…full of atmosphere, broad sweeps, seascapes – it made one think of one’s own store of memories.
- Piers Hellawell, composer
Overall, I think the last concert, “All Aglow”, was my favourite. She was inspired by the bioluminescence which can be found in the Irish Sea and the mixture of traditional piano playing and more contemporary techniques was fantastic.
- Emmylou (13), audience member, Rainy Days Festival Luxembourg
Pianist and composer Xenia Pestova Bennett presents an exquisite and spell-binding award-winning project as featured in Belfast International Arts Festival, Unesco Week of Sound, Festival Rainy Days Luxembourg and on BBC Radio 3 Night Tracks. All Aglow (2023, 50') takes inspiration from coastal bioluminescence (a range of glowing behaviours exhibited by marine life and bacteria) to explore resonance, historic texts, spoken word interviews, memory, improvisation and the human impact on the environment with piano, electronics and field recordings.
The piano is prepared with objects salvaged from the sea placed to vibrate on the strings, while nostalgic analogue synthesizers and field recordings of seascapes, cold-water swimmer interviews and historic texts create a mysterious aural flavour, adding elements of sonic time-travel and blurring stylistic boundaries.
Presented by Middle Aisle and funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Artists Career Enhancement Scheme (ACES), among the most prestigious awards bestowed by the Arts Council annually.
Image credit: Steven Lee
Video excerpts:
Audio excerpts from live performances can be accessed via the playlist here.
Programme note:
Over the course of about four years, I was living in a very special house overlooking the Belfast Lough. According to some, it used to belong to a sea captain. On clear days, Scotland is visible just across the water with hills and wind turbines. The sound and smell of the sea is constant. Storms throw down tree branches and fling salt onto the windows. There are many birds: plump eiders, redshanks, oyster catchers, shags, guillemots, corvids and gulls dropping mollusk shells onto the rocks to get at the tender flesh inside. There are rock pools, crabs, limpets, snails; sea vegetables: dulce, sea radish, scurvy grass. Seals sunbathe and curve their tails into the air, sometimes, you see little sea otters. Container ships huddle in the bay to wait out storms, their lights gleaming in the night. There’s a little cove with the submerged cave, waves churning, cold-water swimmers in all seasons and weathers, starfish gleaming from the depths below, a whole unknown forest beneath the surface. Then, the beach: sadly, full of plastic, glass, golf balls, lighters, toys, bottles, and depending on rainfall, toilet paper.
The sea permeates the ten movements of this piece - it is there and not there at the same time. In the penultimate movement, rhythmic undulation in the piano reflects diel vertical migration, the cyclical movement of tiny creatures rising towards the surface at sundown and coming back into the depths at sunrise. These zooplankton feed on phytoplankton plants, which do the migration in the opposite direction and consume CO2. This way, the CO2 is transported and sequestered into the deep sediments on the ocean floor for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Loosely based on human experiences with the sea and marine bioluminescence, All Aglow is also a reflection on our impact on the environment. Plastic salvaged from the seashore is used to prepare the piano and muffle its sound, ultimately stifling and silencing the instrument's voice.
Credits:
Composition, field recordings, editing, mixing and performance: Xenia Pestova Bennett
Videos: Steven Lee ("A Sea of Milky White", "And it was late at night", "Everything Else Around You")
Voices, quotations and texts:
Tim Parkinson as chief officer of the SS Lima in 1995 ("A Sea of Milky White")
Elizabeth Craig-Johnson, Deirdre Taylor, Jude Smith, Marie-Therese Davis as themselves ("And it was late at night" / "Everything Else Around You")
Bill Thompson as captain of the CSS Alabama in 1864 ("Tapetum lucidum")
Debussy, Images, 1ere série: “Reflets dans l’eau” ("Reflection Echoes")
Zoë Skoulding as herself, reading "A Marginal Sea": Marginalia, Carcanet Press
Initial piano preparations in part reference Annea Lockwood, Ear-Walking Woman ("Iridescence", "By Torchlight", "Tapetum lucidum")
This project was Supported by the National Lottery through the
Arts Council of Northern Ireland.