Mandel - Nha Trang, Mini Suite
Mandel is a creative partnership between longstanding BedCom collaborator Emily Hall and Misha Law. Drawn together by a common aesthetic, they meet every week to practice mindful free improvisation mostly on violin and viola then work together to develop this material into fixed pieces of music. They originally got together to improvise on a regular basis as a means of free expressive offloading. They started to record their improvisations and listen back and quickly spotted ideas and sometimes whole passages which they wanted to develop into pieces. Mostly they then develop the pieces together through devising and for some pieces a more composer-based approach is taken and Emily develops the improvisation in between sessions. In this way, Mandel is a true partnership between the music therapy skills of Misha Law and the composition skills of Emily Hall. In 2019 they added 3 voices and a double bass to their sound.
About the Music:
A mini suite of 3 distinct movements created out of improvisations made looking out of the view of the Cotswold hills out of Emily’s studio, watching different weather fronts sweep across the landscape.
i is evocative of the Hardanger fiddle, which Emily studied many years ago in Norway on an Erasmus exchange
ii is evocative of the rain sweeping through the valley
iii is a reflection on nature’s current demise
The title track comes out of an improvisation in a response to “Nha Trang” a photograph by Andreas Gursky of workers in a factory in Thailand making wicker furniture for IKEA. It mirrors its swirling macro to micro, and homes in at a certain point to something more human. Nha Trang came about through a commission from the London Sinfonietta.