The mind of a composer

By Maria Gregoriou

The Pharos Arts Foundation will present a screening of the documentary A Temporary Arrangement with the Sea by Peter West and Steve Martland on Saturday.

The documentary, written and co-directed by Peter West, looks at composer Louis Andriessen, his artistic personality and the world in which he lives and works.

Andriessen is one of Holland’s most highly regarded composers and he helped young British composer Steven Martland develop his own talents in Amsterdam (which is considered to be one of the last bastions of avant-garde art.)

As Amsterdam’s theatres, clubs and concert halls have often proved a welcome haven to artists from abroad, it was only fitting for Martland to experiment with his talents there.

Andriessen is becoming an increasingly well-known figure, with performances of his dynamic and rhythmically inventive works all over the world. Television viewers will know his music from his award-winning collaboration with movie director Peter Greenaway in the BBC-2 series Not Mozart.

West describes the film as “a montage of fragments, and visual comments which reflect the composer’s own labyrinthine musical mind. Just as his music comments on itself and other artistic worlds, so this film draws on painting, theatre, literature and historical archives to create a documentary which holds a mirror up to itself.”

The screening of the documentary is an introduction to Andriessen, whose subversive Workers Union will be given its Cyprus premiere by Het Collectief on Sunday, forty years after it was composed.

A Temporary Arrangement with the Sea
The Pharos Arts Foundation presents a screening of the documentary by Peter West and Steve Martland. October 3. The Shoe Factory, 304 Ermou Street, Nicosia. 8.30pm.Free. In English. Tel: 22-663871

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.