5pm and we are running the piece for the 1st time. Salmon Band, choir, the six channel electronic score and 2 x 48 minute projections. On stage at 7.30pm. Such a collaboration. It’s sounding incredible.

The choir were brilliant, Harrington is putting final tweaks to map/score for program notes and her 2 x 48 min films are ready to go. Finally the pair are allowed a full and concentrated day onboard ~Flow. Catching high tide, they also get the wheel turning, making an audio nipple of a central burble, with delicate asymmetrical watery additions beneath. Visitors and stewards alike are amazed and calmed at what they see on deck is nothing to do with what they can hear below.

The Tyne is sublime. Astonishingly powerful at high tide when the current slides huge volumes of water underneath us on ~Flow silently. Tonight we are rehearsing the choir. Rather than the 12 children intended, it’s eight individual singers gathered fast to replace the kids sucked away by summer holidays and life outside school organisation.  Adults singing the childrens lyrics could be brilliant.

Some of the Salmon Band are in their first rehearsal. Matthews’ scores and recordings have been shared for some days now so ideas can burst collectively. It’s exciting. Many moments, eg. Davies harp solo version of fish number/river flow Summer melody, Harrington(cornet) and Christo(double kazoo)’s rampaging over Riding Mill summer/autumn summit. With Matthews’ hearing restored 30 minutes beforehand  it’s a great warm up for Saturday.

Despite the sun it’s cold on board ~Flow. Do they feel river sick floating above this continuous change? 9am, surface mill pond, hot sun, 10.30am sudden breeze, temperature feels as it drops 10C, 10.38am, just as mysteriously wind stops and again hot. The river is quiet underneath. Still, waiting to turn. They are amazed how different the instruments sound today. The journalist is happy to sit on land with them to talk. Matthews has been deaf in one ear for 4 days and its now more than bothersome.

Matthews+Harrington have begin a residency onboard ~Flow. An exquisitely made wooden instrument that floats on the Tyne making music from the rivers tidal patterns. Bellows pump, probes dip in and out of vessels of river water whose saline and therefore electrolytic content changes with the tide, so changing notes; turbidity measurements motions are optimally amplified and all the time, she creaks and groans as an ancient sailing ship in the times of Moby Dick. Needing to contextualise this laboratory within the Tyne as a whole, they make a break up river to Wark.  Within 3 mins, they’re rewarded. There lying on the grass is their first witnessed wild salmon glinting in the grass.

Prudghor, aka. Jon Baker is in the house to work on his three solos for Saturday’s show. Thrilling especially to finally hear the map of the river Tyne as Prudghor’s song. It’s  going to work

Harrington  has just sent this in from the Tyne. She is out there grabbing some sunny underwater footage. So far, they’ve had little chance to grab visual details of the water in summer. Preparations for showing on the 4th at Bridges Festival are hotting up.

This is a the river Tyne from Tynemouth to Ryton. It’s the score for the first eleven minutes of the piece, plus an additional 3minutes to arrive from Greenland. It’s also the opening bass aria for Prudghor, ancient salmon god created together through a typo and a weeping lion at Prudhoe workshop, November 2011. On drawing out the map of the entire river however, Matthews realises, of course, that the entire river is Prudghor’s song. That that is why he sends the salmon. To sing his song.

Workshopped Harrington and Matthews departing West Blaydon Primary school, Gateshead  yesterday 3.30pm. In fact the sky was dark green and 3 mins after this moment, (by Susie), down came the heaviest and most continuous deluge of rain seen for 11.3 years. Matthews back south in the early hours of this morning, now they are preparing for the Bridges Festival, August 4th, when a mid stage showing of the ‘Where are the wild ones?’ project to date will be performed. One major development. The final work, planned to premiere 2013, is no longer being called an opera but a sonic story. Watch this space.