Backstage with Owen McCausland

Getting attitude from the opera singer! Backstage with renown Canadian tenor, Owen McCausland, at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s during a performance of The Merry Widow by the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra on Friday, March 21, 2013. Photo by Greg Locke © 2013

The NSO Project – Video Mix

The first video from our work with the musicians of the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra in St. John’s, Newfoundland, comprising of video clips from backstage at concerts and during the production of our musician portraits sessions in 2012.
Visit our NSO Project page for the photo galleries.

The Age of West Aquarius

Seadrill's West Aquarius offshore drilling rig in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. Photography by Greg Locke © 2013The newest arrival in the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore oil industry is SeaDrill’s semi-submersible drill rig, West Aquarius. It is under contract to Statoil Canada to drill a number of exploration wells on the deep water Flemish Pass, 500km east of St. John’s, and the Jeanne d’Arc basin in the area of existing producing wells at Hibernia, Terra Nova and White Rose, 300km south east of St. John’s in the relatively shallow water of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. It will also be used in support of other exploration prospects where Statoil is non-operating partner.  Photo by Greg Locke © 2013

Tempting Topaz

A lovely topaz pendant in 18k white gold on a braided silk rope by designer, Bellarri, for Diamond Design.
Photo by Greg Locke © 2013

Channeling 1968 style

After a week on the gritty, slushy, cold downtown film sets of The Slattery Street Crockers I’m happy to be back in the warm, dry studio to finish up this project I’ve been working on for Olivia Chafe at The Headroom in St. John’s. Kept thinking I was having a 1968 flashback. Must be watching to many episodes of Mad Men.

Model: Laura. Hair: Olivia Chafe. Makeup: Janel O’Connell. Photo: Greg Locke © 2013.

Principle photography wraps on Slattery Street Crockers

Sid Collins as Darry in The Slattery Street Crockers, Photo by Greg Locke © 2013

Principle photography wrapped on The Slattery Street Crockers over the weekend. This is a pilot for a new TV series by Newfoundland author and film maker, Kenneth J Harvey and will air sometime in the fall on NTV. Now its off to the editing suite for Ken and editor Christopher “Mr. Scissors” Darlington for assembly. It was a fast and furious week shooting in downtown St. John’s in the worst weather and location conditions but Ken could not have a gathered together a better cast and crew for the job. …you will not have seen St. John’s like this before.

Still Here – Part 1


In the last days of motion picture film the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Co-operative (NIFCO) ran what may be its last Super 8 film workshop in the summer of 2012. At the end of last year, news came that processing 8mm and 16mm motion picture film would no longer be a viable option for film makers in Canada. I was lucky enough to be a part of the “last batch” with long time film mentor, Roger Maunder.

My Super 8 short film was done in collaboration with HIV/AIDS activist and educator, Robyn Pardy. It is “part 1″ because we hope this will be the opening sequence to a larger film project about the history HIV/AIDS, the people involved and the epidemiology in Newfoundland and Labrador. The rest of this project will, undoubtedly, be shot on digital HD motion picture cameras. Maybe a new Red Epic?

This was shot on a 70′s era Sanyo Super 8 movie camera with Ektachrome 100 Daylight film and transferred to digital for editing in an AVID editing suite at NIFCO. Audio tracks were recording separately with a Sony digital audio recorder and the original music score was done by Debashis Sinha in Toronto.

Thanks go to Roger Maunder for mentoring the Super 8 Workshops, Brad Gover for post-production guidance, Anna Petras for herding cats, Debashis Sinha for the score and especially Robyn Pardy for letting me follow her around with a vintage Super 8 movie camera. The girl knows her buses!

Check out NIFCO and the great work they do at www.nifco.org.
You can find more of  Debashis Sinha’s music, video and sound art installations at www.debsinha.com

Chad Pelley wins Salon Fiction Prize

A big congratulations to Newfoundland’s Chad Pelley on winning the Salon Fiction Prize from the Saint John Telegraph Journal in Saint John, New Brunswick this weekend. Here is a photo from the shoot we did for the Telegraph-Journal last week and you can find a short video of Chad reading a passage from A Second Look at Nothing further down.

The Telegraph-Journal, is New Brunswick’s provincial newspaper, and this is the inaugural Salon Fiction Prize. Launched July 2012, the Salon Fiction Prize awards $1,000 for a previously unpublished work of Canadian short fiction. The winning piece is also published in the Telegraph-Journal’s weekend fine arts and culture section, Salon. A Second Look at Nothing is running in the Feb. 23 issue of Salon.

Chad Pelley’s short story was selected from more than 100 entries from across Canada by an esteemed Atlantic Canadian jury empaneled for the new prize: Giller Prize-shortlisted short story writer Alexander MacLeod; Halifax-based Atlantic Poetry Prize-winner Sue Goyette; and Université de Moncton professor Thomas Hodd.

 

2014 Sound Symposium XVII – Call for Proposals

Celebrating 30 years of exploring sound!
Be fantastic! Be outrageous! Be earth-shaking!

Sound Symposium invites artists from all Sound Arts fields to propose projects, installations and performances for Sound Symposium XVII in July 2014.

Sound Symposium creates a forum for the exchange of ideas, it serves as a crucible for the creation of new art. Activities include workshops, installations, performances and natural audio-visual experiences.

We support the exploration of new repertoire in contemporary classical music; provincial, national and world premieres; jazz; improvisational music; sound installations; dance; theatre; workshops; film; sound poetry; and outdoor or environmental projects.  We emphasize SOUND and INNOVATION.

If you want to help create an adventure in sound, this is the place and time for you.

Invited artists are encouraged to stay for the entire period – take part in collaborations, dialogues, and unexpected pleasures – become a part of a sound community.

It is likely that you will share a program with other artists. Your proposal should suggest, in most cases, a program of approximately twenty to thirty minutes.  There will be exceptions made where a longer program will be appropriate.

We will be looking at proposals as we receive them, and will continue to accept applications until we have filled our schedule.  But we suggest you submit your ideas before our deadline of July 15, 2013.

If you have any questions, please contact us at: soundart@soundsymposium.com or visit www.soundsymposium.com

Proposal Guidelines

Please submit:
? a brief, but detailed description of your proposed project;
? a list of the technical requirements of your work;
? the duration of your work (time) if it is a performance;
? a short bio (approximately 100-200 words) for publication;
? a photo of yourself for publication (electronic format, please);
? a statement that the new work has not been previously produced;
? samples of your work via cds, videos, DVDs, photographs and/or website access
? a brief resumé listing -
permanent address
telephone number
email address
website (if applicable)
education, prizes, awards, performances, exhibitions, critical reviews and references.

Stray Light Media is a proud supporter of Sound Symposium.

NSO Portrait Exhibition

I think it’s been almost 15 years since I’ve put prints on a wall for a public exhibition. With the growth of digital photography in the professional world, the long slow death of newspapers and magazines and the rise of online media, most of the photography we see today is on a website or computer monitor. The small images are a part of life in the new visual media but they don’t compare to seeing large prints on a wall.

So, I’m very happy to offer up this small exhibition of my portraits of the musicians of the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra.

My NSO Project started last year and a part of that was to get these amazing musicians out of the theatres or studios and on location in the dramatic Newfoundland landscape and unique locations for a series of portraits. This exhibit is from the first round of photo shoots which took place in August and September 2012.

If you are in St. John’s during February (Feb1 – March 3, 2013) do drop down to Hava Java on Water Street, have a coffee and take in this exhibit. Hava Java has been making their upstairs space  available to artists as an alternative exhibition space for almost two years and it has been a great success. Sort of an Open Mic for the visually literate.

If you are lucky enough to be at the NSO Silver Ball on Feb 2 at the Delta Hotel we’ll have a large selection of photos from the project on the big screens.

Many thanks for this project go to the musicians of the NSO who bought into my vision whole heartedly and accepted me into their backstage lives.

Thanks to Inna Levchuk, Joe Chase, Erinn Locke for their production assistance, Trish Malloy and Olivia Chafe at the Head Room for hair and makeup. Rob and Erika at Hava Java for offering up their space and Rodney deVries for his instruments …no instruments were hurt in the making of these pictures. Printing by JB Photo. And finally, Neil and Sean at the NSO for herding cats.

This exhibition has been made possible by the kind support of Diamond Design.