DIANA

McIntosh

THE SHOW

on October 18th, 1996

THE MUSIC GALLERY
                                      presented...

                    BERYL MARKHAM
Flying West with the Night                    

  a one-woman music theater work written and performed by

        Diana McIntosh
                      developed in collaboration with Richard Armstrong

Text from West with the Night, by Beryl Markham,
used with permission of the estate of Beryl Markham
and the Watkins/Loomis Agency Inc.

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THE PERFECT EVENING

Ron Gaskin, our dear idio-audio friend, posted a message (a bit late) inviting everybody to the performance at the Music Gallery. More than that. Instead of spending money on advertisement, he offered $5.00 cash at the door to every idio-audio member lucky enough to show up. My solute to a truly experimental mind!

Me and Dima of course were there to collect our freebies and beyond any possible expectations were able to witness the absolutely amazing performance by Diana McIntosh, which in closure followed by splendid bouquet full of delicacies and a fine assortment of beverages, during which people had a chance to emotionally express themselves and get an autograph from Diana McIntosh.

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THE BOOK

Beryl Markham - Flying West with the Night tells the true story of this intrepid, bushwhacking flier. Markham was taken from England as a young girl in 1906 to East Africa by her father.

She became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from East to West in 1936 - taking off from England and crash landing in Nova Scotia 21 hours and 25 minutes later.

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THE MUSIC-THEATRE PIECE

The original piano music for this work is based on an East African folk songs and African drumming rhythms.

At times the text speaks for itself and at others the piano takes the place of the text in narrating the story.

The piano becomes a metaphor both as an object and as a sound source for the emotional inner journey of the protagonist. The electronic tape, created by McIntosh, mixes airplane sounds with African drumming and jungle sounds.

This sound collage is designed to move in ever-changing patterns between four speakers around the hall.

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INTERVIEW WITH DIANA MCINTOSH

"I HAVE A TRUNK FULL OF CONTINENTS"

idio-audio: Can you please recite a little part of your 
            beautiful monolog, where you describe Africa?

Diana: Ahead of me lies the land that is unknown to the rest 
       of the world and only vaguely known to the Africans. 
       Strange mixture of grass land, swamps, dessert sands 
       like long waves of the southern ocean. Badlands. Land 
       without life, land teaming with life. All of the dusty 
       past, all of the future...

       ... and Africa is mystic. It is wild, it is a sweltering 
       inferno of the photographer's paradise, a hunter's valhalla, 
       an escapists's utopia. It is all this things at once that 
       never dull... She loved Africa... She loved Africa!

idio-audio: How did you came across the idea to create this 
            music-theatre piece?

Diana: The book I got the text from is called "West with the Night"
       I've read the book couple of years ago and thought that this 
       could be a wonderful music-theatre piece. So, I got the 
       permission from the publisher to take out the text I wanted 
       and structured a piece myself. We've searched African tunes 
       to get the authentic African sound, and I've based my own 
       original music on an actual East African folk songs.

idio-audio: Do you plan any future performances of this piece?

Diana: Two times this spring. One I'll be doing at the Aviation 
       Museum in Ottawa on the 15th of April. I will let idio-audio 
       know as they come.

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THE ARTIST

Diana McIntosh, recognized as an original, dynamic, innovative and witty creator, has had a unique and active career as a composer, pianist and actor. Her solo performances take her throughout North America and Europe and have included five concerts in New York City.

Commissions for new music have included works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, vocal and instrumental soloists, dance, mime, and tape. Nine Foot Clearance, for piano and orchestra, her most recently completed work, was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for its 1996 New Music Festival.

The performance, with McIntosh as soloist, won a standing ovation. An LP, The Original McIntosh and a recent CD, "Another Byte of McIntosh" feature her music exclusively. Her video, "Serious Fun with McIntosh" featuring four of her one-woman multimedia works is available from the Winnipeg Film Group. In recent years, she has attained a high profile for her one-woman interdisciplinary pieces, in which she has explored unique ways of working with voiced texts in a theatrical relationship with music. McIntosh was the founding Artistic Director of Music Inter Alliance, western Canada's first contemporary music series, and one of the founders of GroundSwell, Winnipeg's most recently incorporated new music group.

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