Helen Hayes, First Light Festival’s Music Co-Ordinator
For the past three years we’ve been thrilled to be partnering with Britten Pears Arts to offer some of our New Dawn young musicians the opportunity of a Creative Retreat at the Red House, the former home of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears – a week to themselves in a calm and creative environment, to experiment, with colleagues or alone and to focus without interruption on their music.
This year, the two selected musicians are the singer-songwriter, Maple Ward and the guitarist, John Green who are both starting to break through into careers in music. Both artists have progressed through our New Dawn programme, which as well as providing young musicians from the region the chance to perform at the festival, also includes year-round artist development support with mentoring, workshops and showcase opportunities. It also provides much needed connections within the regional music scene and has helped to foster a positive community of emerging musicians.
Once John was installed in the Red House accommodation, I scooted over to check in on how he was doing. John grew up in a village close to Lowestoft and studied music at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London. He decided to use the retreat to record a collaborative EP with other talented young musicians from Trinity Laban – time for him and them to concentrate and focus on their creative process in beautiful surroundings with a first class piano! When I got there, they had set up a recording studio and were having a wonderful time and it was so exciting to watch and hear them at work… and also to talk about next steps following college and what it’s like to have a portfolio career.
The following week I dropped in on Danielle – armed with my own violin and viola as I knew that she wanted to use the residency to experiment with instrumentation alongside her vocal composition. We had a great time! As a folk singer-songwriter, and having graduated with a BA in Music Performance, Danielle is making a name on the regional music scene and this retreat gave her concentrated time to work with a banjo, harmonium and piano as well as the guitar. We had a lot of fun playing the instruments together and I could hear the seeds of ideas for new songs emerging with Danielle experimenting with new ways of bringing them to life with a combination of sounds and instruments.
Concentrated time and space to focus on the creative process is hard to find when you are an emerging artist, particularly in the time transitioning from formal education towards a sustainable career, Danielle said “Being able to focus purely on songwriting is my dream life and I’ve really appreciated this opportunity’. .
It’s very rewarding and exciting to see the positive impact that these retreats have on local, talented young musicians and the knowledge that New Dawn project and the partnership with Britten Pears Arts, is helping them to progress in their creative development.