'Sputnik And Beyond' video online
(top to bottom: Bruce Woolley; Thomas Dolby; Ken Hollings and Lydia Kavina)
On Oct 3rd 2007 I took part in a performance entitled ‘Sputnik And Beyond’ at the ICA in London, along with The Radio Science Orchestra. You can download video of the concert at the bottom of this blog entry.
This was a one-off concert to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite successfully launched into space. My friend David Hoffman, a documentary filmmaker, had recently premiered his full-length movie ‘Sputnik Mania’ (previously entitled ‘The Fever of ‘57) and he was kind enough to allow me to use footage and entire edited sequences from his film, to project at the ICA. The Radio Science Orchestra arranged and performed a live soundtrack, with commentary provided by pop culturist/DJ/sci-fi writer Ken Hollings.
The RSO is a UK-based electronic collective, on this occasion consisting of musicians:-
Bruce Woolley (Theremin and ring modulator)
Lydia Kavina (Theremin)
Joy Smith (Harp, Dulcimer)
Andy Visser (Flute, tenor and baritone saxophone, keyboards)
Kit Woolley (Moog Voyager and ring modulator)
….also guesting (on ‘Thunderbirds’) were my UK horn section:
Kevin Robinson—trumpet
Fayyaz Virgi—trombone
Ian Kirkham—sax
We put the show together very hurriedly, in the couple of days off I had between my autumn US and UK tours. It features some original music, a few covers, a little Debussy, and some ‘recycled’ film score music from my other movie projects. For the duet by me and Bruce, I wrote music and some lyrics in English that were kindly translated into Russian by Melissa Jordan. The goal was to showcase the idea of a live Sputnik performance, with a view to interesting some promoters, arts centres, museums, universities etc in a larger scale Sputnik tour in 2008. So if you fall into that category and want to talk to me about it, please post a Comment below and let’s talk.
I invited three volunteers from my Forum (Lindon Lait, Clive Radford, and Nathan Toms—thank you!) to bring video cameras and tape the performance, and they sent in their footage to me afterwards. We also recorded the mixed audio off the front of house PA feed, though this was not working for the first couple of minutes. I put all the content in Final Cut Pro (a Mac video app that should be called Final Cut Amateur in my case) and I did an edit. Of course, the lighting was not optimal for performance, projection and cameras; and the sound mix was not intended for video. But having got those caveats out of the way, I am pleased to offer you the following clips for your enjoyment. If someone out there is a YouTube contributor, perhaps you could work with me to upload these clips there, with the correct format and credits, before someone else does it wrong! I have broken it up into four parts, totalling about 30 minutes. The clips are in .mov format, which should work on Macs and PCs provided you have the latest QuickTime Player. You can view them in your browser window but you’ll probably be best off downloading the four individual parts (~40Mb each) and watch them in sequence.
Enjoy!
December 12th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Wonderful work Thomas. Thanks for your efforts both in putting together such a polished performance in the time you had a available, and for making these videos available to those of us that were fortunate enough to be there on the night and for the many more who were not.
I know there was an awful lot going on at the time with the Jazz Mafia Heathrowgate and preparing for the UK tour, but how was the experience of working with Bruce again after all these years? Regardless of an expansion of the Sputnik project, do you think you two might work together on new songs for your album?
December 12th, 2007 at 7:42 am
P.S. For those of you looking for the Thunderbirds theme, its found in part 3.
P.P.S. Notice Kit’s white coat. Is that his usual stage get up I wonder, or perhaps a homage to TDMR?
Cheers,
Andrew
December 12th, 2007 at 11:40 am
I was singing “oh what a beautiful morning” earlier today, funnily enough, it turns out I was right when I come home to find this. Great Stuff!!
December 12th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Good god, with theremin AND Thomas Dolby. I would have fainted from delight.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
This was such a fun trip full of nostalgia, humor and technological history… thanks for letting us all see this special show. The debussy at the end with Theremin was pretty amazing, but it was a thrill to hear snippets of Gothic floating through the mix…
Was the film created specifically for the event? I think it would make an interesting documentary/commentary about the time (with your musical contributions as soundtrack, of course!).
Beech
December 12th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Oops… never mind about the question about the film’s origin… just re-read the post. Was too excited to watch the clips to read the whole thing the first time around!
Beech
December 13th, 2007 at 1:53 am
Thomas,
It came out well then, hardly amateur Thomas!
I downloaded the files last night.
Watched them again this morning, brings it all back of what a great night it was.
The look on your face says it all, you were grining like a Cheshire cat at the end.
A nice early Xmas present to the forum.
It was a pleasure and an honour to help you out.
Regards
Lindon
January 27th, 2008 at 6:08 am
What an interesting way of bringing back day yore! I can see a single from some of those excerpts. A tad “Gate to the minds’ with a tad of “one of our submarines” on your next work. A very I find it most interesting that when I get fringe fans to look and listen at your work how splendidly shocked they are at your talent. Where is that next album coming!
We saw you you here in Florida and the performance was exquisite!
February 20th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Wow. I step away from the blog for a few months and find here a treasure. What beautiful, eerie, haunting, ironic, hysterical, cynical thoughts, images and music flow forth. This is terrifying, sad and funny at the same time. I also find it amazing to see how little we have changed. We as a species are so easily manipulated. This could have easily been culled from ‘the yellow cake’ broadcast, or the ‘New York mushroom cloud’ campaign. There are two art events happening in San Antonio very soon. I’ve worked with the organizers of both:
Luminaria,
http://www.luminariasa.com/
and the reopening of the McNay Art Museum
http://www.mcnayart.org/
I wonder if either could afford something of this calibre. I’ll look into it and I’ll definitely send them these links.