Marvellous Encounters (Of My Life)

David Butler (Producer), Andrea Pazos (Photographer)

Research output: Non-textual formDigital or Visual Products

Abstract

Marvellous Encounters (Of My Life) was commissioned in early 2017, with Heritage Lottery funding, to mark what would have been the 80th birthday of the composer and pioneering figure in British electronic and tape-based music, Delia Derbyshire (1937-2001). The piece is an audio-visual collaboration between visual artist Andrea Pazos and audio practitioner David Butler, featuring a collage of sounds and make-up elements from recordings by Delia Derbyshire held in her archive at the University of Manchester and related, primarily, to her freelance activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The piece acknowledges the lack of official credits for Derbyshire's work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (it was standard policy in the 1960s for the members of the Radiophonic Workshop not to receive individual credits for their contributions to BBC productions) through a faceless, disembodied pair of hands working through commission after commission and also recognises the significance of the visual arts to Derbyshire’s creative practice. From collaborations with artists such as Madelon Hooykaas, Elisabeth Kozmian and members of Hornsey College of Art to scores for programmes about Goya, Henry Moore and Paolozzi, the relationship between music, sound and the visual was a driving concern in Derbyshire’s work and can be traced to her childhood as well as the pivotal experience of hearing Varèse’s Poème électronique in Le Corbusier’s Phillips Pavilion at the 1958 World’s Fair.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherDelia Derbyshire Day
Media of outputFilm
Size15 minutes
Publication statusPublished - 10 Jun 2017

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