I've been listening to the demo, I've been practicing and hearing the orchestra rehearse when that downbeat struck.
It was just like, it was just all happening in my head and I was just watching.
I was almost like I was witnessing the whole thing.
Brought to you by the University of Central Oklahoma's Center for Global Competency.
Transforming lives through global adventures.
If you had told me five years ago that I would be working with Kyle Dillingham on a fantasy for solo violin and symphony orchestra about the Mary Rose,
and that Prince Charles, the Prince Charles, was going to send two delegates from the Mary Rose Trust in the Portsmouth, England,
and that the concert was going to be hosted by former Governor George and I,
and that Governor Brad Henry and Mayor Mick Cornette were going to declare official Mary Rose Day for the city and the state of Oklahoma in honor of our concert.
I don't know. That's pretty wild. I don't know if I would have believed that.
There's a lot of things we could do, but what should we do?
And by saying what should we do, I mean what could we do that would serve a greater purpose than our own purposes of just performing or showing what kind of a violinist I am or what kind of composer Callan is,
but what could we do? What kind of music could we do that might bring people together, that might celebrate another country or be special for somebody else and significant for somebody else?
And the idea of the Mary Rose, when that came about, very much so, we had in mind the idea of spotlighting a unique piece of British history.
Ships interested me, you know, just generally. I thought that they were interesting, and it made it more interesting that I only saw them in books and movies. I never saw a ship in Oklahoma, you know, being Oklahoma, so just don't run into battleships or aircraft carriers or transatlantic liners, things like that.
Since my interest had a lot to do with naval history, a lot of my subject matter within sort of had that direction, so that's how the idea for writing a piece about the Mary Rose came about.
Callan called me well as middle of the night between the 14th and 15th of February 2009, and he was so excited about this idea he'd had about the Mary Rose.
You know, there's certain subject matter lend themselves to treatment, musically speaking, you know.
Renaissance music, Renaissance England, that's very vocative, it's something that people will immediately sort of recognize and clue into.
Much easier than say, I don't know, a Korean tanker or something built in 1999, you know, that might be more difficult for a multinational, you know, tenorship or something, you know.
Renaissance England, Renaissance warship. I sketched out that night until about two in the morning, printed out the paper, and then I met him the next morning.
I had him read it, and then I played the orchestral part.
He just basically had this little piece of paper, and he laid out a couple of melodies. He said, now just imagine these drums, and imagine this and that, and he said, now play this.
And I was just sight reading, but he said, you know, imagine, you know, 16th century fiddle, you know, kind of this renaissance-y, not fluff, but kind of a, he said, this is the grim fiddle.
This is, you know, leading the crew and this ship to its demise. Now think about this and play.
What if we invited the Mary Rose Trust to come to Oklahoma for the premiere?
And it was just kind of like, I don't know, I guess we could. Might as well.
It seems quite a while now since July, I think it was, when our departmental secretary said, look at this.
And it was a letter from somebody I'd never heard of called Kyle Dilligan, saying that somebody in Oklahoma had written a piece of music.
So we thought, well, you've got to listen and hear what these people say.
So there was a little, I think, two or three week period when you were still working on the piece, and you then sent us the demo tape.
And I listened to it and I thought, this is really good. And I flashed it around some colleagues, and they said, what's a very interesting piece?
So we thought, well, let's get behind it if we can. And so we talked and we had an exchange of dialogue.
And then Cullen very kindly asked us to come along and join in the performance on Tuesday.
And we're delighted to be here. But as Cullen said, it was very coincidental that, in fact, it is our 500th anniversary in terms of laying the keel of the Mary Rose.
And it celebrates the same year as Henry VIII came to the throne in England.
And I did join a spot where we could just introduce you and just agree to say a few words.
You're just going to say, I'm sorry, Cullen.
I've actually been with the trust for 21 years. I joined in the late 1980s.
And I think I'm writing saying that to work on a project like that is fairly unique.
It's not by any means commercial in any sense of the word.
We get no core government funding, so we have to find every penny in order to finance our operation.
It is a unique project. It is very special.
She forms a unique part in our English history with King Henry VIII.
As we approached the date of the concert, we started increasing our publicity and awareness about the concert.
And somehow or another, a poster or a flyer got into the hands of a Mr. Dale Crabtree.
My wife Linda and I, a number of years ago, got to know the Earl and Countess of Normanton in England.
Antony said to me one time, said to my wife and me, you know, there is a project coming up that you might be interested in
because you all are anglophiles. They are trying to raise the ship because they want to restore it
and they want to put it in a museum and so on and so forth.
And they are trying to raise money to undertake this project.
So what we're hoping to do is obviously that in two years, two and a half years time,
we should be opening this new museum just before the Olympics take place in the UK.
And we are hoping as part of those launch activities, we touched upon this last night,
that Kyle may be coming across to play the opening music to that particular great day for us
when the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, our president, will be there to open the new museum.
And as many of you who are gathered here, hopefully you could make a trip as well.
My girlfriend was asking me, she said, oh really, they're sending artifacts.
And she said, you're going to have an exhibit.
She said, who's curating? Is it going to be the violinist or the composer?
A lot of the things that Kyle and I didn't have the resources or the time to manage.
The Centre for Global Composites, they came in and kind of took up the slack.
They came in, they helped with the exhibit, the artifacts that came from England.
They helped with providing materials and resources for people that were there.
They helped to host the delegates from England.
They've helped with fundraising, everything that's going on.
Dennis understood very well how music brings people together.
Not only brings people together, but it helps to develop and strengthen relationships.
And so using music have developed partnerships all over the world.
And thanks to the beautiful music of Callum and Kyle, we had a solid foundation to explore all kinds of opportunities.
Because really what we're doing with the Mary Rose is kind of what the CGC is about.
They're about connecting with other cultures, like I said.
And that's what we're doing with this piece.
So it fit what they were doing and what we wanted to do also.
The very first thing was that we could see was that there were artifacts
that if they were brought over would make the event just so much more successful
and really heighten the excitement of the event.
So we had a great exhibit to the event.
And then secondly we got our American students are currently involved in getting a certificate in global competency
through the Center for Global Competency.
And so we asked them if they would like to become involved and so they became involved by learning about the artifacts.
And then at the exhibit they begin to tell others about the artifacts.
So they became experts on the Mary Rose artifacts.
The orchestra was loud and full, having a chance to warm up and hit a couple passages.
The applause, the silence, the introduction.
Well you've heard the name Mary Rose several times tonight.
But so far that's all we've heard about it is talk.
What would surprise you with me is the MC.
These great musicians behind me have been practicing hard, as you can tell,
for the past seven weeks to bring you a new symphonic work by a composer right here in Oklahoma.
Exactly 500 years ago a young man with the last name of Tudor came to the throne of England
and decided that England ought to have a great navy.
Well a great navy means you've got to have great ships.
He ordered his lords, his admirals, his shipwrights, his carpenters to build the greatest warship the world had ever seen.
And when the ship was launched two years later he named it after his sister, Mary.
But it wasn't the launching of Mary Rose that made her an unforgettable part of history.
It wasn't the many battles she fought against the French and the Scots.
It wasn't even her tragic loss in 1545.
It was rather the rediscovery and the raising of the Mary Rose in 1982
provided the world with a glimpse into the daily life of a lost world, the Renaissance England of Henry VIII.
There's a lot of history here, but all you really need to know as you listen to this
is that there was a fiddle aboard the Mary Rose the days you wouldn't have.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose.
