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 Phillip Houghton