Sheila Hill
“Back in ’98, when pregnant, I found, weirdly, that I craved music. This set me on a 20 year quest to make a definitive work about motherhood.
Developmental psychologist Penelope Leach, whom I met to discuss the evolving text and ideas with, told me how seven is the first milestone across all cultures. The age when the part of a child’s brain responsible for memory is fully formed, and so s/he can be given serious responsibility. And that gave me the shape for Eye to Eye.
Told through my/the adult’s eyes, and also the child’s (my son’s words, my edit), drawn from real-time diaries, with these two voices set to music in a collaboration between two of our most brilliant and maverick: composer Howard Skempton (responsible for the choral work) and jazz trumpeter Byron Wallen, leading a band of world class players in an instrumental response.
Our singers: 100 women and children, auditioned and trained by Glyndebourne.”
Sheila Hill (director/writer) is a theatre-maker and installation-artist. Always using real voices in her work, she transcribes and edits these down to a poetic core. She has had parallel careers as a Guardian journalist, and music curator, founding Tabernacle Folk, a four year commissioning festival to extend traditional music.