The end

After nearly 2 and a half years' work, "The Life and Times of Charles A Allen" is completed. For those of you unfamiliar with this project, let me explain. Charles is my late Granddad, in 1990 he recorded details of his life history onto cassette. I have used these recordings and added music to create a musical history of my Granddad's life: it is just short of an hour of music and speech, spread over 36 tracks.
I am so happy with the final product, I could weep. It was obviously a very personal journey for me using text in this manner and trying to make music I hope he would enjoy. Charlie was a musician himself, you see, a drummer and bandleader. He loved dance music (ie. dance music of the 30's and 40's), he adored the saxophone and the big band sound of that era. I have tried to use this in the musical style of this piece. I will be working on the cover artwork over the next few days, and anyone interested in hearing it, can order a CD through the usual channels.
I am also currently working on creating visuals to go with the music and am at present 8 minutes into the project. It will clearly be a much larger project to make an hour long film and I can only hope that my hard drive doesn't explode.

Also on a different note "The Uninhabited Body Parts 1-8" (based on the poems of Rafael Alberti) has also been 'officially' released on Elementary Recordings. The original Parts 6-8 have been available previously, but this is the first time the entire piece has been together in a completed form. I have emailed the Rafael Alberti Foundation in Spain to ask for their consideration in listening to the poet's work set to my music, and am awaiting a reply.

Crackerdog is still awaiting news from The arts Council about funding for their next project "Home" and a meeting is scheduled for the end of May.

"Touching Wood" is still stuck mid-chapter, sorry folks.

Thanks for listening.

Al