The Bays famously don't rehearse; their music is improvised and spontaneous, and different at every performance. But this show was edgy, even by their standards. Musicians in the Heritage Orchestra played the notes in real time as they were written by two 'live composers' John Metcalfe and Simon Hale; with the four members of the Bays - drummer Andy Gangadeen, bassist Chris Taylor and keyboard and effects men Jamie Odell and Simon Richmond - joining in, the results prompted Metcalfe and Hale to interact and write new motifs and themes, using the software platform Sibelius for the musical notation.
It fell to video designer and visual project manager Adam Seaman to create a way to represent this process visually, as he explains: "I wanted to show the creative development of the music-writing process to the audience in a way never done before." Working closely with event video specialists PSL, Seaman had to solve technical puzzles of latency of signal transfer and timing, as well as meeting the artistic demands of the performance.
Three 4m x 3m screens dominated the stage, the two outer ones paired for content, which showed the different musical parts as they were being composed. PSL also provided small LCD screens for the members of the orchestra which replaced their usual music stands. On stage, 10 miniature cameras covered the different sections of the orchestra and the band, giving a uniquely intimate view of the musicians' interaction with the composers, conductor and the Bays.
As technological shadow of orchestra conductor Jules Buckley, video designer Adam Seaman was responsible for balancing the feeds from 10 cameras, the composers' computer outputs running Sibelius notation software, and his own Mac laptop running a video player called Grid that provided abstract textures and additional video content, while also directing the mix to the three on-stage screens.
"We became so absorbed in the idea, we didn't realise how far we had pushed the boundaries until we got our standing ovation," says Seaman. "It was such a fantastic experience being involved in such an original concept, where I was truly able to incorporate my ideas and vision within such a free-flowing, improvisation-rich environment."
(Jim Evans)
