Participants | Jack McNeill

Open Space artist Jack McNeill has used his place on the scheme to combine his work as a professional clarinet player and his contemporary folk duo McNeill & Heys in a new collaboration project entitled Propellor.

Loom (n.) The slow and silent movement of water in a deep pool (Cumbria)

From 2016 – 2018 Jack McNeill developed an ambitious new concert-length work with his new group Propellor and mentor Aidan O’Rourke (LAU), on the Open Space residency programme at Snape Maltings in Suffolk.

Loom follows a watercourse backwards from sea to sky, the sound intricately plotted on an ambisonic speaker rig which envelops the audience in the sound of the ensemble and blurs the lines and expectations of genre and performance space. Recordings of beach, pool and mountain waterways become new percussion palette, and shared stories and field recordings are woven into the narrative. Illustrator Bethan Lumb’s emotive sketches chart a visual journey with the photography of John Beatty, projected from the ceiling onto a large circular ‘pool’ screen.