Libretto / works with Composers and Musicians

I don’t do music but the words to music I’ve done.

I was part of the London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper in 2012, creating a boxing-sound-poetry libretto for the remarkable Philip Venables, which was performed at LSO St Lukes, London and MATA Festival, New York, and featured on his CD Below the Belt (NMC Recordings).

I’ve worked most extensively with Dutch violinist, composer and musician, Diamanda Dramm, to write poems for song, performance and publication. In 2019, the album Beastings was released (Pretty Purgatory)

In 2016 I provided texts for composer Claudia Molitor’s The Singing Bridge installation and album, with Somerset House and Totally Thames Fest.

In 2019 I was invited to be collaborator / mentor for the Robert Reid Allan Birmingham Contemporary Music Group commission ‘Physical Education’.

I was twice a participant in Voiceworks at Guildhall Music School, writing libretto for Wenjing Wang and Theodoros Chatzidis and performing alongside singers at Wigmore Hall in 2011.

I have performed in collaboration with musicians Benedict Taylor, Pekko Kappi, Garance Louis, Ben Morris and Provokief.

Working with Robert Reid Allan w/ the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group April to June 2019

Over a six month period I had the pleasure to work with composer Robert Reid Allan for a new piece he is making with the BCMG, entitled Physical Education, as part of their apprentice composer in residence programme. My role was morphous, and I hope all the more useful for that fact (certainly it is for me, I’ve learned considerably from Robert and the process. What Robert has been doing extends beyond his considerable work in composition and into text, poetry, language arts, and their fusion, with music, to themes of violence, cruelty, the adolescent body and institutional aftershocks (school in this case), and this is something I’ve been thinking / writing about for years. So it’s been a serious exploration between us, often about concepts and ideas, and pivotally, also about methodologies, about what music and poetry actually do, together and alone. http://www.robertallanmusic.com/

Physical education premiered on June 21st in Birmingham and I witnessed Physical Education in its first ever iteration. The piece was ambitious, dynamic, comfortable with knotty poetic paradoxes, working through multiple mediums, often at the same time, while still feeling quite generous to the audience, perhaps because it was fundamentally exploring a very specific topic and subject which allowed the aesthetic to be eclectic. It was personal while technical, playful as much as intensive. My work with Robert was as open as the final piece itself, but aside from some conversations on the conceptual framework of the piece, and how multiple mediums might be fused, especially where text might sit with music, it was the words and the possibilities of the poetics in the show we discussed most. The language worked best to my ear, and eyes, when at its most intransigent and complex, inevitably, but Robert showed considerable skill with his writing given it was his debut foray into writing words for his own music.

The Singing Bridge : Claudia Molitor, Totally Thames Festival and Somerset House : 2016

Brilliant to be commissioned to work with the extraordinary composer Claudia Molitor, providing new poems that explored the rich history of Waterloo Bridge and her work. - “Fascinated by the rich and largely unearthed social history of Waterloo Bridge and its rebuilding during World War II by a predominantly female workforce comes a brand new work by composer and artist Claudia Molitor. Collect a headset from Somerset House to begin your 40 minute musical experience that features new compositions by Molitor, with contributions from l poet SJ Fowler. The Singing Bridge weaves you along Waterloo Bridge and its surrounding paths to give you time and space to consider your relationship to this bridge and its environs.” Commissioned by Totally Thames in partnership with Somerset House / Digital Release by NMC Recordings

Guardian review https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/22/claudia-molitor-singing-bridge-cd-review-nmc-thames

Voiceworks : 2010 - 2012

Visit www.stevenjfowler.com/voiceworks - A formative project, not only experiencing the rigour and professionalism of classical music and its teachers / students, which changed my expectations of my own approach to writing, but also for collaboration. Led by Richard Baker, Carol Watts et al, and bringing writers from University of London together with composers at Guildhall Music school, I participated in Voiceworks twice, writing new libretto for Wenjing Wang and Theodoros Chatzidis. We had regular sessions of discussion, negotiation and workshopping and were allowed to experiment. I also had the chance, in 2011 to read alongside singers at Wigmore Hall and Guildhall.

Collaborations with Provokief / Pekko Kappi / Garance Louis

PARAMO - Old friend and collaborator Provokief made music to my reading of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Parama for the Electronic Voice Phenomena project.

KALEVALA - During the Poetry Parnassus in 2012, Finnish Jouhikko player and avant garde musician Pekko Kappi and I did a duet with me reading the grand Finnish national text, the Kalevala, arranged by Anselm Hollo’s father.

SCENT - On tour together for Lush’s Golden Hour, Garance Louis played accordion while I read poems in a street in Oxford.