Claire's music

a day in the life

2009-10-12T23:51:00.000-07:00

Today I got up about 9.30am. This is because I am having trouble adjusting to daylight saving time.., but to be honest, I haven't made much of an attempt to go to bed any earlier. I don't really work very well in the mornings anyway.

Then, I did a bit of emailing, and some work on the business plan for SoBI . Most of the time I was doing this I was also trying to get my speakers to work, and afte

r several failed attempts to start up the program I decided it was not worth trying..

After that, it was time to head into town for a haircut.

This took only 1+1/2 hours which is GREAT compared to the usual 5-6hour ordeal when trying to dye one's hair an unnatural shade of snow.. I decided to keep the sexy regrowth for my role in summer wonderland at HLT.

Then, after that, I cooked 3 falafel(s)? for lunch, and put them on a burger.

Then, after that, I decided to wash my blanket that I had got from the hospice shop to make into cushions.

Then, after that, I actually did some composing. I wrote about 2 minutes, of a piano and synth cue for a film called 'The off season' which I have been working on for a few weeks. Directed by Michael Lonsdale.

Then, dinner time.

Now.. blogging.

And in one hour i'm going to a movie because it's cheap tuesday.

This is the day in the life of composer, claire cowan.

Fascinating, ?

I missed out all the little details about phonecalls and suchlike, just because, I can sense your boredom, and can only ignore that to a certain degree.

Good byyeee.

This is a little doll I bought from avondale market. She has blinky eyes. She shall be called - Emma.

Quick catch up

2009-09-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last blogged.
Yesterday I made the list of lists - yes...the one that rolls all the areas of my life into one lump sum, and categorizes them into most and least important...and which bits will pay the bills fastest.

I am keeping very busy, possibly taking on a little more than I should be, but that's all good.

I think bullet points might be the best way to go -

Stuff that's happened in the last month:

Set up the Society of Brilliant ideas
Built their website
Been cast in HLT's new play 'Summer Wonderland'
Taken on two more film soundtracks
Decided to organize an Arvo Part concert
Decided to buy a motorbike
My car decided to blow a gaskit
Built some cool puppets
Done LOTS of screen printing and markets for AFL

Yesterday I played in a midnight youth music video for MTV which was fun, if not incredibly repetitive..but such are the nature of these things.

Things coming up:

Moving into SOBI in high st (a new studio space and artist run workshop)
Developing more puppet stuff for a show next year in auckland
learning lines for play!
buying a new car

Some film related stuff:

Films I scored 'Lessons from a melting ice cap' won Best NZ documentary at Reel earth
'Assume Nothing' was nominated for best art documentary at Qantas awards

I took this picture at muriwhai ganet colony. Me and Chris drove out to helensville as I decided to take a day off work..well, a half day. It's really nice to take a day off now and then, working from home means I'm almost never not working, but it doesn't feel much like work anyway!

Tootle pip.

c

Free Michael Jackson Tribute album by NZ artists

2009-07-06T14:48:00.001-07:00

Download it HERE from cheese on toast.

THANKS CHEESE ON TOAST!

Heavy Dreaming

2009-07-05T00:11:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up and my head was FULL of dreams that I had had the night before. It felt like i'd just sat through a 6 hour long movie and was able to recall almost every moment.

Now, I remember very little, except that it involved a swimming pool, and performing aquatic stunts..

I think last night was the first night in ages that I hadn't been just a little bit cold in bed..so I guess I had put my body into the perfect dream mode, and my brain had a little bit of a party..

Anyway once I'd recovered from that (it took 3 snoozes to actually remember I had to be at the craft market in an hour).. I realized I was going to be late because I hadn't factored in setup time.

Anyway, why am I posting today? I forgot to post in June. I just wanted to have a few random ramblings, and I'll do it in my favoured format - precise and informative, LISTS.

Things I'm looking forward to:

-Seeing my sister in melbourne soon

-The new harry potter movie

Things that have been annoying me a bit:

- People who say 'to be honest..' all the time, even when they would have no reason to lie about the subject matter, say for instance, their opinion on the weather forecast, or, giving directions..

- When the supermarket sells out of the organic cheddar cheese and they dont replace it for weeks

- When birds poop on my windscreen cos i've run out of water in the squirtee thing and cant be bothered replacing it

- people who say 'we must catch up', but have no intention of doing so

- people who update their facebook status constantly with unnessarily boring status' - ie 'so and so is just home from work'

- The window washers at avondale market traffic lights on sundays, who abuse people who actually dont want their windows washed and tell them so..

- hollywood films and their obsession with satisfying every need of the audience until they make no impact whatsoever.

- library fines. fullstop. cant they email you BEFORE they're late?

Things I think could make Auckland a better place:

- If you could buy sandwhiches with better filling combinations.

- If you could get somewhere on time by public transport, even faster than by a car.

-If there were less things being imported cheaply and more things made to last, locally.

- If pt chev countdown rennovations were finally finished, and it opened past 8pm.

-If my sister came back to auckland to live.

-If people with LOTS of fruit on the trees in their front yard would put it in a box by the gate and let passers by help themselves.

Things I'm thinking about doing soon:

-Developing a theatre show involving puppetry, video and music

-Sending out my AFL catalogues to shops and galleries

-Doing an EP with toad and some recording projects of my own

-Buying a sewing machine

-Buying a printing press

-Developing ideas for a community art space/studio in high st (more on this soon.)

- Buying a SCOOTER!

-buying some gumboots (anyone know where to get cheap ones?)

Things I would like to happen soon:

-the winter to prematurely end

-to get some commercial music jobs

Things I have learnt in the last month:

-how to play jewsharp.

- how to use elastic audio in pro tools.

Advice for dreamers:

Dream Big. Dream bigger. Dream biggest. Who is stopping you?

50th blog and award nominations!

2009-05-15T04:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 50th blog on my website..this is quite exciting, I had no idea I'd blogged

that much over the past year.

Anyway... This is just a short one to check out two little films I scored which are gaining attention in the festivals -

Lessons from a melting icecap - a 40min documentary directed by Jinty MacTavish

NOMINATED FOR BEST NZ FILM and and BEST SHORT FILM in REEL EARTH

Whetu Rere - The Sealion and the Coment - a 24min short film directed by Alastair Jamieson and Kat Baulu

NOMINATED FOR BEST NEW ZEALAND FILM in REEL EARTH

view the other nominees here.

The awards are tomorrow night May 16th in Palmerston North, presented by Robyn Malcolm. I have no idea whether Alastair or Jinty will be there but I wish them luck across the interweb..

News if they pick up the awards soon!

NZSO Sounz readings

2009-05-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

The NZSO Sounz readings happened on wednesday and thursday,

where my piece 'the legend of the trojan bird' was recorded.

The session was at the town hall in wellington. Conductor Hamish McKeich.

The score is revised from the version the AYO commissioned in 2008. I was happy with the recording given rehearsal time, and hopefully should have a recording soon from radio nz who recorded it. After the second day of readings there was a forum to discuss new music performance opportunities and collaborations with composers and performers. I had to explain to nzso staff and other composers what the anti-fashion league is.

Here's me having breakfast after the first rehearsal of my piece.. I always get too nervous to be able to eat anything beforehand. Mmm banana.

Waiting for the performance to begin in the afternoon.

Mid-performance, Hamish cues the brass..

Now this weekend will be full on..so trying to get some sleep..

48 Hours

2009-05-10T15:27:00.001-07:00

Again, Team Rampion has triumphed over the 48Hours weekend, getting it in with a mammoth 25mins to spare!

Our genre: REVENGE MOVIE

Our character: ALEX PUDDLE

Character trait: EXAGGERATOR

Dialogue: 'IT DOESN'T FIT.."

Prop: A ROCK

We called the film 'The man with the gravel tongue'. Here are a few shots.

We're in the heats on May 21st.

Some facts about our filming:

- It was 10.30am on saturday before we started filming.

- By midday we'd only done 2 of the 10 scenes.

- By Midnight we'd done about 8.

- By 4pm sunday we'd finished shooting.

-By 5pm sunday we'd finished editing

- By 6.15pm sunday we'd finished sound and Voice Overs

- We had voice coaching in South African accents from australia via internet

- We had a lot of chocolate and lollies

-The director and art director played a gig on sunday morning

- 90% of images were derived from national geographic magazines from 1970-1999.

- At one point we had our frustrated sound man Jared searching for Osama vocal samples (when a mis-communication between producer and Jared had somehow misheard my actual request for Obama sound samples)

- Our producers copy of 'The Secret' provided great inspiration

- We had 3 scripts concurrently which confused almost everyone

-Our first 3 attempts at outputting to tape failed

-We took over Mark's flat unexpectedly and even roped in unexpecting flatmates to our stress circle

- The film is made up of about 1500 still photographs.

Things we learned:

-No matter how calm you are, when you're filming a piece of paper close up on the end of a kebab stick, you won't be able to keep it still.

-Polystyrene is awesome

-Delegation is the key to getting a job done quickly

-Make sure your voice talent doesn't abandon you for other 48hour films.

- a focussing stick is an awesome device

- Camera people get really sore eyebrows from squinting into the viewfinder, possibly inducing headaches.

- We edited with imovie but wouldn't really reccomend it.

Director Claire Cowan, signing off.

Off.

A reason to visit grenada

2009-05-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

This is quite amazing.

A while ago I was fantasizing about having an underwater studio.. or at least the feel of one above water..maybe it's just my obsession with blue..

The bowed piano ensemble

2009-04-07T16:09:00.001-07:00

Found this video on Youtube and wanted to share it.

Wordle, freesound, and easter holidays..

2009-04-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

I found this cool tool on the internet called wordle. It does crazy stuff with text.. I pasted in some blog text and got these among heaps of other results. More pleasing to look at than boring paragraphs..

One is created from text from this blog, the other from the text on my sounz biography page. It creates bigger words for the words that appear more often. Would be cool if you could do this with sounds..

Another cool website i've been using a lot lately is freesound project

where I've managed to collect a lot of the sounds I needed for moonfishing. I got some lovely soft frog calls and some sounds of scraping concrete and creaking doors. It's a free creative commons based sharing website that is an excellent tool for sound designers when foley options are limited.

I have been recording my own foley for some of it though, which involved throwing things into the bathtub, crinkling crunchy bar wrappers and plastic bags, and cracking ice and pinecones.

Finished this week two arrangements for the Hamilton 'play it strange' show, a song by Annah MacDonald and one by Maria English, both talented young song writers from Hamilton girl's college. Their ensembles included everything from brass to strings and piano..and hopefully will sound great.

Emma's coming over for Easter, so will have some nice family time in the next week..probably not much work done, but ah well. I'm also moving into a new flat in waterview, which looks amazing.. very quiet and perfect for music creation. And a cute jack russell called cash.

Bye for now.

The Tractor and the Chochol.

2009-03-15T23:06:00.000-07:00

My brother Mat's film 'The tractor and the Chochol' is currently in the editing process, and I am writing a soundtrack based on a polish folk tune. The film is intended for gallery installation, and follows the story of the polish folk character the 'chocchol' and it's meeting with a tractor in a field. The chochol (pronounced Ho-ho) is said to appear and 'dance' with whoever meets it, to generally lead them away from what they should be doing. Mat's chocchol costume, and later sculpture featured in a prominent art gallery in Poland. It looks like a human dancing haystack.

At first, the tractor doesn't want to dance with the chochol, but after an initial conflict, they make friends, and 'do ce do' in the fields.

The Chochol stands alone in the field.

The unlikely dance partners.

canada report

2009-03-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

I visited Montreal for a week before leaving New York. I was invited by Kat Baulu, from the National Film Board of the Canada, (and who also co-directed Whetu-rere.)
I gave a presentation on 'how to create effective and long-lasting relationships between directors and composers.' It went well and I had good response.
This is the group of Doc Shoppers I did my presentation to.

I also met some famous Canadian film makers, including Alanis Obomsawin and Philippe Baylaucq.

One night Kat and I visited a small town called st adolphe where her parents have a house, we went snow tobogganing and I went snow-shoeing across a frozen lake (with about 4 ft of snow in some places.) Super canadian!

This snow-donut was extremely unpredictable and had zero steering capabilities.

Kat's Dad showed me the best way to sled..
And I broke the record..flea came to get me.

The flea herself.

Double sledding, extremely dangerous and not recommended.

Double sledding carnage.
Kat wipes out off the surfboard thing..

Snow shoeing gear.
Off to walk around the island. Those two poles sticking up are the end of the jetty, where boats are tied in summer.

The beautiful Kat and miss Flea.

Moonfishing

2009-03-03T22:30:00.000-08:00

New York Puppeteer David Michael Friend has been working on his short puppet film 'Moonfishing' for a number of years. I will be composing the soundtrack and a sound design component over the next few weeks when I get back to NZ. This film is truely unique and I look forward to working hard on it.
Here are some stills of the film:

Messy? I'm an Artist!

2009-02-11T07:29:00.000-08:00

My brother sent me a link to an interesting article in the UK times about messy people. Here are some extracts for your enjoyment. Read the whole thing here.

"Even in the absence of underlying causes, negotiations between the tidy and untidy are rarely smooth. The tidy person, for instance, tends to assume that he or she is right. But look at tidy people in history and who do you see? Dictators, secret policemen and oppressors. Hitler was known for his love of neatness and order; Mussolini kept an immaculately tidy desk. Saddam Hussein's guards have told of the former Iraqi dictator's obsession with cleanliness - he washed his hands after every handshake."

“Some people find disorder a threat, others are much more comfortable with it. Artists often find that mixing things up, having things collide, is where they get their most inspirational thought.”

"Researchers at Columbia Business School found that people who kept a neat desk spent 36 per cent more time looking for things than people who kept a “fairly messy” desk. Filing and retrieving things from files takes time."

"This is what makes tidy people so exasperated with us slovenly sorts. They have a strong connection to the world outside and think we have the same connection. They assume that we have taken that coffee cup and thought: “Shall I put this in the dishwasher? No, I can't be bothered”. But, as soon as we have finished with the coffee cup, it is invisible to us. We simply don't see it. It's like that stage of a baby's development at which, if something leaves its grasp, it ceases to exist. Some of us never got beyond that."

DocNZ

2009-02-09T07:59:00.001-08:00

In February and March the Documentary NZ festival takes place.
3 Film's that feature my music (2 fully scored by me and 1 partially scored)
are showing about 9 times each throughout NZ.

I'm delighted to see that they're up for a tonne of awards too -

Here are the films:
Susan Potter's 'An Ordinary Person'
Kat Baulu and Alastair Jamieson's 'Whetu-rere the sealion and the comet'
Kirsty MacDonald's 'Assume Nothing.'

All three films are powerful documentaries that are worth watching.
View more here

Let me know if you go because I am not going to make it back to NZ in time.

In Montreal at present. Has been rather good weather here actually, the last two
days have been above zero which is kind of unusual for february.

On the 9 hour bus trip to montreal.

NZSO Sounz Readings

2009-01-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

Yippeeee! Today I found out my piece 'Legend of the Trojan Bird' (revised 2009)
will be performed in the NZSO Sounz readings on May 8&9 in Wellington.

This is an awesome start to the year..I have to say the score I submitted was
pretty ugly (due to some last minute formatting changes) but I am glad they could
see through that and judged it accordingly! ha.. anyway i'll pretty it up and
get the parts done on the long bus ride to Montreal in february..

I am going to be in Montreal attending DocShop at the National Film Board there, staying with my friend Kat from 'wheturere' film we worked on. I'll be presenting a talk to the students about Composer/director relationships and how to make them work..
will be interesting for me to assess my history with different directors and see what I can present to the audience.

That's all for now..

time for icecream.

President Barack Obama

2009-01-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

Today the new president of the United states was inaugurated. I watched most of it
on tv, albeit I got up a bit late..

and it's still all going now with Obama attending each of the 10 balls in Washington..

I have very little time left now in new york so I figure I should make a list of everything
I need to do before I left.

So I went to the Met opera tonight to try and get a rush ticket. They had sold out in
10 minutes apparently..but I somehow sweettalked the guy and got a $25 seat in row D (that's
four rows from the front..)

The opera was Gluck's Orfeo de Euridice. The mezzo-soprano playing Orfeo looked so much like
Dawn French's piss take of Jack in Titanic it was hard to take it seriously..but she was a brilliant singer..
There were many dance sequences in the opera with a chorus of dancers choreographed by Mark Morris.
Pretty great dancing, sleek, clean..and amazing costumes. The opera chorus were on massive tiered balconies - and each was dressed as a different historical figure - shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Di, Ghandi, Charlie Chaplin, Cleopatra..it was stunning.

So I leave you with this hilarious video from David Letterman's Top ten - Why we'll all miss Bush..well, he was pretty entertaining..

Ego

2009-01-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, David Michael Friend's EGO sold out every performance.
In the weeks leading up to it, I created around 40mins of music to be
the soundtrack -a fairly flexible variety of tracks to cater for the on-stage action
which was never the same each night.

Yet to hear if there were any reviews, but general audience feedback was good,
with the Henson family/foundation attending and giving their compliments and
support to take the show to the next level.

I created a trailer for the show for those who missed out to see what all the fuss
is about.

Furthermore with David I hope to create a soundtrack for his short puppet film 'moonfishing' which is currently in post and in desperate need of a good soundtrack/sounddesign component. When funding and time is sorted out I'll begin work on this.

Touring Exhibition of Assume Nothing

2009-01-14T06:19:00.000-08:00

Filmmaker Kirsty Macdonald, and photographer Rebecca Swan have
collaborated to produce this exhibition of photographs and films exploring
gender identity. Please go along as I won't be able to. If you're not in auckland,
it's touring all over the country too, so please check it out.

There are lots of short films in the exhibition which are set to my music. Kirsty
and I have worked together a lot before and she was recently here in New york
doing some filming for documentary work.

AUCKLAND
MIC Toi Rerehiko- 321 Karangahape Road
23rd January - 19th February
Opening night 23rd January 6pm
Artist’s talk February 17th 8pm
Human Rights Commission workshops, January 30th and 31st.
http://www.mic.org.nz

Photography by Rebecca Swan.

PALMESTON NORTH
Te Manawa- 326 Main Street
28th February - 7th June
Artist floor talk and photography workshop March 14th
Human Rights Commission workshops April 18th and 19th.
http://www.temanawa.co.nz

CHRISTCHURCH
Canterbury Museum- Rolleston Avenue
July 4th 2009- 6th September 2009
Human Rights Commission workshops (dates to be confirmed)
http://www.canterburymuseum.com

HAMILTON
Waikato Museum- 1 Grantham Street
31st October- 14th February 2010
Human Rights Commission workshops (dates to be confirmed)
http://www.waikatomuseum.org.nz

New Years Day Mummers Parade

2009-01-12T21:02:00.001-08:00

Mat and I went to the Philadelphia Mummers parade on new years day. Everyday Philadelphians do this every year in extremely cold weather. Preparations begin in July. This year, due to the 'economic crisis' their funding was severely chopped, so the parade participants themselves raised half a million dollars to put it on. Their costumes were amazing, the music was great and the weather was sunny but freezing.

To get to philly we were up early and at the bus depot, the chinese bus 2000 or something.. the headquarters were unmarked, upon entering there were drop sheets on the floor and an unplumbed toilet sitting in the middle of the room. An elderly asian man sat at a desk with a computer. We asked him if we could buy a ticket. He took our money, put it in a large yellow plastic bag, and rummaged in the same bag for two pieces of paper with stamps on them that would be our tickets. I have no idea what the computer was for because all the transactions seemed to involve the yellow shopping bag. Dodgy but cheap!

We didn't last longer than 2 hours outside because our hands and feet were numb and we couldn't walk. It was -6degrees and we were in the shade. We took some good photos though. My favourite were the egyptian string band.

Now, a 'string band' consists of heaps of trumpets, saxes, banjos, double bass and some drums. This is an american type ensemble and they play concert band type stuff. The egyptians played 'caravan' with a confetti canon going off at the beginning and the end..was great.

Basically the parade consists of many different types of 'mummers' but we just saw the bands. You can read more about this great tradition here:

The Egyptians, obviously. see them dance.
They dance with instruments too.

Some of them are just there to dance.
This was a 50's rock and roll themed band, with werewolves.. ?
Devil women.

Elvis'es...

Abomidable snowman

Eskimos.

Army people...

With feathers. Everyone must have feathers..these strap on tail displays were an essential part of any human looking costume.

After a long day we took the chinese 2000 bus back to china town for $10. Great.

Mainly picture post

2009-01-12T17:58:00.000-08:00

It's getting late and I've been doing a lot of back-log blogging tonight, so I'm just going to do a picture and caption style post now.. So my brother has been staying, and we tend to take a lot of photos..particularly jumping shots. So here goes.

Christmas Pavlova. Best yet.

PS1, the safer way to swim. A gallery in Queens called PS1 has the most coolest installation ever.

Matthew underwater.

On Christmas day i gave matthew this t-shirt. I printed it myself.

We went to Central park. He wanted me to jump, but I was afraid I'd fall into the icey lake, so we both settled on a high-kick instead.

I got some new converse sneakers. Sneakers, wine and macbook, what more could a girl want.

Pennylicks icecream that's what!

Matthew got a williamsburg haircut at the Brooklyn General barber..coolest barber ever!
Look at that chair..

JUMP MAT JUMP

Invisible chair. Shadow of an alien.
Where can one get a decent smoothy around here? Not here that's for sure.

Good coffee though. The General store on Havermyer.

ART

2008-12-27T21:19:00.000-08:00

My brother matthew came to stay over christmas. He had an exhibition on in the lower east side on Jan 7th. He did a sculptural work called 'an english hobby horse.' We named him Philip. I made some cupcakes in honor of him.

In philip's creation, he had to sleep in the kitchen because his un-torsoed legs freaked us both out.
His horsey face is made from a traffic cone I found for matthew under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

Horsey cakes. Vanilla and Chocolate. Mmm.

Dead Umbrellas

2009-01-12T20:58:00.000-08:00

I've decided to make a collection of broken umbrella photographs.
There's something unnerving about their spines all poking out at odd angles.
Nobody fixes umbrellas. They just buy new ones. Their lives are over.
sad.

Manhattan Skyline

2009-01-12T20:53:00.000-08:00

On Boxing day my friend Brendan took Mat and I up to his work, an architecture firm
in Soho. We took these photos of the view. The weather was misty and cold, and the interior
was posh!

Here's mat pretending to be an architect..

Parias Ensemble

2009-01-12T20:47:00.000-08:00

Before Christmas I performed a few times with the Parias Ensemble, a newly formed group playing
music from Argentina and Colombia. I had a good time improvising on my cello and love the ensemble
sound. This photo was taken at Nicu's spoon theatre show on west 38th st.

A friend who attended the performance took photographs and made a collage for me.

In January and beginning of Feb I'll be doing some recording with this group. Have to buy some new cello strings as mine are ancient!