Helen Ottaway: The Open Fund for Music Creators
Saeflod, a walking requiem
Helen Ottaway is a composer and sound artist who works collaboratively to create site-specific and participatory art and performance. Commissions include Salisbury Cathedral, Cork 2005, performance artist Franko B, pianist Iyad Sughayer and BBC2. Locations for her work have included the ICA, London, a banana warehouse, a remote Dorset woodland and multiple staircases.
Her music is inspired by particular places, buildings, landscapes and the natural world. It involves chance, found sound, walking, working outdoors and frequently has a connection with water. Influenced by American minimalism and the English pastoral tradition, she has been described as a folk-minimalist.
Helen will use her Open Fund for Music Creators grant to realise her ambition to compose a new kind of Requiem. Prompted by the death of her mother and the perilous state of the planet, Saeflod will be a musical work about human and environmental loss, a piece for walking and contemplation.
The new work will combine different strands of Helen’s creative practice – composing instrumental and vocal music, using field-recording and found sound and creating sound installations. She will collaborate with poet Rosie Jackson, sound designer Alastair Goolden and singer Melanie Pappenheim to develop a flexible and interactive work. Saeflod will be presented in numerous ways from durational outdoor installation to pure concert performance.
Saeflod will premiere at Inside Out Dorset Festival in September 2023 and will be available for touring to festivals and venues from 2024.