Q&A with Wine Project musician Charley Davenport
NZSM MMus graduate Charley Davenport (cello) has been working with violinist and fellow composer Tristan Carter to create and perform the music for The Wine Project, currently showing at Circa Theatre.
Charley and Tristan (also an NZSM graduate) not only play cello, violin, mandolins and cajon drums during the show – they've also picked up some dance moves along the way, and are fully immersed as characters in the performance as well.
Here Charley shares his insights into how he got involved in the project and what it's like to be a 'closet dancer'.
How did you get involved working with a dance theatre group in the first place?
I first got involved writing, improvising and performing cello with dance as part of the Wellington Fringe Festival some years ago, and I have been drawn to it ever since. I really love the physicality and discovering the links between movement, expression and music. Dancers LOVE having live music, so it's really rewarding to be able to respond immediately to one another and get a heightened visual sense of your musical expression.
I have written and performed with the choreographic students at the New Zealand School of Dance (NZSD), using looping cello and multi-layered cello textures. Also in Wellington I've worked with very free-form contact improvising dancers, opening myself up to improvised movement along with music. I met Sacha Copland, Artistic Director of Java Dance Theatre at the NZSD and got involved as a performing cellist with composer Thomas Press in the prequel to The Wine Project called Rise. Rise used the process of making bread as a metaphor for how humans / individuals develop into forming communities. It had a season at Bats and involved pumping over 50kg of flour into the theatre from the ceiling each show, so inevitably was very visceral (messy!) and exciting!
What has the process been like writing music for dance?
I have been working with violinist and fellow composer Tristan Carter to create the music for The Wine Project. This show focuses on the next stage of humanity (after Rise): how communities become civilisations. It essentially profiles the formation of culture, art, marriage, hierarchy, slavery, sex and debauchery – all expressed through five characters within a village. Weaving it's way through the story in this dance show is the wine-making process. Sacha was inspired by the idea of how people develop after they have their basic needs covered – and the metaphor and simplicity of a grape developing into the rich and complex beverage wine.
Of course there is much history surrounding wine-making, and from the outset, we wanted our music for the show to tap into the flavours of this history. We also wanted to create an immediacy and very "human"-sounding palette, and so we decided that all of the music, drumming and singing would be generated live in the show from the performers without any recordings or backing tracks. Much of the music is very folk-based, but bringing in characteristics very much influenced by the sounds of the Mediterranean – so flamenco music, tango, Bulgarian gypsy folk music, Russian choral music, Ancient Greek music, Rembetika song and Balkan gypsy music to name a few. We did a lot of YouTube trawling to discover new sounds and ideas for ourselves.
With Sacha and Java, another driver of the aesthetic is the blending of roles between performers, and also blurring between the stage/performers and audience. As such, Tristan and I are not sideline backing musicians – we're very much two of the five characters, and act and dance while driving a lot of the scenes with violin and cello music. We all play cajons (box drums especially made for this show by local maker Phil Jones), the dancers are very percussive and we sing and vocalise as well.
What’s it been like having to perform/ act as part of your responsibilities on stage?
Is that something that has come easily?
Sacha likes to say that Tristan is a closet actor and that I'm a closet dancer! That's her way of encouraging us that we're actually able to be convincing in those capacities and able to tap into unknown abilities. I've always been drawn to movement and I love the process of performing more three-dimensionally, so to speak. I've found that it has certainly brought out a new kind of confidence in my performing.
Tell us about the Edinburgh Fringe festival – have you been before?
What do you know about it and what are you looking forward to?
I've never been to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It's hard to imagine 30,000 different shows happening in a month – I think it's probably going to be mind-blowing and humbling! It'll be a lot of hard work to cut through and get bums on seats, but Java has been there twice before with their show Back of the Bus, and so I'm confident we'll offer something different – and perhaps the best smelling show to boot with our use of spices and others evocative from the taste of wine! Java will be performing both Back of the Bus and The Wine Project at Edinburgh, so hopefully we'll cross-pollinate audiences from both shows. We've got some good CNZ support, but we will be putting some funds from our Circa season towards Edinburgh and are certainly open to new sponsorship opportunities too. We've performed The Wine Project at most of the regional festivals in New Zealand, including Wanaka, Southland, Nelson, Tauranga and Hawkes Bay – after our season here in Wellington at Circa, we'll be performing it at the Hamilton Gardens Festival at the end of February, and the Otago Festival in October. Edinburgh is truly a world stage, and so it's really exciting to see where it might go after!
What are the other musical things are you involved in currently?
I'm continuing to perform with The Troubles jazz band – we toured New Zealand in 2014 with Chamber Music New Zealand and this year it looks like we're set to perform in a number of the Wellington-based festivals. I'm also working with Grayson Gilmour on a new album this year, after having collaborated with him for his previous two albums and film soundtracks. I'm also playing bass guitar in an indie-dream-pop-alt-countryish band called Sky Village. Another musician that Tristan and I work with a lot is Nikita Tu-Bryant. As part of her next album, she's developing a theatrical music show, researching a lot of Chinese folk music and traditions – exploring her own Chinese heritage. I still perform at the annual Nelson Composer's Workshop and enjoy working with composers, but Java and these groups are where I put most of my creative energies.
How do you juggle all the various different musical projects you do?
I feel so lucky to be involved in such a diverse range of projects. I think the geography of Wellington has a lot to do with it being possible – I don't think it'd be practical in a large city where you'd have to spend an hour or more commuting to get from one rehearsal spot to another. Proximity is one of the key drivers here. Some projects require a lot of rehearsal time and creative exploration with very little profile or performing time, while on the other end of the spectrum you have gigs with very little rehearsal time and a lot of performance experiences – and development occurs through performance. So, being able to judge the time needed with other people, and time you need for your own practice is really essential. This comes with experience, but being open-minded and really giving, while upholding your own standards for quality seems to work for me.