Guy Gavriel Kay reads Under Heaven

Listen to a passage from Under Heaven read by Guy Gavriel Kay.

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Martin Springett

The Art of Under Heaven

Martin Springett and Guy Kay met in the 1980s when Springett was commissioned to do the covers for Kay's first novels and they have been friends since that time. They continue to also work together: Martin did the map for Under Heaven.

Martin Springett Art

A gifted musician and artist, Springett has found inspiration in Kay's work through the years, and Under Heaven is no exception. Some of his work is shown here, with permission. The poster and the colour map and Guy Gavriel Kay-inspired music are all available, signed, at his own website.

The Music of Under Heaven

The music that I came up with for Under Heaven was created in a delicious white heat of inspiration while I was working on the map and reading the novel. This was an entirely spontaneous reaction to the characters and their various dramas, and that extraordinary feeling of standing solitary beneath a wide open sky, Under Heaven in fact.

I recorded this at home on my iMac using Garageband, which is an amazing piece of software once you get the hang of it. My good friend Allysa Wright played cello, beautifully, as she did on "Dianora". We recorded her in the front room next to a slightly sagging Christmas tree. There wasn't enough room for her to swing the bow in my crowded studio, also room size and surfaces makes a difference to the recorded sound, so the bigger living room was perfect for Alyssa's cello sound. My daughter Miriam played flutes, although we had to deal with her cocker spaniel Orla while she was recording. Orla likes to "sing" along, so we had to record several times until Orla had decided that she had done her bit and ambled off to chew her favorite orange ball. The bass part was flown in all the way from New Zealand! My old friend Dr. Rob Burns played this. He is an academic teaching Rock music and performance, a Senior Lecturer in the department of music and theatre studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin N Z. I hadn't heard from Rob for many years, and he amazed me by telling me that he had played on all the music for the Blackadder TV series.

Thanks again to Guy for the wonderful inspiration here. As he wrote on the title page of Tigana some years ago for me, "...another place to go."

UNDER HEAVEN. Written, recorded and mixed by Martin Springett.

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Cello / Allysa Wright
Flutes / Miriam Springett
Basses / Dr. Robert Burns
Acoustic / Electric Guitars / Martin Springett

Liu Fang

Virtuoso of Chinese Pipa Music and Guzheng

The music of the pipa is powerfully associated with Tang Dynasty China, and Under Heaven makes use of this in many different ways. During his research for the book, Guy Kay came across the pipa music of the brilliant Liu Fang, and they corresponded on issues of technique and transitions in the use of the instrument through time. She has generously given permission for us to showcase some of her playing on this site.