When Daniel Padden went to the first read-through of David Harrower's
play, Ciara, he didn't think it required any music to accompany it.
Given that the Glasgow-based composer and musician had just been
commissioned to write a score for the play, this looked like it was
going to be a problem. As it turned out, while the play was led by
Blythe Duff's solo turn as a Glaswegian art gallery owner and daughter
of a recently deceased gangster, Padden framed the play with a
soundtrack that helped to accentuate the mood of the piece even more.
“Finding music to put into the play was a real challenge,” says Padden
of Harrower's Herald Angel winning Fringe hit, which returns to the
Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh this week. “In physical terms, it's just
one woman onstage telling a story, with no action or set-pieces that
offer a composer the opportunity to do something, so just finding a
space for music was a challenge. In David Harrower's writing, every
word matters, and the thing that came out of the script for Ciara is
that, although on one level it's about Glasgow and the everyday,
there's something much bigger going on there that's epic. In the way it
looks at how things are passed down generations, it's almost Greek in
its construction.
“I was trying to hint at the grandeur of that, but without being
explicit. I don't like theatre music that tells you what to think.
Music can represent a character or a location, or it can be a more
conventional soundtrack, but there's an ambiguity in Ciara I tried to
reflect. I wanted to create something that on the surface is quite
conventional, with elements of 'classiness', but is punctuated with
physical/ugly moments, and has an odd insistency. I still don't know
what time signature its in.”
As a performer in his own right, both solo and in his bands, Volcano
The Bear and The One Ensemble over the last couple of decades, Padden's
sense of theatricality has increased since his move into composing for
theatre several years ago. This came about following the
Manchester-born musician's move to Glasgow at the turn of the century.
Padden provided music for three shows for Visible Fictions - Jason &
The Argonauts, The Hunted and Curse Of The Demeter – and worked with
Nic Green on her show, Motherland. There has also been work with Ankur
on their Jukebox project, and with the National Youth Theatre.
“Visible Fictions were very important to me,” Padden explains. “I'd
done a couple of short films, and started sending the music out, and I
ended up doing my first real score for theatre with them. I'd never
made action music before - and Jason & The Argonauts still tours around
the world over 5 years after we made it! The reason you make music for
theatre is very different to doing a gig, and you learn very quickly
that one note might be all that's required rather than doing something
more. Rather than trying to make the best piece of music you can, you
are trying to make the best piece of music for that moment, on that
stage, with these actors doing these things, and that's a very
different remit.”
Padden first came to music when he bought his first guitar aged sixteen
before going on to study philosophy and psychology. An interest in
experimental and non-western music continues to be explored with
Volcano the Bear, who haver released a multitude of work. There have
been several albums too with The One Ensemble, who recently performed
their latest work, Saint Seven, as part of this year's Made in Scotland
programme.
This year too has seen Padden co-direct The Complaints Choir of
Edinburgh for Edinburgh Art festival, as well as work with artist Sarah
Kenchington on her Wind Pipes For Edinburgh project.
Ciara is the second of David Harrower's plays Padden has scored,
following on from A Slow Air in 2011. The pair met at a bonfire party
several years ago, where they bonded over their similar tastes in
music. The commission for A Slow Air followed shortly after, adding to
an already eclectic back catalogue.
“I suppose I'm never quite satisfied with anything I've done,” Padden
says. “I've got about eighteen guitars, not because I'm particularly
interested in playing the guitar, but each one sounds a bit different,
and I want to explore all those different sounds and what you can do
with them. There's something mysterious about what you can convey
through sound and what you might call noise. It has an effect on us
that you don't quite get from anywhere else.
“I've come to where I am from quite a sideways path, and I wonder if I
feel I need to keep doing it, to keep making work, different work, so
that I can justify my impostor status. And people keep asking me, and I
keep saying Yes. But I try to see them all as chances to learn. I am
pretty restless though. My life would be a lot simpler if I just stuck
to one instrument.”
Ciara, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, December 3-21; Citizens Theatre,
Glasgow, January 21-25 2014
www.traverse.co.uk
www.citz.co.uk
The Herald, December 3rd 2013
ends
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