Urdance - Part 3. Jack Wingad
Jack Wingad is the Dialogue & Sound Effects Editor at Motion Post Production, the post-production arm of Viridian FX, a company I co-founded back in 2011 and of which I'm a director. The company's regular work is on high-end television drama and feature films for the likes of Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. Revising and reissuing a piece of experimental music is not part of the remit, but Jack showed initiative, enthusiasm and willingness to spend his time between jobs working on Urdance.
As a part of my attempt to document the process of bringing the work back to life, I sat down with Jack and asked him to talk about the project from his own perspective.
Richard (Gonski) is transcribing the score, moving it from paper to the computer, and faithfully interpreting it; it's a vast and complex task. My job is adding the detail and nuance that brings it to life, balancing the dynamic relationships between one section and another so that, when that process is done, we can all sit down and make collective decisions about where to go with it next. I feel that you and Richard have given me a lot of freedom to make my own creative decisions. I didn't know Francis, and that is perhaps freeing. My understanding of him comes from listening to his music, your and Richard's knowledge of him, and reading articles. I obviously can't do what Francis would have done. I can only take his 'no barriers' spirit of experimentation as my guiding principle. That attitude colours my thinking when deciding on my approach to Urdance.
Jack at work on Urdance in Motion’s sound suite.
Jack’s talk of Francis’s ‘no barriers’ spirit of experimentation reminded me of a quote I came across in the days after Francis’s death from the musician and writer, Nick Cave, that has stuck with me.
He writes:
For me, vulnerability is essential to spiritual and creative growth, whereas being invulnerable means being shut down, rigid, small. I think to be truly vulnerable is to exist adjacent to collapse or obliteration. In that place we can feel extraordinarily alive and receptive to all sorts of things. It is the place where the big shifts can happen. The more time you spend there, the less worried you become of how you will be perceived or judged, and that is ultimately where the freedom is.
I think that many of us who knew and loved Francis might agree that, both musically and spiritually, he spent much of his time dwelling in this space of vulnerability, exploring risk and experimentation at every turn. From his early encounters with Terry Riley's in C, through the cutting edge experimentation of Curved Air, via his abandonment of the commercial success of Sky, to his brief foray into the film world writing the score for The Long Good Friday, Francis challenged himself both as performer and composer and was never content unless he was pushing at the edges of what he felt was possible.
Whatever we do with Urdance, I don't want it to lose the sense of urgency and risk that was at the heart of his creativity, but ‘vulnerability’ for us, Urdance’s living collaborators, means being brave in our decision-making rather than slavishly attempting to second-guess his intentions.
Whatever we eventually make will have its ancestral heritage in the orchestra, but I don't believe it needs to be faithful to the orchestra. I still have the original all-synthesiser demo ringing in my ears when I say this.
Back in 1987, Francis had an opportunity to write the work for an orchestra, and that's what he did, and that's what we have a score for and where we should start. But I believe our job is to get us close to a faithful rendition of the orchestral and synthesiser work and then break it creatively when we feel it's asking us to. Jack’s ongoing work will take us to a point where those decisions can be made.
In Jack’s words, “That process will be really fun, I think. Collaboration on that is going to be one of the most exciting things for me. And I think what I bring, as I didn't know Francis, is a bit of a fresh perspective.”
Making a fully sampled version, it’s kind of a double-edged sword. So, we should end up with something that’s perfectly in time, and it will be kind of technically right. But you won't necessarily get the character; you won't get that chaos on the edge, which I think this piece is actually all about. Finding ways to make this version breathe, to give it a layer of unpredictability and vulnerability, is the challenge ahead.
While I share Jack’s concerns, I’m hugely encouraged by the work in progress, which sounds extraordinary and is a testament to his craftsmanship, creativity, and judgement.
“I’m learning a hell of a lot, collaborating with you, Richard, and, of course, Francis. There are many challenges ahead, but I’m very excited to hear the finished piece of work at the end of the process. I’m also very excited by the idea of Urdance as a hybrid experience. The thing that really stuck in my mind from day one was Francis’ description of Urdance as a ballet of the mind.”
“Now, using Dolby Atmos, it feels like we have limitless possibilities to explore that. Reading about Francis’s work with early computers in Curved Air, how he put contacts under the keys of his harpsichord to link it to his Prophet synth before MIDI had even been invented, and his work on his own digital synthesiser, it feels to me that he would now be using these new tools as much as possible.”
In the next post, I’ll explore Jack’s talk of Urdance as a hybrid experience, or in Francis’s words, a “ballet of the mind” and suggest some potential avenues that we might try to explore.
In the meantime, ongoing thanks to Jack and Motion Post Production for their truly invaluable support.
