Verity Standen's REFRAIN Opens this Weekend at Richmond Castle

Tomorrow evening at Richmond Castle REFRAIN, a brand new work by award-winning artist, composer and choir leader Verity Standen, opens offering a weekend of reflection on the 16 conscientious objectors detained there 100 years ago.

Local male untrained singers have come together over the last month to rehearse and join Verity and a professional ensemble in exploring their voices and the issues around conscientious objection.

A doctor, scrap metal merchant, a Methodist minister, students, asylum seekers, people who have experienced homelessness, and a Green Party candidate who hasn't sung for 50 years are among the singers taking part in Refrain.

The effect will be an immersive choral experience creating a live sound installation around Richmond Castle which audiences walk through catching different voices and sounds as they roam the ruins.

100 years ago sixteen conscientious objectors were detained in the 19th century cell block of Richmond Castle, leaving their poignant and personal testimonies in drawings on the cell walls. From there they were transported, along with others, from Landguard Fort in Harwich and Seaford, East Sussex to Northern France to be court-martialled and subsequently sentenced to death. Their sentence was commuted to ten years hard labour, and along with hundreds of others, the Richmond Sixteen were subsequently incarcerated in prisons across the UK for their refusal to fight in World War I.

REFRAIN is a contemporary reflection on conscience and sacrifice in the light of drastic, heart-wrenching conflict and, following the potent context of Richmond Castle, the work will be reconfigured and devised with male singers local to both St. Helens, Merseyside and then Newhaven, East Sussex, both locations with specific significance in the story of conscientious objection in WWI and WWII.

7-9 April, Richmond Castle, North Yorkshire

19 - 21 May, St. Helens, Merseyside

9 - 11 June, Newhaven, East Sussex

Tickets go on sale at www.refrain.online

Artist Verity Standen said: "I am thrilled to be working with such a diverse range of voices - men drawn from all walks of life. I try to leave room for the performers to make the music their own within the compositions I'm writing. I expect the piece to sound and feel totally different in each location, as it will be shaped by the local singers, the architecture and history of each site, and each audience who will explore it in a different way. It's a great challenge to compose music that will resound not only in a Castle Keep but also in a local pub. It's a daunting task, but I know the power of a room full of voices and I can't wait to start filling those spaces with sound."

Claire Doherty, Director of arts producers said: "Refrain represents Situations commitment to growing art out of place and to offering the chance to hear untold stories. Refrain offers the opportunity to experience these sites as never before, against the background of the extraordinary struggles over conscience."

Kevin Booth, English Heritage's Senior Curator for the North, said: "English Heritage is delighted to be collaborating with Verity Standen at Richmond Castle. We're working hard to conserve the fragile graffiti left at the castle by the Richmond Sixteen but we also want to involve local people in their remarkable story and this project is part of that."

ABOUT THE ARTIST

'Sound rose and fell in waves until it felt as if I was drenched in music that had seeped its way into every organ in my body, and maybe even found my soul.'

Lyn Gardner, The Guardian on Verity Standen's HUG, 2015

Verity Standen is an award-winning artist, composer and choir leader, whose unique work with voices has surprised and enchanted audiences around the UK and internationally. From intimate concerts to immersive theatrical experiences, Verity's work seeks to reimagine how audiences experience vocal music. Verity's immersive choral piece HUG won the Off West End TBC Award 2016 and was nominated for The Arches Brick Award and a Total Theatre Award. As well as touring her pieces HUG, MMM HMMM and SYMPHONY across the UK and internationally, Verity is currently composing for a contemporary dance opera, which will premiere in 2017. She is also researching a sound design project for in-patients at London hospitals and recording a soundtrack for an independent documentary. REFRAIN is her most ambitious project to date. www.veritystanden.com

As founding director of Situations (www.situations.org.uk), Claire Doherty is changing the face of public art. Spearheading artworks and events which grow out of a place and encourage the public to participate and which often occur unexpectedly, Claire has led an Arctic expedition to locate an unchartered island and brought it 2000 miles to England as a visiting island for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, sparked a gold rush on the beaches of Folkestone, initiated a Future Library in Oslo which sees the commissioning of a new text by a writer every year for 100 years with all the texts remaining unread until 2114, set loose two lions in a 1920s cinema, and opened up the gates of a scheduled monument for the first time in 75 years with a programme of non-stop sounds and music sustained by 700 performers night and day over 24 days. Now she is helping to fill the ruins of Richmond Castle in North Yorkshire with the voices of 30 untrained male singers.

Photo credit: Paul Blakemore

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