Creative

Bluescampuk 

It is the music summer school next week held at the prestigious Tonbridge School in the UK.

Today, while on a walk I share how we make this creative project work and let you into some of the secrets of forming bands, performance training and songwriting skills that we share with the Bluescampers

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

Emily Peasgood Composer, sound artist, artist, author

Awards Ivors Composer Award for Sonic Art (2018)

Emily Anne Peasgood is an Ivors Composer Awards winning English composer and sound artist. 

Emily creates research-led and site specific interactive artworks for galleries and outdoor public spaces, ranging from large-scale community events to intimate sound installations. Her work aims to transform how we perceive our environment by creating invitations to connect with people and places that are forgotten, overlooked, or surrounded by histories that can be remembered and celebrated through sound and music. She is best known for her work in outdoor public locations with specific communities of people, often using innovative technology and design that visitors can interact with. Her work is magical, evocative and memorable.

Emily was profiled by the I as the Hip Op Composer. In 2017 she delivered the TEDx Folkestone talk "Emily! Don't do that!".

Emily  was awarded a PhD by Canterbury Christ Church University for her thesis Leading with Aesthetic: Creating Accessible, Inclusive and Engaging Musical Artworks Through Experimental Processes in the Community and is a composition tutor at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Dr Peasgood is a co-author of The Work of the Military Wives Choirs and The perceived effects of singing on the health and well-being of wives and partners of members of the British Armed Forces: a cross-sectional survey.

Works

In 2014, Emily created Landscapes a choral work responding to the landscape artworks of J. M. W. Turner and Helen Frankenthaler. It premiered at the exhibition Making Painting: J.M.W. Turner and Helen Frankenthaler at Turner Contemporary.

In 2016 she premiered Lifted at Turner Contemporary. In the same year she premiered BIRDS, a sung and spoken word piece observing feminine ritual and behaviour through the lens of a documentary film narrator and Crossing Over, a piece commissioned by Turner Contemporary to premier as part of its event commemorating the Zong massacre as depicted on J.M.W. Turner's painting The Slave Ship (1840).

Halfway to Heaven won the prize for Sonic Art at the 2018 British Composer Awards (renamed the Ivors Composer Awards). In the same year, the "eerily evocative" Requiem for Cross Bones featured at MERGE Bankside and created The Illusion of Conscious Thought for the East Hill Cliff Railway and West Hill Cliff Railway in Hastings as part of the Coastal Currents Arts Festival.

In 2019 Never Again was nominated for an Ivors Composer Award in the category of Community or Educational Project. In 2017 Emily Peasgood was nominated in the same category for BIRDS and other Stories and Crossing Over.

Visit www.emilypeasgood.com for more info and links

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

Alkistis Dimech.

On this episode I am talking to Alkistis Dimech about her work in dance, magic and publishing.

This is a wonderfully deep and encouraging story and illuminates the incredible work that she does.

Alkistis Dimech is an artist, dancer-choreographer and writer exploring the occulted dimensions of the carnal body and its subtle anatomy. Her art and praxis is grounded in ankoku butô (dark dance), which she has practised since 2002. Alkistis considers herself as a dancer after Nietzsche, and pursues a vision of the dancing body and its technique as the final place of resistance.

With Peter Grey, she is the co-founder of Scarlet Imprint, an independent press which publishes practitioner-oriented works on magic, esotericism and the occult.

Alkisitis has performed in the UK, Europe and the United States, solo and in collaboration with musicians and artists, notably Z’EV, Gast Bouschet and Nadine Hilbert, and Anji Cheung – and spoken of her practice and given workshops, at conferences and events in the UK, Europe and the United States.

Selected works from 2008 to 2018 are documented in The Brazen Vessel (Scarlet Imprint 2019). She is currently creating  Antimony – a work of texts and images on the transfiguration of the body – and secunda creatura, a dance of evocation and exorcism.

https://www.alkistisdimech.com/profile

https://scarletimprint.com/

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

Aoife Anastasia Nally

Aoife Anastasia Nally is an artist, performer, and theatre producer, who for the last few decades has been performing in the West End, London, but is currently based in rural Ontario, Canada. Today we discuss her research into the cursed play ‘The Spancel of Death' penned by her Great Uncle T.H. Nally, Abbey Theatre playwright and personal friend of the great poet WB Yeats. She is also a psychic medium, Seer, trance channel and occasional oracle.

The notorious play was interrupted by the Easter Uprising 1916 and subsequently abandoned by WB Yeats eventually giving rise to the belief it was cursed. Not helped in part by the content of the play, for the Spancel that lends its name to the play is nothing less than a necromantic spell of the blackest magick and based on actual events that took place in Balla, County Mayo, Ireland in 1777.

You can contact Aoife

Instagram: https://instagram.com/strengthdrawing?igshid=xdmiw2or374t

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strengthdrawing

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

What is it about Enlightenment

Following on from the previous episode entitled Genetic Thinking, I explore the way that ideas are baked into the culture and its thinking.

I look at the term enlightenment and how that has been used by the Catholics against the Pagans, the Protestants against the Catholics, the Enlightenment period and science against religion.

What other ideas sit in our collective operating system that influences our view of the world?

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

Steve King The Superdep Bassist

“This is Steve. Steve plays bass. Steve sings a bit as well.”

…Of course, that’s what he would have you believe but there is considerably more to him than that. Steve King has been a freelance musician and in “the business” for close to 30 years now and has built a reputation for being one of the most flexible and versatile bassists in the country with a handy sideline in vocals and a fantastic ear for harmony.

Equally at home playing pop, rock, Latin, funk, jazz, pantomime and musical theatre on both bass guitar and double bass, Steve has made his name as a “SuperDep” - someone who can step in at the very last minute and make it sound like he has been performing with that band for several years. From his roots in Medway and the Kent Youth Jazz Orchestra Steve now gigs all over the world with “pretty much anyone who needs a bass player” but performs most regularly with former X-Factor contestant Ben Mills, David Alacey’s Rat Pack tribute, Paul Da Vinci (The Rubettes, Tight Fit) and James Bond tribute orchestra Q The Music as well as frequent guest appearances with bands such as The Chillbillies and Norwich based function band Beat Connection. Past appearances have also included musical theatre shows Beyond The Barricade and Mad About The Musicals, Roy G Hemmings Dictionary of Soul, Suspiciously Elvis, ABBA Gold and big bands The Len Phillips Orchestra, String of Pearls and Five Star Swing.

Steve can be found on Instagram and Twitter by searching @stevekingonbass

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

Genetics of thinking

Today I'm pondering 'the wisdom of mental illness' from the shamanic culture's point of view.

I'm referring to the interview I did with Jez Hughes and how we pay for things later in Western society. In contrast, they pay for things upfront by ritualistic practice in more ancient cultures.

How is it that families often do the same thing as their predecessors? And how does ancestral thinking affect us? Is there an epigenetic aspect to this?

Are your decisions the same as your parent's because you experienced them making those choices?

I look at how we might be able to change our fundamental thinking.

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

Jez Hughes Shamanism, Author of Wisdom of Mental Illness, Huichol Mexico

Today on the podcast I am talking to the author of 'The Wisdom of Mental Illness'

Jez studied Shamanism intensively for over twenty years. Yet, his healing journey began thirty years ago when, as a teenager, he experienced a fit that propelled him into an altered state of consciousness far more powerful, yet intrinsically linked, to the one that surrounded him.

It took a long time to integrate that experience and find healing for the physical and mental disturbances it initiated which included ongoing convulsive fits, anxiety, psychological breakdowns and minor psychotic episodes.

This journey, he now understands as a 'shamanic sickness' lasted on and off for around 17 years and took him through various healing and spiritual traditions and all across the earth, until he finally came home to shamanism and found practical methods to cure himself.

This training is ongoing and for the past eight years he has worked closely with the Wixarika (Huichol) nation of northern central Mexico, hosting many senior Marakames (shamans) as they have shared their ceremonies, culture and medicine with Europeans for the first time in their history.

Outside of shamanism he has worked for Friends of the Earth, The Prince’s Trust, as a professional actor and a published poet and is a practising astrologer and tarot reader.

His first book- 'The Heart of Life- Shamanic Initiation & Healing in the Modern World’- was published in November 2015 by Moon Books. His new book ‘The Wisdom of Mental Illness- Shamanism, Mental Health & the Renewal of the World’ is an excellent read.

For details and Jez and his books visit

https://secondsighthealing.com/

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

Shaun Baxter B.A (Hons). ILTHE. M.Mus (Dist).

Apart from being a player of international renown, Shaun Baxter is the UK’s most experienced and respected rock guitar teacher. He was a founder member of The Guitar Institute in London in 1986 (a partner of The London College of Music), where he taught every week for twenty years. He then went on to become Head of Guitar at Guitar-X in London before, in 2003, becoming an owner and the Academic Director of The Academy of Music and Sound (the UK’s biggest national provider of instrument-specific pop/rock tuition, with seven schools in both England and Scotland).

Shaun composed the World’s first Grade 8 Guitar syllabus for Trinity College; wrote the UK’s National Operational Standards (NOS) for music performance; has, as a music journalist, written for magazines like The Guitar Magazine, Guitar World & Metal Hammer, and was a monthly columnist for Guitar Techniques magazine from 1994 to 2021.

Through his teaching, Shaun helped pioneer popular music education in the UK and taught many guitar players and teachers who have gone on to find fame in the music industry.

In 1993, Shaun recorded a ground-breaking album entitled Jazz Metal. He has also toured the World and recorded with artists such as Princess, John Sloman (Gary Moore/Uriah Heep) and Carl Palmer of Emerson Lake and Palmer, and was ranked in the Top 50 of the World's most Influential guitarists by Guitarist Magazine.

For details

https://www.facebook.com/shaun.baxter.musician

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm8IWQHarZo1wYklEuuHorQ

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music

In this episode I am walking from Battle to Westfield in Sussex in the UK. I reflect on the episode with Bob Morrell about the arts and pricing and what skills we have as musicians and artists. So how we price what we do, how to quantify your worth, and how to make money.

I mention the Robert Cialdini book ‘Influence’ and how we make decisions and how we are wired, and one important skill for negotiation.

Plenty of birdsong in this as I reflect on the question, ‘how much do I charge’ and the response to my answer which is often ‘you can’t charge that here’ and how we are all deluded we just need a more powerful delusion.

To support the podcast and get access to features about guitar playing and song writing visit https://www.patreon.com/vichyland

and also news for all the creative music that we do at Bluescamp UK and France visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

For details of the Ikaro music charity visit www.ikaromusic.com

Big thanks to Josh Ferrara for the music