The British artist and sculptor André Wallace first heard the music of Susie Hodder-Williams and Chris Caldwell from their debut release on FMR Records of the soundscape/Dartmoor travelogue "Mariners Way" (FMRCD291-0510). André invited the two artists to create a musical underscore for his exhibition Voyage which premièred at Poole Museum in the autumn of 2018.
The exhibition is currently being shown in Glastonbury; you can hear and see the sculptures through the summer months of 2025.
This CD Coracle of Life is the musicians response to André's sculptures and drawings. The recording was used in the gallery space to accompany this exhibition.
Drawing on a variety of instruments ranging from gamelan, bass clarinet, flutes, saxophones through to a vintage harmonium, the musicians combine diverse musical influences to invoke connections between land, sea and man. These compositional sketches give prominence to human breath, harking back to a primeval soundscape yet maintaining a purity and delicacy that encourages contemplation and reverie.
We were trying to evoke the qualities and physicality of the sculptures: this world, the other world; time, no time, life, death, and the continuum of time.
The result is an evocative and haunting soundscape, weaving a multicoloured musical thread, from the beginning to the end of a unique and personal human voyage.
Susie Hodder-Williams: flutes
Chris Caldwell: Clarinets and Saxophones
All quietly magnificent. An album of spare and gentle duets.
Fogcast, Resonance FM