What: An evening of music by visionary composers Sun Ra and Moondog
When: Thursday 11th November (provisional), 19:30
Where: Bristol Beacon
Tickets: (coming soon)
The Fantasy Orchestra perform a selection of music by two cosmic artists: Sun Ra and Moondog.
Sun Ra, who claimed to have been born on the planet Saturn led a free jazz big band known for its innovative instrumentation and the theatricality of its performances. His widely eclectic and avant-garde music echoed the entire history of jazz, from ragtime and early New Orleans hot jazz, to swing music, bebop, free jazz and fusion. His compositions ranged from keyboard solos to works for big bands of over 30 musicians, along with electronic excursions, songs, chants, percussion pieces, and anthems.
Moondog was an American musician, composer, theoretician, poet and inventor. He is well known for his Viking costume playing home-made instruments on the streets of New York and respected by the likes of Charlie Parker and Stravisnsky. Largely self-taught as a composer, his work drew inspiration from jazz, Classical, native American music, and was strongly rhythmic and contrapuntal, in some ways anticipating the minimalism of Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
This will be at the newly re-opened (and renamed) Bristol Beacon!
What: Another chance to see Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool in full!
When: (Was Saturday 11th April 2021) (Rescheduled from 2020)
Where: Union Chapel, London (N1 2UN)
Tickets: TBC
Note: this even was originally scheduled for 2020 but has been postponed by a year, for obvious reasons (so the date on the poster is slightly wrong).
After the orchestra’s sold out concert at St George’s last November, here is another chance to see a performance of Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool in full; plus the “Exotica, Electronica and the Retro Futuists” set featuring the likes of Tortoise, Prokofiev, Aphex Twin and Duke Ellington.
Like so many other groups we decided to make a video while we cant play together and this is the result: more than 100 members and their friends filmed themselves playing their parts to Radiohead’s Glass Eyes and I put them all together using Adobe Premiere Pro and Reaper software:
Several people have asked how it was done so here’s a quick explanation.
Everyone recorded their part to a click track demo version i prepared – actually a few versions appropriate for different instruments to play along to eg pianists didnt need to hear piano, lead vocalists didn’t need to hear lead vocals but most other people preferred to play along with both those things and a click.
There were too many videos to deal with all at once so I edited in sections using the audio to line up the vids to the click track and cutting out instruments when they weren’t playing then rendering to a new MP4 video file:
The audio was mixed in premier too in sections then i mixed the sections with lead vocals in Reaper. You can drag video into that software and process the audio. The final audio mix was imported into a master video session of Premier and the different video bounces were blended using a chroma-key plugin. I also faded the opacity of the different layers relevant to what was hopefully most important in the audio mix.
When i do it again, i’ll be a bit more careful to make sure i’m using uniform video properties and perhaps make a bit more of a plan as to what will happen where.
Fantasy Orchestra tote bags are now available, in celebration of our debut album The Bear and Other Stories, created – as was the album art – by Melanie Wickham. These fabulous and extremely versatile bags can be bought from Etsy here.
These bags are made from 100% genuine tote and have a surprisingly large variety of uses:
This is an open-to-all idea to create a video for one song involving as many musicians and singers as we can find… before sunday 22nd march. Maybe we’ll do another one afterwards.
interested? read on….
The idea is everyone to film themselves playing their part of the Radiohead song Glass Eyes, send it to our team of editors and we’ll make a song out of it… and a dance if you move around a bit.
Please send by the end of the weekend sunday 22nd march
What you’ll need
– something to film yourself which connects to the internet and can send a (possibly fairly large) video file; Easiest is a phone or a computer – something else to listen to a special version of the track i’ve prepared to play along to
Online Folder
For us to synchronize the video we’ll all need to play at the same tempo so i’ve prepared the following: – piano with lead vocal – probably easiest for most people to use this one – bass with lead vocal – mostly of use to pianists or harp players – piano without lead vocal, mostly of use to lead singers. do feel free to sing the lead it doesn’t need to be just one person. probably nicer if its a small group.
This is an open-to-all folder with no password so feel free to share with anyone alt all. it also contains all the music and MP3s.
Things to bear in mind
– you’ll need to do the whole thing in one take – you’ll need to wear headphones, we don’t want to hear the click – if you come in near end of song no need to film from beginning, we’ll figure it out – try and be fairly well lit – it would be good if we can see a bit of your confinement area in the shot – dress up as much as you like (in pyjamas if you’ve got covid19) – if you’re mouth is available near the end of the song, please sing along with the last couple of lines for maximum emotional impact and healing vibes
sending the video (again, please send by this coming sunday 22march)
when you’ve made the clip please send by wetransfer.com to jesse@fantasyorchestra.org – please just send one clip. hopefully there’ll be too many clips for us to edit more than one clip per person – let me know if there’s anything i’ve forgotten -please include your name and instrument in the file eg jesse-violin.mov
Do feel free to pass this on to anyone who might be interested, young or old. But be quick, i’d like all the clips in by sunday. we’ll do another soon!
In celebration of our recently released debut album, The Bear and Other Stories, the orchestra will be playing a short gig at Rough Trade, a record shop in Bristol. Entry is free but you are enthusiastically encouraged to buy the album while you’re there! See the Rough Trade website or the Facebook event for more information.
Where: The Old Baths, Hackney, 80 Eastway, E95JH London
Tickets: £8 Early Bird / £10 Late Bird / £15 Door Birds
Following on from last year’s successful album launch at St George’s in Bristol, the orchestra will be playing at the Hackney Old Baths in London ahead of the album’s release.
The album ‘The Bear’ features an eclectic mix of music by diverse artists such as Sun Ra and Caetano Veloso, folk musician Richard Dawson, Brooklyn-based post punk duo Buke and Gase and electronic composer Disasterpeace, as well as local composers. Tickets are available from Fatsoma
Here is the music video for the album’s first single, Empty Boat:
