CHRISTIAN DREW

TALK WITHIN TALK WITHOUT 2023
choir, live electronics, video and flexible ensemble [25’]

Photo: Philip Clemo

Across March 2023, I worked closely with the Shout at Cancer laryngectomy choir and filmmaker / sound designer Philip Clemo, putting together a multimedia piece that draws on recordings and videos of trees that survived the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The recordings that form the basis of the piece were made by Philip Clemo and his team almost exactly 75 years after the 1945 bombings, using contact microphones and sensors attached to leaves and trunks. The project explores the duality of radiation as a destructive force, but also a healing force within the context of radiotherapy. By working with these recordings the project asks what we might learn form the resilience of the trees and the symbiotic communication networks of the natural world.
 

Commissioned by Shout at Cancer as part of the ‘From Silence Into Song’ project. 

First performed by the Shout at Cancer choir, Dr Thomas Moors (conductor), Phil Clemo (guitar, electronics, visuals), Christian Drew (accordion, percussion, synth) and Mark Sanders (drums, percussion) at the Princess Alexandra Hall, Royal Over-seas League, London.