Mēla Guitar Quartet perform Black Opal by Phillip Houghton

Mela Guitar Quartet perform Black Opal from Phillip Houghton’s work ’Opals’ at Founders Hall in London. Filmed by Sean Boothe and recorded by Harry Tarlton 2016. “The black opal is a stone of fantastic colour. Against a dark matrix, electric purples, blues and greens predominate, refract and collide in a fiery rainbow of splinters of brilliant light. Found in black opal is the ’harlequin checkerboard’ which describes block patterns of colour which I “heard“ as block patterns of sound. This led me to mark on the score Black Opal ’like a big Kalimba’.“ - Phillip Houghton