Projects / Performance / Blue Letters from Tanganyika
A unique African journey in music
Blue Letters from Tanganyika is a popular suite for orchestra commissioned by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and and released by Ffin Records.
The music is is inspired by the adventures of John's grandmother as a young woman in Africa. In 1953, at twenty-six, Anne Ritchie set off alone for Tanganyika (now Tanzania), with an annual salary of £30 and the task of managing every school in an area the size of England. She travelled on foot and by dugout canoe across the water and wild country, and her frequent letters sent home over two years paint pictures of an alien but sometimes idyllic world, with “children doing arithmetic on their bare arms,” and where schoolgirls found a python “but killed it quite happily!”
Forty years after her return, John Hardy began discussions with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales about composing a new piece for a series of concerts. John's inspiration came from the exotic stories told by his mother her letters home, and these blue airmail letters gave the piece its name. “What I did was to use them as the basis for a sort of tone poem,” explains John, “describing in music some of the colour and drama of her time there.”
The 18-minute piece is in four movements, each based on a different part of Anne’s travels: ‘Arrival at the Lake’ after a dangerous night journey through lion territory; ‘Travel on the Lake’, sometimes tranquil, sometimes stormy and always filled with crocodiles and hippos; ‘Twilight on the Lake’ through the stillness of a long African night; ‘On Safari’, with the excitement and fear of the unknown.
Full of exuberant African colours, the piece is rich with imagery and imagination. Anyone who likes classical, orchestral and big film scores will feel instantly at home. Fresh and bold, Blue Letters from Tanganyika conjures an exotic world where lions are banished by bicycle bells, snakes are frightened away with hymns and the only person who can cure an aching tooth is a German nun.
John Hardy -
Blue Letters from Tanganyika
Arrival at the Lake
Travel On The Lake
Twilight On The Lake
On Safari
| CD - £7.49 +p&p |
Also at Amazon, Amazon MP3, iTunes and all major download stores. 25p of each CD sale from this site is donated to health and education charities working in Tanzania.
"The rhythmically charged, open and immediately engaging music is bright and colourful while still managing to evoke the African landscape"
Pwyll ap Siôn, Gramophone Magazine
4 stars **** "Four colourful, finely crafted movements"
Phil Sommerich, Classical Music Magazine
'masterpiece of creation... an extraordinary piece of history'
Roy Noble, BBC Radio Wales
"Colourful, filmic, and open to pleasurable listening at a single sitting"
Howard Smith, Music & Vision
"Powerfully cinematic"
Gavin Allen, South Wales Echo
- - -
John Hardy - Letters (Culprit 1 Remix)
Letters (Culprit 1 Remix)
| MP3 single £1.29 |
| MP3 single + all 4 original tracks + PDF booklet £4.99 |
|
The groundbreaking remix by Culprit 1 of On Safari from John Hardy’s orchestra suite Blue Letters from Tanganyika.
Also available at iTunes, Amazon MP3, eMusic, 7digital and all other major music download stores.
'Culprit 1's take on the piece retains the flowing, powerful drive of the original and marries it to a light beat and twisting filters that warp and distort the music to good effect.'
BBC Music Wales