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13/06/19 ECHOES FROM LONDON

Echoes illustration by Amy Whiten

Reserve your free tickets now for our first performance at the Stroud Green Festival on Thursday 13th June at 6.15pm, HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, Granville Road, London, N4 4EL. The performance is preceded by a Touch Tour (5.45pm) for the visually impaired and has Integrated Audio Description. After a successful run at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a Scottish Tour, Five Star reviews and a special Editors Award we are delighted to announce the first English performance of the ECHOES PROJECT at Stroud Green Festival, London 2019. 

6.15pm THURSDAY 13TH JUNE 2019
(5.45pm Touch Tours)
Holy Trinity Church, N4 4EL
Minerva ScientificaEchoes from London
Stroud Green Festival
This performance is part of International Women in Engineering Day

Echoes from London is the first English species of our successful five-star Edinburgh Festival Fringe performance commemorating triumphs and histories of Scotland’s Superwomen of Science through a blend of music, song and spoken word. Featuring singer and composer Frances M Lynch, the show has been on a fabulous tour including the Highlands and Islands, entertaining its audiences and engaging with local communities. 

Check out our project last year in Eyemouth and St Abbs

Echoes from London has been specially created in collaboration with Stroud Green Festival, Stroud Green Primary School and the Women’s Engineering Society, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.  Among others, the “Superwomen” featured include two suffragettes: a Stroud Green School Head  Agnes Metcalfe BSc, and the electrical engineer and physicist Hertha Ayrton from Finsbury Technical College who was a friend of Marie Curie and a prolific inventor.

Their stories are told through the music of women composers from the early 1700’s to the present day, including Haringey – born composer Madeleine Dring. Others are Anne Hunter (better known as a poet who often worked with Haydn), Helen Hopekirk (known as the 2nd Clara  Schumann),  and our own local composer and performer Frances M Lynch.

Created by electric voice theatre, Echoes is a Minerva Scientifica project that brings together professional performers with community musicians and school children. Together, we raise awareness of the rich heritage and deep connections between music and science, and inspire the next generation of future scientists.

Superwomen of Science @ Fossil Festival, Lyme Regis 2017

Festival programme image

 Superwomen of Science
Minerva Scientifica

Winner of a Three Weeks Editors Award – Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016

Singing with Fossils!

Our expedition to the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival made us many new friends. These included 100 children from Symondsbury Primary School Dorset, St. John’s Primary School Weymouth,  Mountjoy School Dorset and Musbury Primary School, Devon, and the 20 adults who accompanied them. They arrived in groups on Friday 28th April at The Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis,  and were introduced to the female earth scientists depicted in the “Raising Horizons” exhibition which was displayed in the auditorium.  We all got to know the women very well – and the children created some very special work which you can hear them sing here: –

TrowelBlazers  – A New Song
On April 29th 2017 at 1.30pm “Superwomen of Science – Minerva Scientifica” was performed at Lyme Regis Fossil Festival in the Marine Theatre by electric voice theatre surrounded by the TrowelBlazers exhibition “Raising Horizons”.WP - TB 4Frances M Lynch created a new vocal work for the occasion, celebrating the scientists depicted in the exhibition and inspired by the Festival theme – Time and Tide and Tectonics.

“TrowelBlazers – Time and Tide and Tectonics wait for no woman”

 

Raising Horizons
Time and Tide and Tectonics wait for no woman
TrowelBlazers finding footprints of the past
Archaeology, geology, palaeontology that’s us
Mary Anning had a dog, holds a hammer in her hand
found a lot of dinosaur poo, flying dragons corprolytes
“In every outthrust headland, In every curving beach,
In every grain of sand, there is the story of the Earth”
(Rachel Carson)
The Earth, what is it? How was it formed?
People, who are we? What have we made?
Creatures of the world, where do they come from?
Minerva Scientifica – Raising Horizons

The work is for a live solo voice with a chorus of recorded voices generously donated by  the children of  Symondsbury , St. John’s Weymouth and Musbury Primary Schools, and Mountjoy Special and Community School and by Pippa J Redfern, Danielle Barry, Kathryn Holland, Miranda Melville, Colette Milward, Eloise Ward, Fiona McAlister
all other voices are Frances M Lynch