David Gordon is an improviser, award-winning composer and genre-bending keyboard-player. The rich diversity of his collaborations includes work with musicians from the worlds of jazz, classical, tango and baroque music.
Talking about the arrangement, David explains “When performed as part of the Four Seasons cycle, this piece is accompanied by a harpsichord, and Vivaldi writes ‘il cembalo arpeggio’ an invitation to the player to embellish and shape the music according to taste,” David explains.
The greater compass and depth of the piano keyboard allows a more dynamic and colourful approach than would be possible on harpsichord. The adventurous nature and sometimes surprising sequence of Vivaldi’s harmonies are the perfect springboard to explore the multi-dimensional nature of sleep and of dreams, whether fragmentary, vivid, vague, sweet, or calm.”
David’s improvisation is the featured in Stewart Bywater’s film featuring featuring the actor Joelle Rae who most recently appeared in Amazon Prime’s Christmas film ‘My Dad’s Christmas Date’ and the BBC iPlayer and Netflix series Get Even.
As with all the films they were filmed during the first lockdown and here Stewart explains the film’s significance: “I wanted to illustrate the monotony of the lockdown. I used the dripping tap, ticking clock and swinging lightswitch as metaphors for the repetitive, Groundhog Day-esque experience of being stuck indoors throughout the lockdown.
The use of the phone was intended to show the impact social media can have on our mental health, especially this year, with everyone being confined to their homes, watching others leading ‘their best lives’, combined with all the toxic memes that were floating around and the awful things happening in the world at the time we made the film. I also hope that it shows how social media exacerbates the general feeling of loss, loneliness and being ignored that so many of us have felt this year. Combined with the alcohol, the combination of loneliness, despair and alcoholic depression leads her into a dark place and for a while, it looks like she might not be emerging from the deep sadness, which I hope came across in the bathtub scene.
With the dream sequence, I wanted to illustrate our collective yearning to be outdoors and ‘set free’ from the lockdown. More importantly, I hope that it shows how happiness can come from simple, natural things and just from an uncomplicated existence. Even though it was all made in just a few hours with just one camera and no other kit, I hope that this film captures some of the feelings, both good and bad, that 2020 has conjured up within us and also that it sends out a positive message about how we don’t need all the trappings of the competitive modern world, and that most of us already have what we need, all around us.”