performingartsincornwall

This year's St Endellion Festival - the 59th Summer event welcomes back for its opera performance Sir John Tomlinson, who memorably generously stepped in for an ailing Robert Hayward  in the role of Wotan Walkure in 2011 and last year appeared in the title role of Boris Godunov.  This year  with Artistic Director  Mark Padmore, and festival stalwarts  baritone Roderick Williams and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth they perform Benjamin Britten's  great seaborne opera "Billy Budd" next Wednesday 2nd August  and Friday 4th August. I attended the imaginative concert of words and music to celebrate Charles Causley's birth centenary. Undoubtedly Cornwall's premier poet, who lived much of his life in Launceston and, a private man, eschewed the limelight....though Ted Hughes his friend always averred he should have been Poet Laureate.   Causley was very fond of the narrative ballad as a form  but his poetry does not generally lend itself to song...

The concert opened with the empty stage filling up one by one with the pianist Robert Mitchell arriving first and at the Steinway (he also plays a lovely sounding Hammond organ) kicks out the first theme, followed by bassist Vidal Montgomery,  drummer Robert Fordjour (whose effortless rhythmic innovation and subtle syncopated invention throughout the gig was a sheer delight and gave the whole team a rock solid structure from which Courtney is free to  improvise).   All the guys are black (am i allowed to say this)  it looks good  and while Montgomery is from Tottenham and Fordjour from Croydon and Mitchell from Ilford, Courtney reveals he shares a North West London upbringing with me! This comes up when he dedicates a piece which he performs on the bass flute (a unusual choice for a jazz musician but wow what a lovely bassy sort of vibe and Courtney brings his very percussive finger technique to this instrument too) call "Change has gotta come" not really refere...

@SouthBankCentre @PRSforMusic @BBCRadio 3 Free tickets to a showcase of "a snapshot of what is going on in contemporary music" at the South Bank Centre was too good a offer to miss. I spent a happy summer's day 10th July 2017 on the South Bank listening to the third and last day of a weekend of contemporary music programmed by South Bank's music director Gillian Moore and featuring a broad range of music and new compositions by Simon Holt, Mark Simpson, Jennifer Walshe, Brian Irvine and Mica Levi First session of #NMB17  was a Jazz composition workshop led by Peter Edwards (a musician unknown to me but a bandleader, composer and arranger whose work had been commissioned by Turner Sims).   He had an admirably pragmatic approach to explaining how he went about creating music. Peter sat at the electronic keyboard with laptop perched on it, a whiteboard to the side and a projection screen over his shoulder. The workshop highlighted a critical proble...