Page 312 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

Coupled with the stressful change in their financial circumstances
a huge percentage of people with professions in the performing
arts found themselves completely rudderless.

I myself wandered aimlessly around the Barbican Estate, gazing
longingly at the Barbican Centre and feeling empty without the daily
power of the music I was so used to soaring through my very being
courtesy of my life in the London Symphony Orchestra. Finally after
two weeks of lockdown I began practising the violin every day - a
wonderfully worthwhile pursuit, of course. and I joked to friends that
I was in the best playing shape of my life, but ironically with no one
around who could actually appreciate the fruits of my hard work, it
felt rather empty at times.

The opportunity to create a short film in a collaboration between Culture Mile, Brookfield
Properties and the LSO was a wonderful chance to show how much creativity there is within the
City, even during such a dark time. During our “meet and greet” Zoom meeting, filmmaker
Antonia Luxem explained her vision of a single musician performing alone in the dark, seemingly
to no one at first, but as the light begins to shine on the violin, a dancer notices the music and
begins to react to it. From that moment my imagination was well and truly captured by this
powerful idea of a lone creative voice having the ability to move us through a host of emotions.
After hearing Antonia’s narrative, composer Darren Bloom set about penning an original piece for
solo violin that would perfectly draw on all the imagery. He was particularly taken with Antonia’s
descriptions of lights being switched on at twilight, thereby illuminating windows in the darkness,
and hit upon the use of harmonics so the sounds would pop from the texture like twinkling stars.
Darren was able to perfectly capture in his writing the hesitant opening, a solitary voice finding
itself again that starts warming up over time and then becomes positively playful as it sees that
the music is inspiring ballet dancer Marie Astrid Mence (pictured below) to express herself.