Note by Mike Batt

A fantasy musical and theatrical treatment of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem of the same name, - this project tells the story of a group of characters, all with names beginning with "B", for no obvious reason - who go off in search of the Snark - whatever that is. It is a different thing to each character. The Bellman leads the way, but is his confident, "I see-no-danger-therefore-there-is-no -danger" approach the right one? The Baker, whose Uncle once told him that "If your Snark be a boojum, you vanish away', - thinks not. But perhaps it is this careful and fearful attitude that leads the Baker to find what he fears most - a boojum!

I wrote new songs, using my own lyrics throughout, but quoted Carroll in full, as spoken narration. The first album contained only about half the score - being the complete concert piece at the time of release. It was years later that I completed it for the stage, and we are yet to record the full score as a record.

An equally important (to me) part of the artistic core of my Snark piece is the design, which I created as I went along writing the piece, producing hundreds of sketches to enable me to realise it in my specialist medium of projection design. The above pic is a very early one that I put together using my unique system of slide projectors- effectively to create stage scenery: I draw the pictures of, say the moon, then the mountain, etc, colour them and then photograph them onto separate transparencies which we then project onto a screen, programming in animation movements by firing off lots of different stills projectors. Many people have described these as computer graphics, but they are in fact "paintings" made up of my own artwork (done by hand) and then the only "computerised" element is the combination of them by computerising the projectors to flash and fade on and off..

Above are Philip Quast, as the Bellman in the West End (London) production at the Prince Edward Theatre,October 1991 - with Veronica Hart as his friend, the Beaver. Philip's costume is very much designed to look like the front cover painting by Patrick Woodroffe (see below).

The next shot is the enigmatic SNARK ALBUM COVER Painting by the brilliant Patrick Woodroffe...

My Snark piece has had many manifestations, begining with a concert at the Barbican (1994)- (attended in the audience by ABBA, who got from it the idea of doing their CHESS concert tour, and Cameron Mackintosh, who was an early SNARK fan but who then got very tied up with Les Mis, and so had his hands a bit full when it came to our finding a willing producer). We then did it as a costumed concert at the Albert Hall, which was a right laugh. Celebs volunteered to sell programmes (it was all for the ROYAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND) so we had Torvill and Dean and loads of other famous people selling programmes. Billy Connolly played the Bellman, John Hurt narrated, Julian Lennon was the Baker, Roger Daltrey the Barrister, Deniece Williams the Beaver, Captain Sensible was the Billiard Marker, Midge Ure played Guitar, Justin Hayward was the Butcher. I conducted and sang "Children Of The Sky". We went on to do two successful concert versions in Australia before going for the big one and mounting it (excuse the expression) in the West End.