Press Release
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Garden in Summer EP
Julian Marshall
Featuring Avigail Tlalim
Catalogue Number: ORC100237
Release Date: 19th May
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Taking influence from jazz styles, filmic atmospheres and romantic orchestral colours, Garden in Summer potently evokes the remarkable poetry of Gertrud Kolmar, with words performed by up and coming actor Avigail Tlalim set to music by composer and songwriter Julian Marshall.
Watch the teasers HERE
Schedule of single releases:
Garden in Summer – SINGLE – 14th April
Cat no: ORC100235
UPC: 5060189562350
Sunlit Hour – SINGLE – 5th May
Cat no: ORC100236
UPC: 5060189562367
FULL EP – 19th May
Cat no: ORC100237
UPC: 5060189562374
1. Garden in Summer
2. Sunlit Hour
3. Canopy
4. Yours is the Heart
Music composed and produced by Julian Marshall
Performed by Avigail Tlalim
Directed by Anastasia Bruce-Jones
Garden in Summer
Garden in Summer is a cross-disciplinary, ekphrastic audio piece, that interweaves music and poetry to beckon the listener towards gardens remembered, summers echoing across decades, romances captured and lost, and myths made manifest. Its bright light creates long shadows; the ghost of a pervading, dark presence reaches across the glittering insects and singing skin. Combining composition by Julian Marshall, voice-work by Avigail Tlalim and direction by Anastasia Bruce-Jones, three 21st Century British artists meet in the soundscape of 1980s Latin America to summon a poem written in 1930s Germany by Gertrud Kolmar.
Sunlit Hour
Two lovers are cocooned in the happenings of a dreamy, summer’s afternoon, enthralled by one another amidst the vibrancy of the natural world. Lyrical and uplifting, ‘Sunlit Hour’ conveys the giddiness, anticipation and curiosity that ensues from new connection and the possibility of things to come.
Canopy
The poem offers a window into the lovers’ internal worlds – and that of the night garden that surrounds them. ‘Canopy’ evokes the passion, urgency and tenderness of new love with a hint of dark drama and suspense.
Yours in the Heart
The third poem in the anthology, ‘Yours is the Heart’ finds our lovers awakening but still in a dreamlike state. The rest of the world and its harsh inevitabilities may be approaching but for now their union and happiness is assured.
The Garden in Summer EP comprises a suite of four spoken word pieces and one instrumental remix, written by Julian Marshall and based on texts by Gertrud Kolmar and Emily Louise Bland.
Gertrud Kolmar was a remarkable, though little-known German-Jewish poet, who wrote most of her important work while living in Berlin, looking after her aged father, during the 1930s. She perished in Auschwitz in 1943. Her seventeen-poem cycle, Welten, has become the source and inspiration for a number of musical and audio-visual works by the composer and songwriter Julian Marshall – under the title The Welten Project.
The Garden in Summer EP represents the latest of these works and features texts written both by Kolmar herself and the contemporary young British poet and songwriter Emily Louise Bland. The pieces are performed to Marshall’s music by the brilliant up and coming actor/writer/director Avigail Tlalim – directed by Anastasia Bruce-Jones.
The style of music is multi-genre – taking influence from jazz styles, filmic atmospheres and romantic orchestral colours. The text potently evokes the experience of two passionate lovers, meeting in a beautiful, fertile summer garden. Here, their love blossoms, despite the profound uncertainty made real by the inevitability of the approaching darkening menace suffusing the world outside the garden walls.
For more information on Julian Marshall and the Welten Project see: https://julianmarshall.co.uk/
Shortly after graduating from the Royal College of Music in 1975, Julian Marshall’s professional life as a composer and songwriter took flight with the internationally successful bands Marshall Hain, The Flying Lizards and Eye to Eye.
His compositions include work for film and theatre and a new chapter as a composer of longer-form work (specifically, the cantatas Out of the Darkness and The Angel in the Forest), along with other, shorter, choral-based pieces, began in 2009.
Out of the Darkness and The Angel in the Forest both feature settings from Welten, the seventeen-poem cycle by Gertrud Kolmar.
With the addition of two further works from the same cycle (the film, Yearning, and the spoken word and music piece, Garden in Summer), in October 2021 Julian founded The Welten Project. The project’s mission is to conduct research and produce a series of works inspired-by, re-imagining or setting poems from Welten.
For further details about The Welten Project, visit julianmarshall.co.uk
In addition to composition, Julian teaches and coaches creatives of all ages.
He works with clients privately and is also a Teaching Fellow at ICMP, London.
Anastasia Bruce-Jones is an award-winning writer-director, working across film and theatre. Their debut short, All Girls premiered at Aesthetica Film Festival, was featured by Director’s Notes magazine, and won Best Ensemble Performance at Cornwall Film Festival, as well as screening at festivals across the UK and Europe. Their latest short, Microwave, will premiere at Two Short Nights Film Festival in Exeter. Alongside their short form projects, Anastasia is developing a slate of screen work, including the feature False Positive and HE-TV series The Highwaymen.
In theatre, they have directed more than fifty productions from the West End to Edinburgh Fringe. In March 2020, they directed the 5*, award-winning Bin Juice at VAULT Festival. Prior to that, they worked on Robert Icke’s The Doctor. Anastasia is currently co-writing the opera The Glass Cage with long-time collaborator Noah Fram and has partnered with BAFTA-winning writer Tom Harvey to develop and produce a series of plays.
Anastasia’s work explores the depth and strangeness of experience, often by way of magic realism, dystopia and folk horror.
Avigail Tlalim is a director-actor-writer. She wrote and started in the short film SAUCE (2020) which was nominated at numerous BAFTA qualifying festivals including Asthetica and SOUL and won best screenplay at High Peak Festival. She has also written and directed the short films CHANGE AT BAKER STREET (2020) and ACTRESSES (2021) and directed numerous plays including Isla Cowan’s DAPHNE OR HELLFIRE at the Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh (2019). During her time at Cambridge she directed a production of SWALLOW by Stef Smith and THE FLICK by Annie Baker. She has also assisted on two productions at the Soho Theatre. Avigail acted alongside Andrew Scott in ITV’s THE TOWN (2012) and in Matt Smith’s short film CARGESE (2013). She has stared in numerous stage shows including an international tour of THE TEMPEST (2018), in which she played Prospero. Before lockdown she was in rehearsals for TWO PALASTINIANS GO DOGGING at The Royal Court.
Emily Louise Bland is a graduate of the University of Bristol and the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance, where she gained an MA in Songwriting. She is currently working for the NHS as an Assistant Psychologist while also pursuing her passion for poetry and songwriting through solo work and collaborations. Emily draws inspiration from the quiet occurrences of the natural world, as well as the pain and wonder of the human experience. She lives in London.
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