, and as always happens, a whole host of other music influences and directions have added to the mix. 

A People With No Past From Soweto Kinch's 2011 New Emancipation album

So of course things have changed and developed. But do you feel that over the past nearly seventy years, that there has been a dilution in Jamaican music and culture?

“No, I wouldn’t describe it as dilution at all. It’s an evolution. Identity and culture are not static concepts. We’re all dealing with what globalisation means to us; all reassessing what ideas like ‘Britishness’ are like – are they redundant as terms when we’ve got such a heterogeneous population? For me, consistently, Jamaica has provided more than just a place to associate with… but a kind of attitude that’s embodied in the people.  As Usain Bolt says (as he beats his chest crossing the finishing line), we’re a small island with a big heart.”

“There are so many islands across the West Indies, but for some reason, Jamaica seems to shout loudest above the rest. That may be criticised by the other islands, but it’s something to be commended in this country, when we’ve had to deal with so much virulent racism. That fighting spirit has left an indelible mark on this country, and certainly on me.”

OK, evolution it is. But where does, say Wordsworth MC – he’s from Brooklyn – place himself? 

“It would be impossible for Wordsworth to do what he does with the influence of Jamaica and Jamaican culture. As a Brooklyner, as that kind of MC – it’s completely flavoured with West Indian inflections and Sound system culture. As an MC, growing up in New York, you have to be aware of that tradition. That morphs, wherever you go in the world.” 

Pogus Caesar's shot of Soweto Kinch, 2010

 “That’s a great thing – it gets you thinking about the tendrils of Jamaican culture. Not just some jerk chicken on the beach. Escaping some of those stereotypes, you realise it’s had a far more profound influence on the way we all think, the way we all approach music now. So it’s a great time for us to consider how that culture has changed, how is it different from, you know, after the Empire Windrush to now.”

Given that huge span of culture and interactions, how easy is it to put a bill together?

“It’s great having these themes to tie things down to. To be able to have jazz alongside hip-hop, alongside spoken word, alongside dance (there’s a specially commissioned dance from Birmingham Royal Ballet), alongside an out and out reggae artist… there is a common thread tying them all together.”

You’re growing all the time. Will you come back to Hockley Flyover next year? There’s only so much space there…

“Yeah. Absolutely. I would love to. I think what’s really symbolic and important about this show is that it has a grass-roots identity. The work and the stories from that community that never get celebrated, that never really earn the same respect – it’s always ‘community arts’, the poor cousin of high art – that work still needs to go on. And if it just gets too big, we’ll build a bigger flyover!”

Links:
The Flyover Show site
The Flyover Show South Africa site
Soweto Kinch's site
Hockley Circus Birmingham on Google maps 

Birmingham Opera and the New York Met: different creativity, different audiences, different marketing. Same goals.

Opera. Big-budget belters and small-scale savvy. It’s all good… but it’s still a bit of a secret. 

A fat lady. Not singing for BOC

With 21st century media, there’s no connection between what you find and what you pay. Works of towering genius go for free; silly sums are asked for derivative crap. Often, we're charged for the cost of distribution rather than the creativity. I can’t complain when I find brilliance for pennies. Creators, rightly, do. 

Two very different things are going on in Opera in Birmingham. There’s a local company that does brilliant work, so rooted in its market, with passionate local participation, that sell-outs are virtually guaranteed. People fight for tickets. The other operation offers work from one of the most powerful, stylish and all round fabulous companies on this planet, for a relative pittance. They have had to fight, ultimately successfully, for their audience. It doesn't make sense, but it's great all the same.

Although they’re not that well-kept a secret, the first time you’re likely to hear about Birmingham Opera Company (BOC for short) is when you read yet another five star review of an edgy, provocative performance that’s already been and gone. Venues are never conventional – warehouses, old factory premises – nor are the productions.  
BOC operates from a tiny office in the Jewellery Quarter, bulging with paperwork and posters. Luxurious it’s not. Jean Nicholson runs it; Graham Vick drives it, directing and working part-time. From a core full-time staff of three, staff numbers scale up and down around productions.  

Past BOC glories

 The company is famous for its shows and the way it involves you in those shows. The action explodes around you. Go to a show – if you can get a ticket – and you’ll be surrounded by singers. It’s great. People LOVE them. So now they have an interesting dilemna. 

Kindly reproduced courtesy of Birmingham Opera

“The ethos of the company is to take work to places audiences that didn’t get opera” explains Jean Nicholson, “to make opera speak to more people, and to have lots of involvement with local people alongside the professionals. One of the great myths is that it’s cheaper to do it this way.. but it’s not. It’s more expensive because it takes more people more time to get it to the standard you need it to be.”

You can guarantee to sell out these days – not least because of the number of people who are involved with the people who participate. So how does that square with your mission to take work to new areas and new audiences?

“In general the ticket-buying public, regular users or music, theatre and the like, know to book ahead. A lot of the people we’re trying to reach don’t. They’re very last minute. We have to skew our tickets to those people. That can make it hard to find tickets. It’s a difficult balance to achieve. I have to hold a proportion of the tickets for friends, relatives and colleagues of people who are appearing in the show. It’s of great importance that people who spend many, many weeks, working really hard, can get their kids, their partners, their grandparents in to see the show. Those people won’t be first in line with their credit cards, ready to buy tickets. And without those people, the shows don’t take place.” 

Kindly reproduced courtesy of Birmingham Opera

All that said, if you’re quick, you can grab tickets online. 50 percent of tickets for the next production are now on sale through Ticketsellers via the BOC website. So it’s possible that by the time you read this, they may have already gone.

The production ‘Life Is A Dream,’ a world-premiere production, runs for seven nights between 21st and 31st March at the Argyle Works, the former McDermot factory building in Digbeth, Birmingham. Here's a shot from the press show/live rehearsal, by kind courtesy of Pete Ashton; there's more below, and a link to the full flickr page.

From 'Life Is A Dream': photo Pete Ashton

Life was hectic in February, with full-scale choral rehearsals and detailed show prep work in hand; now with the production running, it's even more so.

“One of the biggest problems for us in choosing a venue is size. There are very few buildings that are big enough now. The nature of Birmingham’s industry is small engineering, so our choices are limited. We used this building two years ago, and we are going back there now – although the heating doesn’t work anymore!” 

Size matters. A BOC production involves a lot of people: around  200 people, and up to 500 audience members. I keep finding people I know – generally adventurous music types - who are deeply committed to BOC. They sing in the chorus, or build sets, or dj at afterparties. You read that right – afterparties. For an Opera company. The Dj in question last time out was Marc Reck. I find that impressive and very cool.   

Sue Nicholls is a BOC chorus member, when she’s not working on rock tours, or playing gigs. She loves it to bits.

“Mere mortals like me don’t get to perform at the BBC Proms! But we got to perform Britten’s ‘Curlew River’, the first staged opera in the history of the proms. And WE did it! Birmingham Opera did it! And we got four five-star reviews for it! You don’t get to do that in real life, and perform with world-renowned opera singers. It just takes your breath away. Five stars in the Times! And it’s innovative! And it’s in Birmingham!”

A brilliant institution. But tickets are hard to find, so go get yours now. And/or volunteer - they can use all the help they can find. Here's a link to the Life Is A Dream page on the BOC site. As on Monday 21st February , tickets went on sale. Great price, too. 

At the time of this mid March  update, the show is in mid-run, with an even more spectacular show promised for the summer. Here's some more shots from Pete Ashton's flickr page:

From 'Life Is A Dream': photo Pete Ashton 

From 'Life Is A Dream': photo Pete Ashton 

From 'Life Is A Dream': photo Pete Ashton 

Now, another best-kept secret. A world away from funky warehouses, in the Cineworld multiplex up at the top end of Broad Street, you can catch New York Metropolitan Opera performances, live, about once every three or four weeks. It's a bargain: work from one of the world’s biggest and best, flashiest and most stylish opera companies, for twelve quid a pop - the same as for BOC productions. You didn’t know about this? Nor do many people, but word is spreading fast. Three years ago, the Met productions were pulling in a few dozen people in Birmingham. Now, maybe four hundred roll up, and the numbers are growing. They’re thinking about running the shows in several rooms.

New York's Lincoln Centre, home of the Met

It’s a brilliantly simple concept: live relays of shows at the New York Metropolitan Opera, under the overall banner of 'Live in HD'. A 1pm matinee in Manhattan runs at 6pm in Birmingham, 7 pm in Paris, 8pm in Helsinki, and 10pm in Moscow.. They screen at Cineworld and a number of other locations around the Midlands. The productions are top notch, with the biggest names, great production, and brilliant onscreen hosts to walk you through the whole operation, working backstage and shooting live. A lot of spit and polish has gone into the relay, and it unquestionably works. The big challenge has been for Cineworld’s local staff to develop their audience.

“When we first started, we weren’t sure how it would be received” says Cineworld’s Vinod Mahindru. “We hadn’t shown Opera before, and our first audience numbers were pretty small. But we wound up talking to choirs, societies, our own audiences, and music institutions around Birmingham. It really was a question of getting the word out. Now, there’s strong word of mouth, and we’re very pleased”

Götterdämmerung's fabulously flexible hi-tech set. Photo: Ken Howard/Met Opera

They should be. A week ago, the biggest screen in the multiplex was packed, for a six hour star-studded Wagner marathon – Götterdämmerung, the conclusion of the Ring Cycle. Go Vinod! That’s some going for an institution which knows how to sell 'The Iron Lady' or 'Shrek', but which has had to work out how to reach an entirely different audience. It turns out that Birmingham’s attendances are among the best across the Cineworld chain. What’s more, their audiences are now getting younger. And it appears they’re rather better behaved than your average 'Lord of the Rings' or 'Twilight' crowd.

Following the lead set by the New York Met, other opera and theatre companies are now offering live relays and repeat screenings. They’re going to have to work hard to catch up. The Met has gone out of its way to engage with its global audience. Just like Birmingham Opera, they don’t simply put out a show and wait for the punters. They reach out, very effectively.

The goal is to bring great work to new audiences. Both operations are succeeding. Both operations are totally different in scale, in budget, and in their own unique senses of adventure.  And I for one am really glad we have both of them in our town.

Birmingham Opera Company
Metropolitan Opera Live In HD season details