Chris Watson live at Port Eliot Festival | 24-26th July 2009
A Nature Disco by Chris Watson at Port Eliot Festival, Saltash, Cornwall
More info can be found here
Chris Watson live at The Purcell Rooms | 11th July 2009
"It’s happening on Saturday July 11 and it’s a cracking line up. Featuring Laura Barton and Gavin Pretor-Pinney reading their pieces from 'Words On Water' with live sound accompaniment from the great Chris Watson - a really exciting prospect. We are also showing a short film of the late Roger Deakin in his house and garden. This was made by Mike Dibb as a pitch for a BBC documentary slot. With real short sightedness that slot was never commissioned and this wonderful fifteen minutes of history has sat on Mike’s shelf until its existence came to our attention and we tracked Mike down. We are also honoured to be joined by the authors of two of our current favourite books: Michael McCarthy reads from ‘Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo’ and Andrew Brown reads from ‘Fishing in Utopia’ which has just come out in paperback. We’ve also got Will Hodgkinson reading from his forthcoming book ‘The Ballad of Britain’ and live music, in the foyer of the QEH, from The Memory Band and friends, who will be performing the soundtrack to The Wicker Man."
Caught by the River - see entry below for further details
Chris Watson podcast for Caught by the River
John Richardson’s workbook for ‘A Collection of Words on Water’.
"We’ve had a bunch of unique podcasts made to compliment the book and they are now available to download (for free) over at iTunes.
Click here to go to the CBTR page where you can hear Bill Drummond, Chris Watson, Hannah Hamilton, Gavin Pretor-Pinney and Chris Yates read extracts from their contributions. There is also the treat of hearing Robert MacFarlane reading Roger Deakins, ‘Jack Frost’ piece. All of these recordings have been produced by Chris Watson."
THE ESTUARY is to be repeated for the 3rd time...
THE ESTUARY
BBC Radio 4
Sunday 5th July - 2 August, 2009
14.45-15.00
A Guide to Water Birds | BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
Sunday 31 May – 28 June 2009
14.45 – 15.00
Brett Westwood is joined by keen birdwatcher, writer and broadcaster, Stephen Moss in this informative and entertaining series to help you identify many of the birds which are found or near freshwater, whilst wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson provides high quality of recordings of the calls and songs of the birds under discussion.
Recorded on location in Somerset, each week the series focuses on a different group of birds, namely waders of wet meadows, (like Lapwing and Redshank), Ducks (including Mallard and Teal), Warblers (like Grasshopper and Cetti’s warbler), Rails (including Water Rail and Spotted Crake) and the River Birds, (birds like Kingfisher, Dipper and Grey Wagtail). Not only is there advice on how to recognise the birds visually, but also how to identify them from their calls and songs .…. after all, its more likely that you will hear a bird first and than see it.
A Guide to Water Birds follows A Guide to Garden Birds (broadcast in 2007), and A Guide to Woodland Birds (broadcast in 2008)
Series details
1. A Guide to Water Birds : Waders of wet meadows
BBC Radio 4, Sun 31 May, 2009 14.45-15.00
2. A Guide to Water Birds : Ducks
BBC Radio 4, Sun 7 June, 2009 14.45-15.00
3. A Guide to Water Birds : Reed bed warblers
BBC Radio 4, Sun 14 June, 2009 14.45-15.00
4. A Guide to Water Birds : Rails
BBC Radio 4, Sun 21 June, 2009 14.45-15.00
5. A Guide to Water Birds : River Birds
BBC Radio 4, Sun 28 June, 2009 14.45-15.00
Producer Sarah Blunt
Installation | The Roundhouse 14-17 May 2009
As part of the Short Circuit festival, there will be an installation by Chris in the Mezzanine Bar area on all 4 days of the festival.
The track listing, compiled by Chris with Touch, is as follows:
Embleton Rookery
Lioness Threatens Male
Mozambique Nightjar
Unidentified Pair of Birds
River Mara at Night
Tarbet Gulley
Sunsets
Gahlitzerstrom
The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London
THE ESTUARY & THE LAKE are to be repeated
Peter France narrates an extraordinary story of life on The Wash as the tides cycle and the seasons change. Set against a backdrop of sounds specially recorded on location by wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, this evocative and dramatic series follows the history and wildlife of the Wash from its earliest creation to the threats it faces in the 21st Century
BBC Radio 4
Saturday mornings 4 April 2009, 18 April 2009, then weekly 15 April, 2 May, 9 May 2009
05.45 - 06.00am, so set your alarm or catch it again on BBC i-player!
Producer Sarah Blunt
The Lake which was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4, is to be repeated on BBC Radio Ulster.
Sunday 5 April 13.30 -14.00.
A haunting and evocative sound portrait of Britain’s largest lake, Lough Neagh. With a shoreline measuring over 70 miles long, this vast stretch of water in Northern Ireland is more like a sea than a lake. Recordings made above and below the waves reveal a moody, stormy, wild and even dangerous place where legends of a buried town, a horse god and three sisters emerge from the shallows, whilst smoke-like plumes and huge flocks of birds rise from the surface as the seasons unfold.
Sound recordists: Chris Watson and Tom Lawrence
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Tonight | BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
Wednesday 25 March, 2009
21.02-21.30
Writer and Narrator: Paul Evans
Sound recordist: Chris Watson
Producer: Sarah Blunt
On a warm May evening, the boat trip across the river from Orford Quay to Orford Ness takes only a few minutes but the distance is enormous, as narrator PAUL EVANS discovers in this sound portrait of Orford Ness.
And so begins ‘a journey in sound’ around one of Britain’s most haunting, unsettling and seductive landscapes.
Orford Ness is the longest vegetated shingle spit in Europe. It runs for over 10 miles along the Suffolk coast from Aldeburgh to Shingle Street, north of the port of Felixstowe. It’s not quite a proper island because its nose is attached to its Suffolk face at the northern end, but access is restricted and the only way to get to the area that’s now a nature reserve owned by the National Trust is by water.
“Its distinctive elements seem a simple trinity: stone, water and sky” explains the narrator “but there’s something in the way these elements sound to me - the way the sea smacks against the shingle; the way the light reflects on the stones and pools; the way the wind cries over the flat ground. This is far from simple. There is something else in the aural landscape of Orford Ness, some feral power, disturbing yet seductive. “
Written and narrated by PAUL EVANS and with sound recordings by CHRIS WATSON, the programme explores this feral, disturbing yet seductive power of “one of the UK’s most important and most secretive military establishments”.
It’s an unsettling landscape. Deep, low mournful vibrations chase shadows across the shingle. Railings whistle and whine, twisted arms of metal clank against one another in skeletal remnants of buildings where the crash of heavy laboratory doors are part of an orchestra of sounds which also feature the hiss and sigh of waves of shingle furrows, the ever-present gasp and roar of the wind, cries of curlew and gulls, dot-dot-dot alarm calls of redshank and the rattle and scratch of sedge warblers.
Here Paul encounters shadows from the past; Cobra Mist, Blue Danube, nuclear bomb testing sites, a wall built by the Chinese Labour Corps, the skeletal remains of vast laboratories called Pagodas and the sea “polishing and resetting each pebble”.
This is a journey into a disturbing landscape; a fusion of creation and destruction, of man and nature, a poem of words and sounds, a trinity of stones, water and sky.
Today | BBC Radio 4
SOUNDSCAPE: The Lion Pride
BBC Radio 4
Monday- Friday, 23 -27 March, 2009
15.45-16.00
Narrator: Hugh Quarshie
Wildlife sound recordist: Chris Watson
Chris's recording of Hippos was aired on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning. This recording is one of many available on his CD 'Outside the Circle of Fire', which is avaiable from the TouchShop here...
The Guardian | 13th March 2009
In the Film & Music section, there is a page discussing the relationship between birdwatching and music, 'Twitchin' the night away' by Roy Wilkinson... there is also a mention of a project with which Chris involved: Caught by the River
