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Playing the Skyline

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Musicians look at how the land meets the air and imagine it as music.

Tim Marlow joins musicians as they look at how the land meets the air and imagine it as music.

BBC Radio 4 FM

Playing the Skyline: Series 1

Playing the Skyline: Series 1: Episode 2: Port Talbot: Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

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Episode 2

Episode 2: Port Talbot: Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock

Series 1

Port Talbot: Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock

BBC Radio 4 - Playing the Skyline, Series 1, Port Talbot: Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock

Singer-songwriter Kizzy Crawford and pianist Gwilym Simcock play the Port Talbot skyline.

Singer Kizzy Crawford and pianist Gwilym Simcock each create a piece of music, inspired by the outline against the sky of Port Talbot, seen from the sea - they play the skyline.

On old nautical charts as well as the bird's eye view there is often a coastal profile - the outline of the land seen from the point of view of a sailor approaching it. Radio producer Julian May was struck by the musicality of these, the undulations of hills are melodic, the spacing of landmarks - trees, church spires - rhythmic. Musicians could, he thought, take the line dividing sky from land, place it on manuscript paper, and play the skyline.

Half a dozen prominent musicians are intrigued by this, including jazz musician Courtney Pine; the Scottish composer James MacMillan; Julie Fowlis, leading light of Gaelic song; and Anna Meredith, who was commissioned to create a piece for the Last Night of the Proms.

For Radio 4 Tim Marlow presents three programmes, in England, Wales and Scotland, in which two musicians look at the skyline, talk about their initial responses, then create a piece of music each - playing their skyline. He hears how they are getting along then the musicians, Tim (and Radio 4's listeners) hear for the finished pieces, and consider what they have made.

In the second programme the singer and song writer Kizzy Crawford and pianist Gwilym Simcock create new pieces inspired by the outline against the sky of Port Talbot, seen from the sea. The town, the hills beyond and the steelworks encapsulate the geography and history of Wales.

Kizzy Crawford is eighteen, of Welsh and Bajan heritage, a singer and songwriter at home in English and Welsh. Gwilym Simcock is a Welsh pianist who composes classical pieces, and improvises, too,

They meet Tim Marlow aboard the Seren y Mor (Star of the Sea) looking from out at sea at Port Talbot, whose skyline they will make into music and song.

Producers: Julian May and Benedict Warren.

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Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Presented by Tim Marlow. Musicians create a musical rendering of skylines.

Tim Marlow presents three programmes in which two musicians look at how the land meets the air and imagine it as music.

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Playing the Skyline

Series 1

Episode 2: Port Talbot: Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock

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