Inanna: the facts so far about the recording.

Just come back from a story telling evening with Diane Wolkstein - the woman who helped manifest the story of Inanna in the world and who, last year, came and did an evening here at the Loft. She's on again at the weekend at the BM and the Theosophical Society. We had a brief chat after show tonight and she suggested I get some flyers together for the weekend so I can alert people about the Inanna opera project. Speaking of which, it is getting ever closer to the recording on June 10 and, so long as I keep plugging away at the score, I should have everything ready in time.

We have cast most of the roles. We haven't confirmed yet who will sing Inanna and Dumuzi but we are getting closer - and all the other roles are cast. Here are the singers we have on board so far:
Marie Angel - Geshtinanna
Adey Grummet and Carol Grimes- sharing the role of Ereshkigal
Maria Jardadottir - Spinner solos (tbc)
Kerry Andrew - Spinner - chorus only
Eyjolfur Eyjolfsson - Dumuzi (tbc)
Nigel Robson - Enki
Michael Solomon Williams - Utu
Jeremy Birchall - Gilgamesh
Nawroz Oramar - Free vocal improviser (Kurdish Iraqi artist)

The players are:
The Smith String Quartet :
Ian Humphries violin 1
Darragh Morgan violin 2
Nic Pendelbury viola
Deidre Cooper, violoncello
Corrado Canonici - double bass
Nancy Ruffer - flute
Dai Pritchard - clarinet
Julian Jacobson - piano
Walter Fabeck - keyboard
Joby Burgess - percussion
Martin Allen - percussion

We have Alex Ingram conducting. Adrian Lee is producer and Michael Gordon is sound engineer. Steve Teers of Diva Pix is filming (with a crew of 4 and 6 cameras). We have two helpers - my cousin Sue and friend Phil. There will be 27 microphones and 3 DI's. We will work with two computers, one slaved to the other, four sound cards, each with 8 inputs. We are going to do the recording at the Loft.

We hope to record 40 minutes from the 100 minute piece. We will make a 10 minute DVD promotional film and a 60 minute (or so) archive of the whole days recording including all the music performed, interviews, relevant imagery from the story, etc.

I think that's all the for this post. Just needed to get the facts down for now.