The Cape Jeremy Affair is an experimental music theatre composition for 2 musicians and 2 laptop computers. It is created from a text: a 1969 sledge report from the British Antarctic Survey that described an arduous, and ultimately aborted, rescue attempt by four dog teams from Stonington Island to Fossil Bluff, where several geophysicists had sought shelter following a plane crash. The 30 day trip started as a routine dog sledging expedition conducting a geophysical survey along the way. But it ended up being a survival exercise with 4 men and 27 huskies adrift on an ice floe.
It is not a piece of music about the report, nor is it with the report – as in a libretto – but something that is more inbetween. In this sense the music is created from within the report; that is to say, the imaginary dimension that the report generates when read, or was in the mind of the author when written.
Theatre is usually a place of seeing, however, I am interested in it being a place of see-hearing. The main concern is to take the mind of the audience to other places, and create a ‘dimension’ for their minds ear to wander. The overall result is a constantly shifting image of this dimension: it will start and then stop, and the stuff that happens inbetween will be both the report and the music.
I describe this piece as a ‘play’ for musicians, in so much as each musician has a responsibility to a narrative exposition – however abstract this may be – and approaches the performance embracing any of the definitions for the word play (noun or verb).
The role of the musician is to contribute to a sense of place – in this case the reality within the written report. The role of the computer is both functional (score generator) and performative, as such this piece should be considered a quartet.
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