Robert Dickinson

Bob Dickinson (born 1955) is an English composer and writer. Whilst engaged in electronic music research, he became briefly involved with the emerging New Wave scene but later dedicated his creative energies towards more experimental works.
Biography
After attending the Derby School in Bury, which was then in Lancashire, he studied music at Sheffield University and Keele University (1973-77) plus additional studies with the German composer, Dieter Salbert, in Bayreuth (1975). During the mid-1970s he worked on early realisations of The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars for performances in Sheffield and Manchester and in addition worked on versions of Completely Sweet by Jean-Yves Bosseur and Repertoire by Mauricio Kagel. At this time he also collaborated with Sheffield-based electronic music pioneers Cabaret Voltaire on the multi-media piece Vietsong and played keyboards with seminal new wave band Magazine, contributing the song "Motorcade" to the album Real Life'.Commenting on his keyboard work in the early days of Magazine, the New Musical Express comments: "The band played their debut live gig at the Rafters in Manchester, on 28 October 1977. Their moody, cold keyboards and harsh rhythms were in sharp contrast to the mood of the day". A rare recording of Dickinson playing with Magazine is captured on the 'Pre-Real Life Demos', sessions recorded in various studios in the north-west of England in the second-half of 1977. A studio interview for Siren FM with Dickinson and his replacement in Magazine, Dave Formula, was broadcast in March, 2009 and reveals much of interest relating to the two musicians contrasting contributions to the band . As a footnote, it is interesting to note that the song 'Motorcade' provided inspiration for the name of a rock climb created on the face of Frogatt Edge in the Derbyshire Peak District by the iconic British climber, Gary Gibson. Ironically enough, in the early 1980s, Dickinson himself was to commence climbing, an interest which developed through into the 1990s, and which was inspirational in giving rise to his later work in the area of earth spirituality and the subsequent publication of 'Music and the Earth Spirit'.
Extra-curricula work whilst with Magazine included a side-project with Dick Witts, later of , deconstructing classic songs from the punk era. Previous work with Dick Witts had included the composition of a solo percussion piece, 'She was only the drum-majors daughter but she knew how to beat a retreat', which was premiered at the Spring Theatre in Hull in October 1976 by The Option Band and 'Death of the Maiden' for the 1977 International Festival of Mixed-Media in Ghent, Belgium. Also at this time, Dickinson collaborated with Kevin Eden of the Manchester-based band, 'Slight Seconds', which resulted in the song 'Building Bridges' which featured on the album 'Waiting Room' released on the Object label [http://www.mdmarchive.co.uk/archive/showartefact.php?aid3776&bid879 ]
During the 1980s he presented a number of systems-based pieces in gallery environments and initiated projects with artists from other disciplines. Projects at this time included work with the mime artist, Rowan Tolley with two staged pieces,'Steel' and 'Tusk', being presented at theatres in Yorkshire and Humberside. The 1990s saw a developing interest in "earth spirituality" resulting in a series of non-linear pieces of a ritualistic nature for performance in a variety of natural environments using a combination of natural and humanly-produced sound. These activities led to the publication by Capall Bann in 2001 of his book Music and the Earth Spirit. This was an investigation of the ways in which music and sound have been used in different cultures to connect with the "earth spirit". It also contains "sound workings" - short text-based pieces which can be used as guidelines for musical performances in the environment. Prior to the publication of 'Music and the Earth Spirit', a number of articles exploring the concept of sacred resonance and the relationship between sound, music and landscape were published in a number of alternative journals . Bob Trubshaw, the noted writer on folklore, archaeology and mythology, has highlighted the significance of Dickinson's work in an article, 'The Hills are alive', published in the journal, 'At the Edge'. Further citations and examples of his work in this area are to be found in the book 'Sacred Places - Prehistory and popular imagination' by Bob Trubshaw, 'Earth Mysteries' by Philip Heselton and 'Towards 2012'. The latter presented new perspectives on the 'pre-millennial revival of archaic spiritualities'.
Recent compositions
In recent years there has been a return to more "traditional" compositional methods, working in large resonant spaces in order to "magnify" the underlying tonal basis of the music. Recent projects have included collaborations with the artists Mary Barratt at Southwell Minster (Trinity) and Stephen Morley at the Haven Arts Centre Boston in addition to larger-scale installations such as Light into Dark presented at the '20-21' Gallery, Scunthorpe in December 2004, the latter being a cyclical work inspired by an overland journey to Tibet. Current activity has included two new works for the Vancouver Miniaturist Ensemble and a series of pieces for 10-string classical guitar, 'The Silence of Temples and Shrines' premiered in South Africa (September 2008) by their dedicatee, Viktor van Niekerk.
</gallery> A sequence of settings for voice and piano of Haiku by the sixteenth century Japanese poet, Issa, and a 13th century Middle-English fragment, composed for the mezzo-soprano, Siobhan Mooney, and the pianist, Ezra Williams, reflect a more long-term and ongoing interest in Zen buddhism, the music of Gustav Mahler and the aesthetics of John Cage. This new work entitled, 'Pictures of a floating world' is to be premiered at a concert at Schotts Music publishers in Central London on January 30th, 2010, alongside songs by Mahler, Webern and Sibelius[http://www.facebook.com/#/event.php?eid181119691378&refts]. An album of recent instrumental and electronic works, 'Logic, beauty and chaos', produced by Mark Stolk, was released on the JNN netlabel as a free download in early May, 2009. Two tracks from this album, 'Strata' and 'Threads', were used in the retrospective megamix by Mark Stolk, 'The world is just not normal, part two'. Currently he is working on a commission from the Firebird Trust for a new composition for the Komposit ensemble.
Electronic treatments of Wagner and Mahler
An ongoing series of electronic transformations and manipulations of micro-sections from Wagner's 'Ring' cycle, starting with 'Abscheid',featured on the 'Logic, beauty and chaos' album, and continuing with 'Leb'wohl' (to be released on a second JNN compilation album in August 2009) deal with concepts of time-stretching and textural 'masking'. For example,'Leb'wohl', which uses a looped figure from the closing scene of Die Walküre, employs a sonic treatment which references the Shepard tone, creating the auditory illusion of a pitch descent which seems never to get lower. A third piece takes the opening bars of the Adagietto of Mahler's Fifth Symphony as source material and subjects it to a complex treatment of loops, pitch alteration, time-stretching and filtering.

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