Helen Ottaway

Earlier this year I was invited to write a new piece about the white storks at the Knepp Estate in Sussex.  White storks have been absent from the English landscape for several hundred years but are being encouraged back by rewilding projects around the country, including at Knepp.  You can find out more about the White Stork Project here  and if you are interested in going on a virtual stork walk follow this link.

The commission has come from Andrew Bernardi and the Shipley Arts Festival.  Knepp is in the village of Shipley and the festival and the estate are frequent partners, including an annual concert at Knepp Castle now titled ‘The Wilding Concert’.  The new piece, for String Octet was to have been performed as part of the Wilding Concert on Sunday 21st June 2020.  Due to covid19 the concert has been postponed but the festival, the string octet and I are busy collaborating and working towards a virtual premiere of the new work.

Over the coming weeks I will be documenting the progress of the piece in this blog.  Because of the remote nature of the collaboration bits of score and recording will be flying back and forth between Frome and Sussex.  I will be employing the kind of techniques I use for creating sound installations, recording fragments and experimenting with different combinations.  It’s exciting to be working with such great musicians and to get the chance to hone the material with their help into what I hope will be a landmark piece.

You can also follow the progress of the white storks and their fledgelings on the knepp instagram account @kneppsafaris