Kerry teaches the art of sound drawing - composing live on musicians, taking everyone through the different gestures and how the musician will respond to them. The children make visual scores of Messaien Quartet For The End of Time mvt 1 (birdsong), giving a line to each of the instruments. Then they use this new skill for composing with the sounds they had collected, creating visual scores of island sounds for musicians to play. They create wonderful sound pictures of the island which we decide should be played at the concert later.
In the afternoon Zack teaches how to make feathers out of paper and create wings. He shows his chart system for aligning the feathers - this can be used to make accurate wings for all types of birds.
In the evening we throw a free concert, with everyone on the isle attending - featuring the compositions of the Fair Isle children based on the sounds of the isle; Kerry with her loopstation singing folk songs from her You Are Wolf project; a talk from Roderick on the history and music of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, prior to it being played by Roderick, Stuart, Daniel and Clare.
Afterwards islander Jimmy Stout makes a speech, talking of George Waterston, who owned Fair Isle for 7 years after WWII. Like Messiaen, George was also interned in a prisoner-of-war camp, and his “great work” there was to dream up the idea for the Bird Observatory, which he set up on Fair Isle after the War. Jimmy said the Quartet for the End of Time made him feel that great yearning for freedom that George must have experienced in his POW camp, and that the two men had birdsong and bird flight in common. Jimmy then made us somewhat emotional by adding that hearing the music played by us was all the more special because the Fair Islers know us, we are their friends.
After the concert, an island social in the hall, with some peeling away to help Bird Observatory Warden David Parnaby and his team with the ringing of the Storm Petrels up at the Bird Observatory.
