Interview with Ruth Wall : Ockham's Razor, Kathryn Tickell and The Side, and other projects

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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1 April

Harpist Ruth Wall – with compositions written for her by her husband (Graham Fitkin) – provided part of the music for Ockham’s Razor’s (@AlexOckhams') aerial-theatre show Not Until We Are Lost at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx).

Sadly, although Ruth had played other gigs live, only the locally formed choir was not a pre-recorded element on this occasion. However, it was still an amazing accompaniment to hear in the space that had been made (by taking out the seating of the flat stalls), both at the dress rehearsal, and at the first performance.

On the strength of it, The Agent, having talked to Ruth (@RuthWallharp) when (as a member of the quartet The Side (@TheSideBand)) she played the first gig with Kathryn Tickell (@kathryntickell) at Childerley Hall, near Cambridge, asked her for this interview…



Q1

Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Ruth !

These questions were devised after hearing your playing (sadly not in person, but recorded) at the dress rehearsal for, and the first local performance of, the show of aerial theatre Not Until We Are Lost by Ockham's Razor (@AlexOckhams) (at The Corn Exchange in Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx) last December).

I understand that, even when the score is performed live, there is a taped element : what does it comprise, and to what extent, and how, did you work with the composer (your husband Graham Fitkin) to determine its content ?


The show uses two harps, wire-strung and lever harp, and more than half of the tracks for the show are just solo harp, no pre-record.


I play as much as humanly possible, but, as Graham sometimes wanted the sound of more than one harp at once, we recorded the secondary lines and put them on the computer for playback. So I had in-ears [personal monitors, often custom fitted, to cut out ambient noise], with this other harp playing, so that the whole performance would be in time. It was complex, working out this element, and we used a click-track occasionally, too.


I worked closely with Graham in devising how all this could succeed, adding more lines to be played live as time went on. Graham also attended the first week of rehearsals, as the Ockhams' creative process took place later than the composition / music rehearsal, and he needed to add and change odd things.


Generally, a good fun process, though occasionally Graham shut the door on me to let me work things out alone – and also to avoid the expletives !



Q2

Please describe some of the techniques and effects employed in your part of the event, and also what challenges they can represent in live performance.


Complex counterpoint, very fast arpeggios, many harmonics, playing the red box [sound generator] with a bow and beater while also playing the harp with another hand, conducting the choir whilst playing (especially in rehearsal, and sometimes in performance), live control of the computer...

All this needed tons of practice on my own, with all the harps, red box and computer at exactly the correct height and position, as Fitkin music doesn't allow for any pauses. On top of that, the music is very tricky : rhythmically, I often play in two time-signatures at once, in different hands. It took SO much practice, and I did worry for months that I wouldn't manage it.


In performance, one last thing – I needed to watch the Ockhams', as I was synchronizing to their moves quite often.



Q3

Are there any favourite passages in the score, either because of what you are playing, or (as it has been said by the directors that it is too complicated for you to watch as you play) because of what you know that the performers are doing at the same time ?


Yes, when the Cat-flap (a massive construction of scaffold bars, which swings back and fore) is first released, the music is at its peak of complexity, and the performers are sliding down the scaffolding, or dodging the massive wall of iron bars. SCARY !


I really must NOT look then, but it is impossible not to see images flashing by, generally life-threatening images of little gymnasts flying through the air, trying to avoid this swinging wall.


Also, the first piece, for wire-strung harp, when Tina is in the Perspex tower, hidden. Amazing lighting and pacing in this, musically and visually... and, as the audience eventually discovers that there is a person hidden in the tower, there is a very special atmosphere in the room.



Q4

A few years back, you brought three types of harp that you like to play (with, of course, some of Graham's compositions for you) to a recital at Kettle'€™s Yard (@kettlesyard), in Cambridge. Congratulations on your CD, released at the end of last year, that now features three harps: what excites you most about the CD, and also the responses to it that you had ?



Thank you ! You are referring to The Three Harps of Christmas. It's an utter joy to play Graham's music – I met the music before the man, and love the complex harmonies and rhythms, as well as the wit and sensitivity, that he has employed in making these old Christmas carols new.


Each has a unique character – and the choice of harp for a specific carol is made carefully : hence, the wildly buzzing Bray harp for 'We Three Kings' – or the delicate, bell-like sound of the Gaelic wire-strung harp for 'Away in a Manger'.


To go and perform them then in beautiful historic houses, all around the UK, has been very special : the settings of Fyvie Castle, Holkham Hall, Culzean Castle, Glendurgan, etc., etc. Incredible atmospheres, and such a special tour – with Christmas decorations, candles and champers !



Q5

With this project with Ockham's Razor, you toured with the show for some time. With the group, or generally when on tour, what raises your spirits, or keeps you fresh ? (One imagines that it may be different things at different moments / in different moods ?)


I enjoy travelling on the whole, and love the chance to see new places, but I generally get excited as soon as I start playing.


The lights help, and the audience coming into the room as I play (in Ockhams' case), all get my adrenaline going. I also loved hanging out with the Ockhams' – they are a great crowd.



Q6

How much time do you spend touring nowadays, and do you have any more dates planned, playing as a member of The Side, with Kathryn Tickell ? The collaboration's first gig [reviewed here] was local – at The Long Barn at Cambridgeshire's hidden Childerley Hall – and do you have any special memories of that evening ?


I loved that first gig at Childerley – it was one of my favourites. Playing with Kathryn and The Side is amazing fun. I love the girls, and they are all such supreme musicians that being on stage with them is a wonderful experience. We will be touring more this year, and, having just finished a long, happy tour in February, I can't wait for the next outing!


At Childerley, Jocelyn and her friends looked after us so well, from the picnic in the garden, to dinner on the terrace, and then the most lovely wild party, with dancing – it was a total joy. The Long Barn is a great venue, and to see Joss and her family dancing down the aisle when we played was an incredible buzz !



Q7

Finally, what message would you give to someone coming to Not Until We Are Lost at another venue, and are there any other similar collaborations under way that you can tell us about ?


I would recommend the Ockhams' show totally, and also recommend that the audience keep wandering during the performance, not to get stuck with one viewpoint... and be prepared for some audio and visual magic !


I am working on my next show at the moment, with Graham again, a new album that we will be releasing in late summer, called LOST. The initial inspiration came from the Ockhams' music that Graham wrote for me, but, in the last year, he has transformed it, and only a couple of the original tunes remain.


The new album is for me on harps, and Graham on moog [synthesizer], autoharp, and red box. There are visuals in the live show, and it will involve video, and lighting.


The music has a mesmeric quality to it, highly intricate rhythmically, and focuses on how 'lost' we can feel in this world, including loss of faculty, understanding, memory, etc.


Thank you so much, Ruth, and I am sure that we all look forward to LOST, album and show, later in 2015, as the sensation of feeling out of place in this world is one that many are sure to find themselves relating to through the experience !

Mapping, a track from FitkinWall's new album Lost, really needs a listen (six minutes in) : https://t.co/ItvsKXdfNi pic.twitter.com/hXrjCEZ6yt

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 16, 2015

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Artist Gilly Marklew's impressions of Ockham’s Razor’s show Not Until We Are Lost at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge

Artist Gilly Marklew's impressions of Ockham’s Razor’s Not Until We Are Lost

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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18 December

Watercolourist Gilly Marklew at the dress rehearsal for Ockham’s Razor’s (@AlexOckhams’s) show at Cambridge’s Corn Exchange, Not Until We Are Lost

Moonlight Sonata (© Copyright Gilly Marklew 2009)

It is a pleasure, which is ever present, to retire in contemplation of this watercolour, and to be wakeful with it after sleep :

The best art, whatever its apparent simplicity may be, one can live and grow with, because it has this quality to it that it never ceases to give as the eye explores, and re-explores, the felicities of construction and execution.

Partly, that is a question of the richness that keeps coming to the eye, but that richness is not simply in the work, but came from somewhere : Gilly Marklew has been known as a dear and gifted friend for more than half-a-dozen years, and, much as she might play down her intellectual side, her essential gifts of copying in image, word and sound, and her love of inventiveness and fun, are central to what makes her work special and alive – coupled, of course, with a strong sense of line, form, colour, and the dynamic power within a composition*.


It was a special pleasure, by invitation from the marketing team at The Corn Exchange, to bring Gilly along to the wonderland of expression that was last night’s dress rehearsal by aerial-theatre group Ockham’s Razor. In the event, she did not find herself with enough light to make use of her supply of sketching material, and the action anyway proved a little too swift for the medium, but she relished the clarity with which the subjects in the performance had been lit, and she took in image after image through her camera-lens, some of which have been shared in the original response to the evening.

Image by, courtesy of, and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014

A pose and a face such as this, that of the group’s Telma Pinto in the solo opening of the show, is classic material for Gilly Marklew : the timelessness of the expression, look and gesture


Since last night, the show has been seen again, and a short discussion with cast and crew took place, and Gilly has been making sketches after the fact, using what attracted her when she saw through her lens. On this first one, she comments :

I wanted to play up the interconnected movement and love story as I saw it, [without the climbing] poles, to emphasize the aetherial.

An original sketch, by, courtesy of and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014,

based on images taken at the dress rehearsal

The other sketch available so far is an ensemble piece, about which Gilly says This is a bit rougher, but there was more energetic movement in this scene, so it merited a more vigorous approach.

An original sketch, by, courtesy of and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014,

based on images taken at the dress rehearsal

In some key-words, after the matinee, this Tweet sought to use language to describe how this part of the performance looked and felt :

Some words about Not Until We Are Lost from @AlexOckhams at @CambridgeCornEx : artistry / grace / energy / atmosphere / vibrancy / fragility
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 18, 2014

With her painterly perspective, here describing her artistic approach and process, Gilly uses these lovely phrases ‘vigorous approach’ and ‘interconnected / energetic movement’ : for us, those descriptions may be in the same relation as are our internal attempts to encompass, through our senses, the performers’ work in Ockham’s Razor, and to find ourselves touched and emboldened in our responses :

In the live show (as against with a smaller audience at the dress rehearsal), we had this sense of atmosphere from sharing what we felt about the different scena as they unfolded – all at once and in the moment : for they do unfold, not as origami figures might, but with the delicacy and precision that we might, say, associate with the construction and appeal of a Fabergé egg.


After the show, in response to questions about working with Graham Fitkin on his score (as beautifully performed by harpist Ruth Wall), Alex Harvey said a little about what had gone on, after they had met him, between Alex’s fellow directors Tina Koch, Charlotte (‘Lottie’) Mooney and Graham, seeking to communicate through the language of moods a conversation about the score, and helping it to take shape. Now that we have it, though unfortunately at this venue Ruth cannot be present to play live, the music feels integral to the piece...


The life of the work is in its performance, and its performance is inseparable from the immersive participation of us being there, reacting to sound and visuals (from, all the time, the actors, from Ruth, and from each other), and to the sheer drama of limbs and bodies that are flying and interacting through space and time – the actors knowing their parts and abilities so well that they are in, and simultaneously are, the vigour and interconnectedness of which Gilly speaks :

In her pastel interpretations of moments from Ockham’s Razor's Not Until We Are Lost, in finding her own relatedness to the energy and imagery, Gilly shares with us wonder and amazement that even the performers themselves seem to feel just about being alive in, and having such power of motion within, our physical world.


Artist, and Bauhaus lecturer, Paul Klee is famous, in art circles, for opening his Pedagogical Sketchbook** with this proposition (from which the work, and its teaching, develop) :

An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal.
A walk for a walk’s sake. [emphasis added]


In the second scena on the large apparatus (whose first reaction to seeing which Telma Pinto delightedly described to us as like a playground), when it becomes hinged as like a gate, we have yet another moment of discovery – it is as if another Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy (from the Narnia novels) were playing as Lucy does with Aslan (after The Stone Table), all four enjoying a game of chicken with it :

Running, as one does on a beach, towards the roarers of the ocean, and then squealingly away again, even more quickly (if possible), at a sudden appreciation of the sea’s might. All its nimbleness and experimentation – as if for the first time – caught in the hope of Graham’s score, and in the magic depicted by Ruth’s playing.


Whether evoking metallicized percussion, the picked notes of guitar, or of plucked instruments (as of a lute or thumb-piano), the boundless sound-world of Ruth and Graham's music, just as with the variety and variation of Gilly's palette, are all emblematic of the richness in Not Until We Are Lost, that we

begin to find ourselves [...], to learn the points of compass again as often as [we] awake, whether from sleep or any abstraction

[Henry Thoreau, Walden, chapter 8, 'The village']

End-notes

* As Gilly shared just on the night of the dress rehearsal, Moonlight Sonata relates to an image by Henri Cartier-Bresson that she once found and pasted into her source-book : she had seen, in his photographic image, the classicity of The Three Graces, and had – with some of her favourite sitters (not least the one placed centrally) – created her own version, looking back, beyond him, to what she thought had inspired him.

** So published in the UK by Faber & Faber Limited, London, 1953, in translation of Klee’s Bauhaus text from 1925, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)