Ivory Feathers

The project was given a real lift when it featured on the SIBC 1^st birthday party with Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin.

Joe explains how the project was named: “The ivories is a reference to the piano keys (now thankfully not made from real ivory) and feathers makes the link to my love of birdwatching, given a new lease of life during lockdown 2020! The project is a fusion of piano improvisation with the amazing world of UK birds.”

“Once we've had a bird nominated on the live zoom session, we chat about the characteristics, movement, call and song, and any other bits of insight in order to feed some musical ideas into the composition. This is sometimes useful and at other times quite the opposite, but it's all part of the fun. However, it is having '4 random notes' that really makes the project, at the same time, both extremely thrilling and utterly terrifying! These notes often give an almost unusable sequence of music that seeks to de-rail the work before it even gets going. It is the wrestling with and eventual taming of these notes which is by far the biggest challenge and that which provides the most joy should it go well! The pressure of creating something musically satisfying, which properly and authentically represents the bird in question, is an onerous undertaking. Some go pretty well, and others are a fight-to-the-death that leave me licking my wounds and wishing I'd approached the piece differently! Once it all starts there's no going back and nowhere to hide!

Improvisation is generally as difficult as you choose to make it. There are plenty of chord progressions and melodic sequences that string together quite easily and that tend to follow predictable patterns. The random generation of notes here ensures that the piece each week genuinely is unique and has a melodic and harmonic structure of its own! This project really is an adrenaline-fuelled ride for me - whereas the listeners hopefully will be sat comfortably on a nice sofa with a comforting drink and be treated to to a few minutes of musical creation. A rich and silky musical purse conjured out of a selection of random sow's ears!”