Bayeux Conversation

With coverage of the Bayeux Tapestry currently wall to wall (literally - see this tunnel at Kennington tube station) some people may be feeling they've heard enough already about the famous "embroidery", especially as tickets are completely sold out until next year. Even I have been adding to the tapestry content mountain, in an interview with Tom Service on his BBC Radio 3 Saturday Morning programme (coming up on 12th September).

We talked about my Bayeux-based composition Thread!, written in 1980. It was a particular pleasure to recall the original performances by the New Music Group of Scotland, their kind and encouraging founder, composer-conductor Edward Harper and the people who took part in the original Thread!. For instance, it included a considerable viola solo for the late, great Jimmy Durrant, and I've been thinking of him and his idiosyncratic musical diet ever since the interview. Other Thread! performers coming instantly to mind were the elegant flautist, David Nicholson, and Pamella Dow, who formidably had a great deal to say about the percussion part in this piece. Thanks to this short conversation, Scotland's new music ecology 45 years ago came vividly to life in my head. Composing music over a long period is often an extraordinary form of time travel...to say nothing of the Bayeux Tapestry's 960-year Rückblick !