A game-for-music
Instrumentation: mezzo soprano, violin and electronics
Duration: variable (9-13’)
Release date: 3 November 2023
Black Fell is an interactive digital opera: a story in song, in which you control the path the narrative takes and the way the music evolves.
You are an astronomer, returned to childhood haunts near Kielder Forest in Northumberland after many years abroad. The observatory above the forest was almost a second home to your father and you find yourself there again tonight. While a host of enthusiastic amateurs huddle in hope of a brief gap in the clouds, you prefer solitude in the darkness and reflect on the path that brought you to this point.
You circle fragments of memory, some pure, some bittersweet, some fierce. Your inner voice wanders through the landscape of your youth and and as you replay these scenes over and again in altered sequence you notice your emotions shifting. Nevertheless, each path seems to lead to the same point, leaving you no less lost, perhaps, but at least somewhere clear, between grief and forgiveness.