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RPS Awards Shortlist

Category: News Posted: 02 May 2012

The Unplugged Project: Winning the Clay
Performed at Eden Project, St Austell, Cornwall

Shortlisted for an RPS Award

Tim Sutton’s Unplugged, Winning the Clay has been shortlisted for an RPS Award. Unplugged, a site-specific work produced by Cape Farewell at the Eden Project, was a community project and a TippingPoint commission. The RPS awards are the highest recognition for live classical music-making in the UK.

In the year of Eden’s 10th birthday, musicians from across Cornwall created and performed an ambitious ensemble work, written and directed by acclaimed composer Tim Sutton. Unplugged is a zero carbon event. Performed in the daylight across the Outdoor Biome, the piece used no electro amplification and exploited the former clay pit’s natural acoustics.

Working with local organisations, choirs and music groups, participants included singers from the Eden Choir, Blazing Heart Chorus, The Fifty Degrees, Kernow Voice and Imerys Male Voice Choir, and players from Bombrassa, Big Beat, the BBC Proms Cornwall Family Orchestra and the Seriously AwEful Symphonia.

The music, inspired by Cornwall’s folk traditions and mining history, evoked connections between Eden’s origins, community and environment.
More about Unplugged ›

The project is now shortlisted for an RPS Award of the Royal Philharmonic Society.

Slow Origins

Unplugged was the first Slow Art project to enter the public programme at Eden. At the beginning of 2010, Tim Sutton joined Cape Farewell producer, Vicky Long at Eden to explore the possibility of creating a site-wide acoustic musical event.

Tim and Vicky spent time talking to staff, walking the site and, with local musicians, testing its acoustics. They found that sound travelled beautifully and Unplugged was then planned as a daylight performance, positioning performers across site (brass players around the perimeter, percussion in the centre and voices in between), creating a third dome at Eden; a temporary structure, light on resources, built with sound.

Tim works as a composer and musical director in the fields of theatre, classical and choral music. He is particularly interested in large-scale collaborative works, bringing together disparate and contrasting musical forces. Composition for theatre and choir includes The Secret Garden (West Yorkshire Playhouse & and Birmingham Rep), Dreamfighter (Scottish Ensemble & Lichfield Festival) The Bacchae (Edinburgh International Festival and Lincoln Center Festival New York).

Unplugged is supported by TippingPoint, PRS Foundation and Arts Council England.
More about the Slow Art Residency ›