info
Hello and welcome to my site.Barnaby Tree born 26 November 1966.
Performer, musician(cello, voice and piano), artist and writer.
may08 heading to berlin and then in june teaching and performing at the Zip festival, Orvieto, Italy.
April, o8, working with Pete Thompson on new recording in Barcelona, having completely a couple of sucessful projects. One performance with Sandra Narravo, we presented improvisations and video at L'Antic Teatre, and one workshop lead by Shahar Dor of Artness, I provided some music and physicality....
Also I shall be continuing work with Ellen Kilsgaard and Alice Tatge on the BodySong project, looking for residences and offering a teaching in our respective disiplines. For more on the project go to the BodySong GALLERY. Alice and I will be working together in Berlin in May.
"Barnaby uses sound, music, body and voice to improvise. He breaks the routine
static musician positioning. He's one of the few musicians who inhabits his
body while performing. He uses the shape of the instrument, the wood, the hair,
the rosin, the string as partners in his improvisations, not merely the music
that comes out of the instrument. The weight of a melody contains the weight
of the arm and bone and muscle, the weight of the wooden bow, and Barnaby
notices this and plays with it."
I am driven to see what can be done with the bare bones, with just the body and acoustic sound; just air between the performer and the audience. The physicality of song; the sweat and blood of the noise. I have performed in any which way, as a dancer, a poet, a backing vocalist and will keep experimenting. The work I am focused on at present is moving in and out of roles, from a musician to poet to dancer to pilot to hunter and back. The space I need is an open, focused, small theatre kinda place. My work revolves around songs I have written and improvised for cello,piano and voice.
I am a cellist that sings and a pianist that dances.
I have learnt to play and dance largely through the process of improvistation.
I have many years of perfomance experience and last year,2006, I toured some of the pieces I have been making over the years. The work is acoustic and visual, and the tour included living rooms and small theatres. The living rooms concerts were based on the model set up by www.healthyconcerts.com, an organisation dedicated to bringing music and performance into the intimate space of home. The tour went all over england and wales.The work is experimental and changeable in temperment and style.
2007 saw a further development of these performance songs, not only to include movement, voicework and stories, but collaborations with other performers, dancers. For the dancers, they would experiment moving from movement into sound, this was made possible at M&de,(Music and Dance Exchange) held at Dartington Hall, led by Emaline Claid and Chris Best. Many stories arose form this development I am seeking situations in which i can continue this research in collaboration with other dancers.
I am inspired by perfomers such as Neil Bartlett and Derevo (St.Petersburgh perfomance group), the practioners of Butoh, as well as musicians Meredith Monk, Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, Jan Gaberek, John Zorn, Natalie Merchant, Glenn Branca and Keith Jarrett. It is the energy of live perfomance and the interaction that occurs that amazes me.In performance I will use dance, poetry, drawings and songs.
You will find under downloads a small film of Boy in the Breakers, a work for cello and voice.