Bay Life is hearing news that internationally renowned sound recordist, Chris Watson may be headed for St. Nicolas Church in Pevensey as part of the recording of the ‘Ocean Song Project’ to accompany the opening of Whale Hall in Cambridge.
The Ocean Song Project is part of the opening of Whale Hall in the summer of 2016, a £5.9 milion part lottery funded project that will see a new museum gain an iconic status.
Star exhibit of the museum, over two storeys, is to be the skeleton of the famous Pevensey Whale.
The monster finback whale was beached in what we now call Norman’s Bay, on 13 November 1865. It has become the stuff of legend. It was 71 foot long and was the same weight as eight double decker buses.
Alongside the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology, plans are afoot locally to celebrate the 150th commemoration of the beaching of the whale on 13 November 1865
The ‘twinning’ of the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology with Pevensey and the Bay is the latest in a line of high profile events that the locality is beginning to attract.
Tracey Biram, Marketing & Communications officer with the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology explained how excited the team behind the project was with everything being done locally to support the launch of the museum.
She explained that the prestigious institution plans a visit to Pevensey in the summer of 2015 in the company of Chris Watson, the internationally renowned seascape artist.
“The Ocean Song project includes at its core a series of 20 workshops with people from across Cambridge and beyond, where we will be exploring the sounds of nature, how animals produce and perceive sounds, and exploring our own voices and the sounds we can make. Recordings will be made of these voices of the community, and combined with natural sounds, including recordings of the ocean at Pevensey, to create an atmospheric sound installation for the new Whale Hall”.
Amongst many other projects, his work features in the BBC Life on Earth series, made by David Attenborough.
Chris Watson is one of the world’s leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena. He was born in Sheffield where he attended Rowlinson School and Stannington College (now part of Sheffield College). In 1971 he was a founding member of the influential Sheffield-based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire.
His sound recording career began in 1981 when he joined Tyne Tees Television. Since then he has developed a particular and passionate interest in recording the wildlife sounds of animals, habitats and atmospheres from around the world.
As a freelance recordist for film, tv & radio, Chris Watson specialises in natural history and documentary location sound together with track assembly and sound design in post production.
Bay Life can confirm that these plans are now shaping up and that the team behind Whale Hall will be with the community on the weekend of 22nd and 23rd August, with part of the project possibly taking place in the historic setting of the 800 year old St. Nicloas Church.
It may well be a fitting setting for this part of the project.
The children of the village on Sunday 15 November 1865 crowding into St. Nicolas church would no doubt have been aghast and excited about what was happening on the beach a walk away from the scene.
Thousands of people would have been flocking to the scene that Sunday to see the monster whale. Some contemporaneous reports suggest that as many as 20,000 people witnessed the event.
We will never know if the vicar on that day had something to say about the whale in his sermon, but it seems likely that the event would have been the focus of attention far and wide on that fateful weekend in the history of the community.
Further details about the visit of Chris Watson to the locality will be provided as soon as the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology makes more information available.
IMAGE CREDIT: CHRIS WATSON
