British composer coming to USU’s ‘Songfest’
Internationally-acclaimed composer David Fanshawe is coming to Utah State University in June for the Mountain West Songfest and Symposium.
“We have been working with Mr. Fanshawe for about a year to make this happen,” said Songfest director Elaine Thatcher. “We’re very excited to have him coming to spend a couple of days with us at the Songfest.”
Fanshawe will interact with audience members and give a daytime lecture during his stay as well.
Songfest will be held on the USU campus June 26-28.
Fanshawe is best known for his monumental choral work “African Sanctus,” which combines a live chorus and instrumentalists with African tribal music he recorded during a trip to northeastern Africa in 1969. “African Sanctus” will be performed as part of the Mountain West Songfest on June 28 in the Kent Concert Hall in the Chase Fine Arts Center on the USU campus. It will feature Ghanaian master drummer Obo Addy and the composer himself giving a pre-concert talk.
Fanshawe is the recipient of many international awards, including a Churchill Fellowship, Ivor Novello, ARIA Gold Record and AFI Best Sound. He is a composer, ethnic sound recordist, record producer and photographer. He was born in Devon, England, and was educated at St. George’s Choir School and Stowe. In 1959 he joined the Film Producers Guild in London, gaining valuable experience as a documentary film editor and sound recordist. In 1965 he won a Foundation Scholarship to the Royal College of Music, studying composition with John Lambert.
His ambition to record indigenous folk music began in the Middle East in 1966 and was intensified on subsequent journeys through North and East Africa (1969-75), resulting in his unique and highly original blend of music and travel. In Africa he succeeded in documenting hundreds of tribes, achieving such close rapport with local communities that they gave him special permission to record their performances.
The performance of “African Sanctus” not only will feature many of these recordings, but will also show projected photos of the people Fanshawe met along the way.
In addition to “African Sanctus,” Fanshawe has composed many other concert works and more than 50 commercial scores for film and television, including Rank’s “Tarka the Otter,” BBC’s “When The Boat Comes In” and YTV’s “Flambards.” His recordings are featured on films like “Seven Years in Tibet” and “Gangs of New York.”
Beginning in 1978, Fanshawe spent ten years traveling and recording across the Pacific Ocean, resulting in a monumental archive of 2,000 stereo tapes, 950 boxes of colored slides and 40 volumes of hand-written journals, preserving and documenting the traditional music and oral traditions of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. He recently published a new composition based on this work, called “Pacific Song: Chants from the Kingdom of Tonga.” He has a massive archive of recorded indigenous music from around the world at his home in Wiltshire, England.
For information on the Fanshawe’s visit and the Mountain West Songfest and Symposium, contact the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies at Utah State University, (435) 797-3630, or visit the Web site (www.usu.edu/mountainwest).