Tutti
News
Bath Spa University student and graduate create music score based on pandemic statistics
Wednesday, 21 July, 2021Third year BA (Hons) Fine Art student Charlotte Tamkin and MA Commercial Music graduate Matthew Collins have been inspired by Covid graphs of deaths and recovery rates to create a music score that addresses separation and the longing for togetherness that was felt during lockdown.
The piece is called Tutti, and funds raised from the score will go to NHS Charities Together as a way of thanking NHS workers for their life-saving efforts during the pandemic. Charlotte said:
"It’s the Italian music term that means when something is played all together. I think that sort of symbolises this idea of things being played all together, people being all together, which is Tutti's goal ultimately."
The two students met on the Porthleven Prize, where they initially had the inspiration for the idea. “I approached Matt with an idea of taking a tracing of the landscape,” said Charlotte. “I knew a little about staves, and I asked Matt if we could put this line on these lines – in music, does that do anything?”. With this idea, Charlotte and Matt created several music pieces incorporating the line of the coast around Porthleven.
It was several months later, once the pandemic had struck, that Charlotte had the inspiration to develop the idea further.
“I remember watching one of the pandemic briefings to show the progression of COVID-19. I was looking at these graphs and these linear lines, and I realised that they look the same as the lines that we had got from the coast in Porthleven,” she said. “I thought, 'there could be something here actually'.”
Matt adds:
“If you listen to the piece, you notice how it blooms eventually. It gets higher and lower at the same time, because that's the way the graph works. The recoveries are getting higher and deaths are getting lower, thankfully. That's the main theme.”
After developing the piece further, Charlotte and Matt decided that it made more sense to have it as a duet which could be played on one piano. Given the lockdown restrictions, a duet in person has been out of the question. Instead, Charlotte and Matt opted to create a lockdown video for Facebook.
With the project taking shape, Charlotte and Matt applied to Bath Spa's Student Opportunities Fund. The money they received enabled them to pay for two musicians, Robert Green and Felix Surbe, to play the piece independently, with the two recordings then edited together into the final video.
The pair are hoping to return to Porthleven in November with the possibility of more collaborations to come. Charlotte said: “I can't wait to get back to Porthleven and continue with the same processes or something different – we’ll be looking at whatever happens next in the world that we can make work about.”
You can download Tutti on Matt and Charlotte’s website. There is also an option to make a donation to NHS Charities Together.