L'Orange - Black Fire on White Fire

BLACK FIRE ON WHITE FIRE

An interdisciplinary music, theatre, video and live calligraphy performance interpreting the 7 days of Creation using the mystical meanings of the Hebrew alphabet.

Part 1
BLACK FIRE ON WHITE FIRE
For calligrapher, voice, 7 clarinets and electronics

©Patricia Curtis

“The Torah which the Holy One gave Moses was given to him as white fire engraved with black fire. The Tora is fire, mixed with fire, quarried of fire, and given from fire” – Jerusalem Talmud.

Using the artistry of world-renowned calligrapher Frank Lalou (fluent in Hebrew, Latin and Greek alphabets) as a starting point, Black Fire on White Fire creates a new way of linking music with the written word through the creation of an interactive music-theatre performance.

Apart from his numerous published works (he has illustrated and written many books, as well as created one-off manuscripts and artworks, and his unique style has gathered admiration and recognition world-wide), Frank Lalou is known for “performing” his calligraphic designs by projecting them in real-time on a large video-screen, thus revealing the beauty of the gestures, colours and shapes of Hebrew writing. Recently, he has also found a way of amplifying the sound of the writing by placing a microphone on his calligrapher’s pen (thus inventing the “calamophone”). This allows him to create rhythms and “bowing” or percussive sounds from the letters and text themselves.

©Patricia Curtis

Hebrew mysticism believes the alphabet to be the instrument of Creation, the DNA of the physical world where each letter contains the essence of every thing. Speech and writing therefore become the ultimate creative acts where each word does not describe an object, it is the object itself (in Hebrew, the words for “word” and “object” are the same: “davar”). Understanding the structure and deeper meaning of the 22 letters, like the 22 human chromosomes (+1 male or female one), gives us an insight into the origins of the Universe and of ourselves.

©Frank Lalou

Franco-Hungarian composer Daniel Biro, whose interests in the links between music, science and spirituality have brought him to explore new methods of interactive compositions, incorporates Lalou’s calligraphic sounds with vocalist Orange /Véronique Joly and seven clarinettists to create an original composition. Starting from the idea of breath as the source of all creation, the piece evolves layer by layer towards a complete sonic landscape where all sounds become one, taking the audience, whether Jewish or not, through an audio-visual journey of discovery.

Read an extract from the play

Credits:
Music by Daniel Biro
Performed by:
- Daniel Biro: electronics
- Véronique 'Orange' Joly: voice
- Franck Lalou: calligraphy & Calamophonics
- Adrian Crawford, Philip Edwards, Ian Mitchell, Kate Romano,
David Ryan, Andrew Sparling & Sarah Thurlow: clarinets
Text chosen by Daniel Biro and taken from the “Sefer Yetzirah” (Book of Creation)

©Patricia Curtis

“What really happened in that Garden, on that Day?”
“Why did they do it?”
“Whose fault was it?”
“Who took the blame?”
“Why the big deal?”
“Were the rumours true?”
“Was it really the end, or was it the beginning?” All will be revealed…

Credits:
Text by Véronique 'Orange' Joly & Daniel Biro
Performed by Véronique 'Orange' Joly

BLACK FIRE ON WHITE FIRE Parts 1 & 2 was performed at:
-The Blue Elephant Theatre, London, June 2003