October songs
Oct. 27th, 2019 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe spent last weekend at the Hartlepool Folk Festival, driving down in the morning and back late at night: it's a half hour drive, so that worked well. Events are shared between two venues: evening concerts in the Borough Hall on the Headland (currently heavily scaffolded, but no doubt it will be splendid when it's finished), while the daytime festival fills the National Museum of the Royal Navy:
HMS Tricomalee is a genuine early nineteenth century frigate, and the dock itself is also original, but the surrounding buildings are pastiche, a perfect little toytown port, with plenty of rooms for concerts and sessions, and a coffee shop in the corner.
If I tried to talk about everything we heard, I'd be here for another week, and I don't need another post in perpetual progress. Nor was there one great new discovery that I'd want to rave about to the exclusion of all else. The pleasantest surprise was 'East': things have come to a pretty pass when Martin and Eliza Carthy are a pleasant surprise, but this was a commissioned project, and I was quite prepared for the sort of collaboration that leaves me wishing everybody else would go away, and we could just listen to Martin Carthy. 'East' celebrates music from the East of England, and was commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival for performance at Norwich Cathedral. The show opens with Eliza Carthy entering from the rear of the hall singing unaccompanied The snows they melt the soonest, an unexpected voice from behind the audience which must have been spine-tingling in the cathedral: it was pretty impressive in the Hall. (This was the second time in the weekend I was impressed by Eliza Carthy: her song in Your Affectionate Son, smoky voice and brass band accompaniment, made me think what a loss she was to the Music Hall). 'East' also made good use of Sheema Mukherjee's sitar, and featured Ewan Wardrop clog dancing, reading Marvell's To His Coy Mistress and performing a solo rapper dance (omitting, for obvious reasons, the final summersault). This was a two-hour show cut down to fit the Festival's one-hour slot, and I could have wished they'd been given longer (it would be unkind to nominate who could have been dropped to make room, but I do have a candidate).
Things I particularly enjoyed, without it coming as a surprise, included the opening concert, Your Affectionate Son, a specially commissioned piece based on the recently discovered letters home from the Great War of Hartlepool man Illingworth George Gower, with songs by Robb Johnson, poems by John Hegley, performed by various singers and the Durham Miners' Association brass band. Also some morris, (for which there is a sound justification, though it was not a local tradition). (Associated pleasures were Robb Johnson's solo show the morning after, and a 'making of' panel about how the show was put together.)
Sunday's highlight was The Bagpuss Show:
with, left to right, Gabriel the Toad (John Faulkner), Madeleine the rag doll (Sandra Kerr), Professor Yaffle (James Fagan) and Emily (Nancy Kerr) - look! Emily's got her dancing shoes on:
Also starring the audience, many of us wearing paper mouse headdresses, singing the cleaning-and-mending song of the mice (as a round) and joining in to "Heave! Heeeave!" when the mouse organ had to be activated. (If this makes no sense to you, or even if it does, YouTube has many episodes of Bagpuss). (An associated pleasure here was that after a break, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan returned for a grown-up session, and were as good as they reliably are).
Pete Coe, Brian Peters and Laura Smyth's The Road to Peterloo, telling the story through contemporary ballads, was good, and would have been better if the performers had been visible above the packed audience. Grace Petrie and Chris Wood are two performers I'd heard good things about, and been interested to hear for myself, and now I have, so that's good. We took shelter from the rain at one point and found ourselves listening to youth band Cream Tees, which was fun. I was sorry not to see more of the morris, especially Boggart's Breakfast. We kept missing the Wilsons, though we caught up with them at the closing session, and we did hear Mike Wilson launching his solo album -
- which reminds me: I'll spare you the rant, and just just say how good it was to hear performers singing songs by other songwriters. I was surprised (and delighted) to hear Mike Wilson singing Robin Williamson (hence the title of this post); equally unexpected, Chris Wood singing Jake Thackray; and one way and another, people kept on singing Robb Johnson! This is my kind of festival.
HMS Tricomalee is a genuine early nineteenth century frigate, and the dock itself is also original, but the surrounding buildings are pastiche, a perfect little toytown port, with plenty of rooms for concerts and sessions, and a coffee shop in the corner.
If I tried to talk about everything we heard, I'd be here for another week, and I don't need another post in perpetual progress. Nor was there one great new discovery that I'd want to rave about to the exclusion of all else. The pleasantest surprise was 'East': things have come to a pretty pass when Martin and Eliza Carthy are a pleasant surprise, but this was a commissioned project, and I was quite prepared for the sort of collaboration that leaves me wishing everybody else would go away, and we could just listen to Martin Carthy. 'East' celebrates music from the East of England, and was commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival for performance at Norwich Cathedral. The show opens with Eliza Carthy entering from the rear of the hall singing unaccompanied The snows they melt the soonest, an unexpected voice from behind the audience which must have been spine-tingling in the cathedral: it was pretty impressive in the Hall. (This was the second time in the weekend I was impressed by Eliza Carthy: her song in Your Affectionate Son, smoky voice and brass band accompaniment, made me think what a loss she was to the Music Hall). 'East' also made good use of Sheema Mukherjee's sitar, and featured Ewan Wardrop clog dancing, reading Marvell's To His Coy Mistress and performing a solo rapper dance (omitting, for obvious reasons, the final summersault). This was a two-hour show cut down to fit the Festival's one-hour slot, and I could have wished they'd been given longer (it would be unkind to nominate who could have been dropped to make room, but I do have a candidate).
Things I particularly enjoyed, without it coming as a surprise, included the opening concert, Your Affectionate Son, a specially commissioned piece based on the recently discovered letters home from the Great War of Hartlepool man Illingworth George Gower, with songs by Robb Johnson, poems by John Hegley, performed by various singers and the Durham Miners' Association brass band. Also some morris, (for which there is a sound justification, though it was not a local tradition). (Associated pleasures were Robb Johnson's solo show the morning after, and a 'making of' panel about how the show was put together.)
Sunday's highlight was The Bagpuss Show:
with, left to right, Gabriel the Toad (John Faulkner), Madeleine the rag doll (Sandra Kerr), Professor Yaffle (James Fagan) and Emily (Nancy Kerr) - look! Emily's got her dancing shoes on:
Also starring the audience, many of us wearing paper mouse headdresses, singing the cleaning-and-mending song of the mice (as a round) and joining in to "Heave! Heeeave!" when the mouse organ had to be activated. (If this makes no sense to you, or even if it does, YouTube has many episodes of Bagpuss). (An associated pleasure here was that after a break, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan returned for a grown-up session, and were as good as they reliably are).
Pete Coe, Brian Peters and Laura Smyth's The Road to Peterloo, telling the story through contemporary ballads, was good, and would have been better if the performers had been visible above the packed audience. Grace Petrie and Chris Wood are two performers I'd heard good things about, and been interested to hear for myself, and now I have, so that's good. We took shelter from the rain at one point and found ourselves listening to youth band Cream Tees, which was fun. I was sorry not to see more of the morris, especially Boggart's Breakfast. We kept missing the Wilsons, though we caught up with them at the closing session, and we did hear Mike Wilson launching his solo album -
- which reminds me: I'll spare you the rant, and just just say how good it was to hear performers singing songs by other songwriters. I was surprised (and delighted) to hear Mike Wilson singing Robin Williamson (hence the title of this post); equally unexpected, Chris Wood singing Jake Thackray; and one way and another, people kept on singing Robb Johnson! This is my kind of festival.
