COMPOSER and sound artist Duncan Chapman admits to twin obsessions. Food and music.
And apparently he is not alone.
“Most musicians are obsessed with food,” he said.
Many musicians travel widely and food is just one of the many things which mark out a place as different.
“It is one of the things that is different depending on where you are,” said Duncan.
“I was in Tokyo doing a project and when I finished they were asking where I was going next.
“I said I was going back to do a piece in Huddersfield for the Contemporary Music Festival and they said that was fantastic and that they had always wanted to go there.
“It has this incredible reputation for music. I feel that it’s something that we don’t celebrate well enough. It is one of the things that we do really well.”
Celebrating people’s sense of place can include many things. Music is one of them, food another. And when we travel, we not only focus on those things in the place we are visiting but can find we appreciate more what is familiar when we return home.
“People don’t always see what’s in front of them. Then they travel and things smell and sound differently,” said Duncan.
His current food fad is rhubarb and not surprisingly, it’s now all to do with music.
And before the jokes start, don’t bother. Duncan has probably heard as many rhubarb jokes as he has seen sticks of the stuff since he started work on a new project for Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Thankfully he’s the sort of chap who will think that if the very idea makes you laugh then that’s a win, win. You reacted. And that’s after all what music is after. A response.
Duncan’s new piece, Growing In The Dark will be heard in the Creative Arts Building at Huddersfield University next Thursday.
It uses a series of recordings of rhubarb which were collected as part of a wider project with Overthorpe Junior School and called what else but Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb.
The project meant the children got to do what they presumably never get chance to do at home – mess about with food!
They were given sticks of rhubarb to play with, to see what sounds they made when they were snapped, crunched or rubbed together.
Then came the even better bit when they got to taste the rhubarb and rustle up some cooking favourites.
“We had rhubarb cake, crumble and pie. Some children said it reminded them of gran’s rhubarb crumble and for some, the taste was something entirely new.”
Sound pieces were made of all the children’s responses and the project also includes photographs of workshops and of a Rhubarb-B-Q.
As for Duncan, he got to spend hours on his hands and knees in the dark in a rhubarb growing shed near Wakefield to get time-lapse shots for a short film.