Upcoming performances
April 27 Poetica, Bangor
July 28th St Jullitas Church, North Wales
Four star review from the Standard 25/2/2011
Good to find the words jazz and poetry back on the same bill, a thing seldom seen since novelist Jack Kerouac and beat-poet Allen Ginsberg outraged redneck America 50-odd years ago. Perhaps the recent movie about the obscenity trial of Ginsberg's epochal poem Howl - "I saw the finest minds of my generation destroyed by madness/starving, hysterical, naked" - revived promoter Ross Dines's interest in the spoken word.
For whatever reason, alto-saxophone wizard Peter King shared Friday's fun with Lorraine Mariner, Corrie Etter, Ross Sutherland and Richard Douglas Pennant, four bold bards with the literary equivalent of a natural sense of rhythm. "This next poem," Sutherland confided, "was written by a computer program. If you don't like it, you must be a Luddite." "The velvet silence of an instrument case" illuminated Pennant's Poem in the Key of O, while Etter, American winner of the 2010 London Festival Fringe's New Poetry award, revisited the blues of unrequited love. Mariner, their wittiest wordsmith, reprimanded My Heart, The Slob: "Now is the time to get yourself free/but it just wants to stay on the sofa with me".
Cautiously, the musicians and poets kept apart until John Turville, warmed up by impassioned versions of Speak Low, Footprints and Impressions with King, drummer Stephen Keogh and bassist Mike Coney, volunteered some atmospheric chords. Full credit to him, to the ever-masterly King, whose startling new autobiography, Flying High, exposes the perils of a jazz life, and to Dines, for daring to put poets back on the bandstand.
Selected previous performances
(in chronological order from debut in 2004)
Old Stones New Tales – Book Launch 2 & 3 December 2004
Music for clarinet quintet was composed by Roland Melia and Andreas Moustoukis.
Old Stones New Tales Tour – 2006 / 07
Venues including:
Cambridge Summer Music Festival
British Embassy, The Hague
Yeats International Poetry Festival, Sligo, Ireland
Global Music Foundation Jazz Seminar, Certaldo
Alabaster Jar Tour – 2008
Venues including:
Oriental Art Centre, Shanghai, China
Pizza on the Park , London
Global Music Foundation Jazz Seminars in Certaldo, Italy and Saarwellingen, Germany
Tours – 2009/2010/2011
Venues including:
DeMontfort Hall, Leicester
Troubadour Club, London
Grand Pavillion, Porthcawl
Ucheldre Arts Centre
Dylan Thomas Centre
Aberystwyth Arts Centre
Queen’s Hall , Narberth
Pizza Express, London
Oriental Arts Centre, Shanghai
Teatre La Massa, Villesar , Catalonia
2010 Cork Jazz Festival Poetry Stage
Poets performed with include:
Stuart Silver, Cahal Dallat, Anne-Marie Fyfe, Paul Henry, Ruth Padel, Andrew Motion, John Barnie,
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Mike Jenkins, Richard Margraff Turley, Nigel Jenkins, Martin Daws, Robert Minhinnick, Ross Sutherland, Lorraine Marriner, Carrie Etter, Hannah Silva, Emma McGordon, Sophie McKeand, Aiofe Mannix and Christopher Simpson.
Musicians performed with include:
Tina May, jazz vocalist
Frank Harrison Jazz Trio
Peter King Jazz Quartet
Deborah Brown Jazz Quartet
Garrison Fewell Jazz Quartet
Barry Green and Huw Warren piano
Leicester Symphony Orchestra, with singers Katerina Mina, James Edwards and pianist Clare Hammond
Ross Daly and Kelly Thoma Cretan Lyre
Matthew Barley cello, Abdullah Chhadeh Qaanun, Darragh Morgan violin and Matthew Jones viola
Brodsky, Allegri and Danel String Quartets
