leoonthehighseas-blog

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1st movement: Begins at 00:00 2nd movement: Begins at 20:55 3rd movement: Begins at 33:00 4th movement: Begins at 40:57 Bernard Haitink's performance of RVW'...

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Leo On The High Seas - Previously unreleased album now free download

In anticipation of a new collection of songs I have been writing and recording ready to release this year, I thought it was time to put a previously unreleased album on Soundcloud for free download. Please go and listen and download what you like. Recorded in 2010-11, It was a 2 year period of writing and recording. A concept album, a tragic plot about a man who runs away to sea but ends up shipwrecked. Some songs are based on true stories of shipwrecks you may have read about, but it also has songs about the main character that the album is based around and his journey. Any cover art you see was also drawn by myself at the time. Try listening from beginning to end and let me know what you think, Enjoy! 

https://soundcloud.com/stream

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This is a great read if you are interested in polar exploration! tracing the footsteps of De Jong who was a forgotten 19th century American explorer.

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Twenty Eight Feet: life on a little wooden boat, great video about a man and his boat, Lizzy Belle H-28 "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain

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Here is a link to where you can download the first officially released songs I have written that are inspired by the sea, It is called Volume 1, so there will be a Vol 2 somewhere down the line! Have a listen and download them if you like what you hear. Cheers Leo x

https://itunes.apple.com/au/album/leo-on-high-seas-vol.-1-single/id768540604

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Beautiful song called 'John Taylor's Month Away' about a man who spends most of his life out on the sea, from a great album by King Creosote and Jon Hopkin. 

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Hello everyone and Happy New year from Leo On The High Seas. This is a video recorded at The Playhouse in Norwich back in October for 'A Night At The Popera' Where I played two of my seafaring songs 'The Melrose' and 'E La Nave Va' with the Norfolk County Youth Orchestra. Orchestral arrangement and conducting by David Stowell. It was a fantastic night organised by BBC Radio Norfolk Introducing.  

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Hi everyone! Here is a nice little video which myself and Theo Godley made last week on Hickling Broad in Norfolk. It was a fine day for sailing and we thought we would try out a camera called a GoPro which is water proof I hope you like the results. The song is a tune called 'Gone Cruising' I wrote a about a friend called Andy who went Cruising on the high seas with his saxophone and a martini! Strings played by Mr Louie Robinson, hope you enjoy!

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Hi Everyone! Here is a live version of 'E LA NAVE VA' recorded in Porringland in July 2011, Kate Reynolds on Violin.

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Anyone looking for something to do in the Norfolk area this weekend should come down to my gig in Porringland, It is the start of their Art Festival and it is going to be an exciting evening. I am playing original tunes with a live band and there is also a unique LeoOnTheHighSeas set with live visuals to accompany my seafaring melodies. Including a video I shot today on a beautiful old broads cruiser called 'Golden Dawn' that was built in 1932, see the picture above, what a lovely day out I had, thank you to her faithful crew!

DETAILS

SUNDAY 10TH JULY-7 OCLOCK

TICKETS £10 ON THE DOOR

WHITE HOUSE CATHOLIC CHAPEL UPGATE

PORRINGLAND

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Hey everyone, I have just watched a great film on the train on the way back from London! Here is some info about it, really inspiring stuff!

'Alone Across The Pacific'

A powerful hymn to the human spirit, Alone Across the Pacific – by renowned Japanese director Kon Ichikawa (An Actor’s Revenge, The Burmese Harp, Tokyo Olympiad) – tells the extraordinary real-life story of one man’s obsessive quest to break free from the strictures of society.

In 1962, Kenichi Horie (Yujiro Ishihara) embarks on a heroic attempt to sail single-handed across the Pacific Ocean. Leaving Osaka in an ill-prepared vessel – The Mermaid – the young adventurer must overcome the most savage of seas, the psychological torment of cabin fever, and his mental and physical breaking point, if he is ever to reach the fabled destination of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

Using Horie’s best-selling logbook as his source, Ichikawa portrays the epic struggle of man against nature. ‘Scope cinematography – with Horie isolated in the oceanic expanse of the frame – and a score by celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu, add to the drama of a film for which Ichikawa received a Golden Globe nomination, among other accolades.

This film has an incredible atmosphere, it never rests as he crosses the Ocean. He is a living legend, here is a link to Horie's long list of achievements:

http://www.solarnavigator.net/kenichi_horie_voyages.htm

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At least since Darwin's day, we have known that all of us originally emerged from the sea. That fact may in part account for our abiding fascination with it, our longing to return there, whether to sail the main or merely contemplate its restless enormity. Surely it's not accidental that we refer to "bodies of water", when we think how, from the very beginning, men have explored its secluded coves and furthest reaches. Our continents have been carried, grain by grain, in its deeps. The earth's wind and rain rise from it. Like our bodies, the globe itself is mostly water, the ocean river of time circling, sweeping us towards our beginning and our end.

Exerpt from FOREWORD by J.D. McClatchy who also selected and edited the poems for the book "POEMS OF THE SEA" by Everymans Library.

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Good afternoon shantyfolk! Here is another song for you. 'E La Nave Va' is a song inspired by a film. Made by The Italian director Federico Fellini, the film 'E La Nave Va' or in English 'The Ship Sails On' is a tale of an unusual voyage from Italy to scatter the Ashes of a famous Opera diva. On the way we see how the Italian musical Aristocracy behave. A strangely beautiful film which does not take its self too seriously but has some very moving moments. For instance, a scene where the ship picks up refugees in the middle of the Ocean, and all of passengers sing and dance together. The main character is a filmmaker and he is documenting the journey, the films changes from moments where he is talking straight to the camera to others which are almost as if recorded at the opera on stage with the cast all singing, It feels very ambitious and unique, with some really haunting scenes and music. My song tells the story of the film through my own words, Have a listen at the beginning and end of the song, I have used the sound of the film reel and part of the melody which appears at the beginning of the films main theme by Verdi. Watch this space for a version of this song in Italian, I am translating it at the moment!

'E la nave va' evokes the end of Belle Époque and Belcanto, with a perverse Felliniesque twist'

You can actually watch the whole thing in parts on youtube if you like!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpeAW-7bSV8

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I wrote this song after reading the journal of Frank Worsley, the captain of The Endurance and the navigator of the Shakelton's famous boat journey.

'Among all his achievements as great they were, his one failure was the most glorious'

Never has a story of survival from the icy sea been so remarkable in my opinion. From such disaster came great courage and adventure. So remarkable was the survival of Shakelton's failed Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition mission 1914-17 that it became legendary. 

To cut a long story short , Shakelton and his crew were stranded as their ship was crushed in pack ice, they then travelled in lifeboats until they reached the remote and desolate Elephant Island.

 Shakelton and 5 men then took a lifeboat across the ocean in an attempt to reach a distant South Georgia whaling station, the boat was thrown around like a match in a hurricane constantly on the edge of capsizing, surviving on tea and whale blubber, navigating using the sun and the stars. They luckily beached at the small Elephant Island and then had to trek across a mountain range, eventually they reached a whaling port called Stromness and travelled back to the original camp where the rest of the men were camped underneath the rest of the lifeboats in freezing conditions for almost 6 months. Everyone was saved. 

The British explorer Duncan Carse who travelled much of the same route as Shackleton's party in 1955 said "I do not know how they did it, except that they were men of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration with 50 feet of rope between them and a carpenter's adze".