Rude Awakening! – Jason Yarde

“In setting out to write this piece, I knew I wanted to represent something in ‘real-time’ i.e. running for a bus or boiling an egg perhaps, being two of the more extreme ideas that came to mind. I then thought about ways in which I could incorporate some different moods, wanting to mix it up, and that’s basically how I ended up with the following scenario …
You are lying in bed enjoying a calming sleep, that sweet spot just before you know you are supposed to get up … only you don’t know! You drift off deeper still, perhaps trying to get back into ‘that’ dream, the soothing pulse from a harp turns out in fact to be your alarm clock that you’ve just slept through! There’s a fumble to turn it off … A pause … And then, the realisation … ‘Ahhhhh IDIOT’ … you have minutes to be where you need to be!” Jason Yarde

This film was recorded as part of the London Sinfonietta’s socially distanced concert Yet Unheard at the Southbank Centre on 28 October 2020, a concert of music by established and emerging black composers, co-curated by leading composer and new music thinker George Lewis and experimental vocalist, movement artist and composer Elaine Mitchener.