In Spring 08 OCM brings you the freshest, the hottest, the most strange and beautiful and the most exclusive.
I was busy again hunting down exciting new sounds from far flung places (it’s a hard life)…and found some fascinating new music from Argentina, Norway, Israel and Cameroon. We were also delighted to be part of the Polska year of Polish culture with two very special events in May. But the OCM team had also been out to track down bats in North Oxfordshire and thus our ‘Born in a Barn’ series continued, bringing new music into the countryside with Robert Jarvis’ evocative Echolocation event. It was time to don those walking shoes again.
This season we were also searching for your favourite local sounds (musical and otherwise), both for our Open Session at The North Wall in April, and for our Sounds of Oxfordshire collaboration with BBC Radio Oxford.
Jo Ross, Director
OCM Open session & Sounds of Oxfordshire
Following a successful debut at Modern Art Oxford in January 2008 The OCM Open returned! We opened up the stage once again for some of Oxford’s finest and most innovative bands and performers, this time as part of the Oxford Fringe Festival. With a focus on original creations and compositions, we put together a musical box of treats and surprises from an open submission process starting at the end of January…any genre considered.
Sounds of Oxfordshire
Working with sound artist and composer Robert Jarvis, OCM was commissioned by BBC Oxford to produce Sounds of Oxfordshire as part of Made in England celebrating St Georges Day in April 2009. Over the space of 6 months, Robert worked with the BBC and its listeners to collect people’s favourite, meaningful, disappearing or characterful sounds from around Oxfordshire. Their stories were told on radio, TV and online and their sounds incorporated into a commissioned piece of music which was played at the end of the project as part of an hour long documentary.
