Our World in 2022…

December is a time to reflect on what we have achieved, where we have been, what we have learnt and to appreciate those who have made everything possible.  Even though it’s impossible, 2022 seems to have gone on longer than other years, and we sincerely thank those who have worked with us on the many and various projects and activities this year. 

Here’s what kept us busy in 2022…

Live Work
In the wake of the pandemic – an extremely uncertain and frustrating time to be working in live performance - Arts & Parts moved ahead with a few unfinished or partly produced creative projects that were held over from 2020 and 2021.  When the world opened up, we managed to co-produce a celebratory concert at the Barbican in London, for our dear departed colleague John Cumming (see Continuing to work from home… Parts I, II & III), and started the roll out of the ambitious commissioning and presentation project Finding Our Voice – Celebrating Australia in Sound (with colleagues Genevieve Lacey and Paul Mason) which was devised in the depths of the pandemic.  To date, live iterations of the new works commissioned as part of FOV, have seen a presentation at Ukaria, of a new work by Erkki Veltheim and Mark Atkins (who we first worked with in 1993), a presentation of a new work by William Barton, and his collaborators Scott Tinkler and Simon Barker at the Sydney Opera House, and the crepuscular experiential installation by the DarkQuiet Collective (Madeleine Flynn, Tim Humphrey, Jenny Hector and Erin Milne) at Bundanon.  It’s been amazing to work on these unique and distinctive commissions, especially when they reach audiences in some of the world’s most beautiful venues.

Working with Artists
In 2022, we started working with Greek pianist and composer Tania Giannouli which has, among many things, expanded our database of ‘halls with good pianos’.  Her year included a fruitful residency at Enjoy Jazz which resulted in three new collaborations (a trio called Hemera, a duo with Sun-Mi Hong and a duo with Nik Bärtsch), and she sees out the year with a trio concert for the Winter Piano Festival in Ystad – the setting for highly regarded books and TV series, Wallander.

We also continued working with Norwegian producer and composer Jan Bang and his co-director Erik Honoré and their wonderful festival Punkt – which now has four pillars of activity: the annual festival, a label (Punkt Editions), engagement and development work (Punkt Futures) and international activity under the banner of Punkt International – which has some exciting things in the pipeline for the coming years.

John Surman and Arts & Parts are looking forward to his 80th birthday in 2024.  He is focussed on some fun things to celebrate this significant milestone and is currently in the recording studio for the first time in four years working on Words Unspoken, a CD which will be released by his long-term label ECM in 2023.

And there was a steady stream (torrent) of work with Australian musician Genevieve Lacey – who has raised the bar with what it looks like to be firing on all cylinders!  Together, we are working on several long-form projects including the aforementioned Finding Our Voice – Celebrating Australia in Sound, that we are producing alongside co-executive producer Paul Mason, and with immense help from Ukaria, and a team of dynamic and adventurous cultural operators across communications, sound and image.  We are also working on Breathing Space, a yet-to-be-fully-revealed sound installation at the National Museum of Australia, which is envisioned as a sonic re-wilding of the Garden of Australian Dreams (more to be announced in the new year).

Travel
After being grounded for much of 2020 and 2021, 2022 was so full of travel, it made our head spin…we oscillated between the UK, and Australia, and took in a range of countries in and beyond Europe including: Belgium, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Portugal and Finland.  In the constant quest to be alert and responsive to a broad creative community, we travelled to deliver, as well as to take advantage of some interesting pieces of work, both behind-the-scenes (artist development projects and industry conferences) and produced by others (i.e., Venice Biennale).

Behind-the-Scenes
Behind-the-scenes was a big part of Arts & Parts’ activities in 2022.  We continued to work with the excellent NICA artist development programme on their third generation (with Stadtgarten - European centre for jazz and contemporary music, Köln), and on mentoring Swiss musicians in conjunction with Pro Helvetia, while other more formal artist development programmes that we have devised and produced in partnership (e.g., SOUND OUT, Milestones, etc), were temporarily overtaken by informal, individual mentoring of emerging artists – which also proved, as ever, to be an illuminating and profound way to keep in touch with the next generation.  New work in this area included a few beautiful days in Helsinki working with Arts & Parts’ associate Marieke Meischke, and new colleague Geir Lindahl at the Nordic Culture Point on their innovative Nordic-Baltic Mentoring Programme.

Our Community
This year we kept our eyes peeled, ears open and nose the grindstone on behalf of several not-for-profit cultural organisations.  After six years’ service (five of them as vice president), I said an emotional good-bye to the best-ever board experience (Europe Jazz Network) and continued on the boards of the Australian Music Centre (highlights were the AMC-Sounds Australia stands and delegations at Jazzahead in Bremen and ClassicalNEXT in Hannover, and the lovely Christmas lunch with the staff in Sydney last week), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//) and Making Tracks.

Our People
So, as 2022 draws to a close Arts & Parts would like to thank all the associates who have done brilliant work behind-the-scenes, especially to Daniela Gerstmann and Marianne Lumholdt who have been responsible for the look and content of the A&P communications across social media, on the web and for our newsletters. 

Thanks to Bill Strode and Sara Da Costa for advance work and research for upcoming projects, to Andy Brumwell for his financial expertise, to Katrina Duncan for her wise counsel, and to those – too many to name – who have been working on the events that A&P have produced across 2020 – 2022, and on the ideas that we hope will turn into future projects.

Martel Ollerenshaw, December 2022