Richard Thompson: Changing Platform date in Pocklington
POCKLINGTON Arts Centre has confirmed Thompson dates at the double for 2021.
Father Richard, the 71-year-old English folk-rock luminary, songwriter and guitarist, will play next summer’s Platform Festival, run by PAC at The Old Station, on July 21. Son Teddy, the English singer and songwriter long resident in New York City, is booked in for January 22.
This summer’s Covid-curtailed Platform Festival would have opened with comedian Omid Djalili on Thursday, followed by Robert Plant’s Saving Grace on Friday; Shed Seven’s Rick Witter and Paul Banks headlining Super Saturday in acoustic mode and the BBC Big Band next Tuesday.
Fairport Convention alumnus Richard Thompson, who now lives in Montclair, New Jersey, after three decades in Los Angeles, was in the diary to close the festival next Wednesday. Instead, you will have to wait a year now.
Next January, son Teddy will showcase his sixth solo studio album, Heartbreaker Please, released on May 29 on Thirty Tigers.
“Here’s the thing, you don’t love me anymore,” sings Teddy on his frank contribution to the time-honoured break-up record club. “I can tell you’ve got one foot out the door.”
Teddy Thompson: Joining the break-up album club. Picture: Gary Waldman
From the off, Heartbreaker Please wrestles with the breakdown of love with wistful levity and devastating honesty. The songs are drawn from the demise of a real-life relationship, set against the backdrop of New York City, the place Thompson has called home for the better part of two decades, having left London for the USA at 18 and settled in the Big Apple five years later.
“I took a summer vacation that never ended,” he says. “In retrospect, I was trying to reinvent myself. It was easier to leave it all behind, go somewhere new and declare myself an artist. And you can actually re-invent yourself in America; step off the plane, say ‘my name is Teddy Thompson, I’m a musician’.”
In a departure for Teddy, at the [broken] heart of Heartbreaker Please are references to someone else doing the heart-breaking. “I’m usually the one who does that!” he says. “A defence mechanism, of course, but all of a sudden I was the one on the back foot. I was the ‘plus 1’, and I admit, I didn’t deal with it very well. But also, don’t date actors.”
The relationship ended just as Thompson was finishing penning the songs that would form Heartbreaker Please. “I tend to write sad songs, slow songs. It’s what comes naturally,” he says. “So I tried to make an effort here to set some of the misery to a nice beat! Let the listener bop their heads while they weep.”
Teddy, 44-year-old son of Richard and Linda Thompson, will be supported by another artiste with a folk-roots heritage: Roseanne Reid, eldest daughter of The Proclaimers’ Craig Reid.
Tickets for Thompson times two are on sale at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Red sky at night : York Theatre Royal taking part in the #LightItInRed campaign tonight
YORK Theatre Royal will be bathed in “emergency red” tonight as part of the nationwide #LightItInRed campaign.
The 9pm event was announced before the Blues came to the arts industry’s aid in the dead of night last night when the Government suddenly announced a £1.57 billion grant and loan package after the Covid-19 pandemic left theatres and music venues in the dark, both physically and as to when they might re-open both safely and economically viably, stymied by social-distancing measures.
The choice of red has turned out to be prescient, given the most well-worn reaction of the day being that “the devil is in the detail”.
Taken as red: The foyer “mushrooms” pictured on #LightItInRed night at York Theatre Royal
Organised by Clearsound Productions in partnership with the Backstage Theatre Jobs, the #LightItInRed project sees theatres, arts and music venues up and down the country lighting their buildings in red to “raise awareness of the difficulties facing the UK events industry as a result of the Coronavirus crisis”.
Unlike for other industries, no set date is in place for live events, shows, festivals and performances to re-start after the COVID-19 lockdown, against the backdrop of the “creative sector” usually generating around £110 billion annually for the UK economy, based on figures from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Since mid-March 16, however, major events have been prohibited, leaving more than 25,000 businesses without any income. York Theatre Royal, for example, has lost £650,000 in expected income since its closure on March 17.
In a statement today, the Theatre Royal “welcomes, with gratitude, the announcement that the government will support the arts with a £1.57bn funding package and keenly awaits the details of how the funding will work”.
“We currently have no clear time frame as to when our doors will be able to re-open,” says York Theatre Royal executive director Tom Bird
Before the late-night announcement of a deal thrashed out by Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden and the Chancellor, Richmond MP Rishi Sunak, the Theatre Royal’s executive director, Tom Bird, had warned that “the clock is ticking” after Dowden initially announced a road map for theatre’s return “that a child could have drawn up”.
Others had called the five-step plan – short on detail, devoid of dates – a road map to nowhere, a faulty SatNav leading only to a cliff’s edge.
Today Bird called for a “clear time frame” for urgent action beyond the words. “York Theatre Royal makes a huge social and economic impact in our city, and we have been working very hard behind the scenes to ensure we come roaring back with an epic programme for all the community to enjoy,” he said.
Silence is…red: The York Theatre Royal stage and auditorium, as empty as they have been since March 17, on the #LightItInRed campaign night
“We are delighted and grateful that the Government have committed £1.57bn to support the arts sector. However, our theatre remains closed, and we currently have no clear time frame as to when our doors will be able to re-open.
“Just 11 per cent of our annual income comes from state funding, the rest is made up by our audiences: the thousands of people who come to be entertained and inspired by us every year.
“We are pursuing all possible sources of funding, including the Government support, but we ask that you join the many who have already supported us by donating to us.”
Tom continued: “This is a difficult time for our building, but it is an incredibly difficult time for the freelancers who make up such an important part of our theatre family. 70 per cent of people who work in theatre and performance in the UK are freelance, and it’s for this workforce that the impact of the current situation is most acute. Our freelance family are very much in our thoughts and plans for the future.”
On red alert: The Joseph Rowntree Theatre, the York community theatre in Haxby Road, taking part in tonight’s #LightItInRed emergency campaign
The Theatre Royal is asking people to share photos of the red-lit building in St Leonard’s Place on social media, using the hashtag #LightItInRed. Donations to York Theatre Royal can be made online at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Tonight, York Theatre Royal, the National Theatre and the Royal Opera House will be among 564 “iconic landmarks” to be lit up in “emergency red to draw attention to the critical condition of the live events and entertainment industry”, in a campaign inspired by Germany’s #NightofLight protest in June that triggered €1billion in emergency arts funding.
A spokesman for #LightItInRed said: “While we welcome the rescue package from the Government, we await clarification about what this means for freelancers, suppliers and those in the wider theatrical and events industry. We continue to light buildings red this evening to show we are still standing by to reopen.”
Taking part too tonight will be the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, whose chair of the board of trustees, Dan Shrimpton, said: “We want to show our support for this movement. Our theatre is all about involvement and community and because of the generous support given to us by local company Technical Stage Services, we’ve been able to get the ‘Emergency Red’ lighting set up quickly. “
Shortly before the closure of theatres, the JoRo, in Haxby Road, York, launched its Raise The Roof appeal to raise a £90,000 shortfall for roof repairs, with the remaining costs coming from reserves.
“A prolonged closure will result in the theatre needing to dip into those reserves to meet running costs, so the charity will be keeping a watch to see if it will be able to apply for grants or loans from the government’s scheme,” said Dan.
“Asking the essential timeless question about mad love”: Katie Melua’s new single A Love Like That
OVER the weekend, the serious Sunday papers were still carrying adverts for Katie Melua’s 45-date winter tour, taking in York Barbican on November 7.
We are no nearer to knowing when concert halls may re-open, but the Georgian-born Melua has announced the October 16 release of Album No. 8 – yes, her does-what-it-says-on-the-tin eighth studio album.
The accompanying tour was put in place last November in days of innocence before Covid re-wrote the rules of human engagement, but that does not stop the delivery of Melua’s “most cohesive and assured recording to date after a prolonged period of musical rediscovery” at 35.
Her most personal lyrics to date “attempt to reconcile the knotty complexities of real-life love to its fairytale counterpart, as Melua draws from the vernacular of folk songs to evoke a sense of magic-hour wonder mirrored by string arrangements whose depth and movement evoke Charles Stepney’s work with Rotary Connection and Ramsey Lewis”.
On her first studio set since 2016’s In Winter, the full track listing will be: A Love Like That; English Manner; Leaving The Mountain; Joy; Voices In The Night; Maybe I Dreamt It; Heading Home; Your Longing Is Gone; Airtime and Remind Me To Forget.
The artwork for Katie Melua’s….eighth album
Already doing the rounds is first single A Love Like That, a cinematic exploration of love, with lyrics by Melua, production by Leo Abrahams and a cast of musicians that embraces drummer Emre Ramazanoglu, flautist Jack Pinter and the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra.
The video is the first in a series of collaborations between Melua and director Charlie Lightening, who has worked previously with Paul McCartney, Liam Gallagher and Kasabian. Joining Melua on screen is Star Wars, Dunkirk and MotherFatherSon actor Billy Howle.
“I’m really proud of the video,” says Katie. “I loved working with Charlie Lightening. We had lots of talks about how to make it a meaningful work and deal with the new limits on filming. We went with just me and Billy Howle on screen; we tried to show with subtle gestures and nuances the truth of love in its early stages. Hopefully, everyone can enjoy watching it.”
Charlie says: “It was so nice to collaborate with Katie on this project. We talked through the idea at length and honed what we wanted to achieve. It’s always so good when the artist has a strong idea of where the visual needs to go.
Katie Melua and Billy Howle: “Dealing with the new limits on filming” when making the video for A Love Like That
“It meant we could create a character and figure out this narrative journey that you go on throughout the film. The music is so cinematic, so to create this film has been so rewarding. Everything just came together perfectly in the end.”
Katie says of the writing process for A Love Like That: “This song is asking the essential timeless question about mad love: ‘How do you make a love like that last?’ But before it became about love between a couple, it started its life centred on my relationship with work and the stamina required to keep being an artist in the music industry.
“It was only after my co-composer Sam Dixon and I wrapped our session that I retreated to a cottage in the Cotswolds for three weeks to wrestle with the song’s lyrics. A Love Like That continues a narrative that is across the new album. And in the context of love, it’s about having the courage to speak openly and freely.”
Producer Leo Abrahams picks recording the orchestra in Tbilisi with Katie as his highlight. “The arrangement is written to convey the protagonist’s changing state of mind throughout the song: from turbulent to calm, sentimental to defiant,” he says. “Technically, this was probably the simplest arrangement on the record but we had to do almost 20 takes of the tremolando introduction to get the right amount of aggression but with an elegant resolution. The players seemed to enjoy it.”
Melua last played York Barbican in December 2018, when she was joined by the Gori Women’s Choir. Tickets for November 7 are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Hat’s off to a new date: Thea Gilmore looks ahead to her re-arranged Pocklington solo show in October 2021
OXFORD singer-songwriter Thea Gilmore will play Pocklington Arts Centre on October 8 2021 on her first ever completely solo tour.
Held back by 12 months in response to the global pandemic, Thea, 40, now will be touring in September and October next year rather than this autumn.
In 2019, she released her fourth successive chart album, Small World Turning. Songs from all stages of a career stretching beyond two decades will make up her 2021 set, performed on guitar, keyboard and loop station
Since first stepping out aged 18, Gilmore has released18 albums and six EPs; collaborated with “roots royalty” Billy Bragg, Joan Baez and The Waterboys; performed on BBC Radio 2 with Jools Holland’s Rhythm and Blues Orchestra and contributed songs to the soundtrack of the BAFTA-winning film Bait.
Third time luck of the Irish: first April, then September, now next April for Mary Coughlan’s Pocklington gig
“Like so many other shows, sadly Thea’s 2020 performance at PAC has been postponed, but all original tickets have been transferred to the new date and customers are being contacted by PAC staff,” says venue manager James Duffy.
Meanwhile, Irish jazz and blues chanteuse Mary Coughlan is re-arranging her Pocklington gig for a second time. First, she switched from April 21 to September 23 2020; now she has put PAC in her diary for April 23 2021. Again, staff will be in touch with ticket holders.
Coughlan, 64, is sticking to a September release for her new autobiographical album, Life Stories, preceded by a single this month, Two Breaking Into One.
In stitches: York textile artist Cathy Needham working on Rooted
YORK textile artist Cathy Needham will be taking part in Friday’s episode of the BBC One art show Home Is Where The Art Is.
“I’m one of three artists competing to win a commission to make for the home of an art buyer, and you can see how I got on at 3.45pm,” she says. “I’m thrilled to be part of this show promoting art and specifically promoting textile art to a wider audience.”
The format of the BBC show involves three artists, who work in “very different” media, meeting at the buyer’s home and being given a short brief of what is required before looking around the premises to trigger ideas and inspiration for a piece.
Starburst and Flames, unframed wall hangings, by Cathy Needham
They do not meet the buyer at this stage. Two weeks later, the artists pitch their ideas to the buyer and presenter Nick Knowles at the studio. The buyer then chooses two of the artists to make their ideas into pieces. Four weeks later, the two artists return to the studio to reveal their pieces to the buyer, who then picks which one to buy.
Filming also takes place in all three of the artists’ studios, showing examples of their work and processes used, while they discuss their inspirations and passions.
Given that format, Cathy cannot reveal too much for now, but did say: “I applied for the first series, when I was sending stuff here, there and everywhere, as you do as an artist. They did contact me, but then it all went quiet, and I forgot about it! That was probably in 2018.
Orange Petal Power, by Cathy Needham
“Then last year, in late-August, I got a call out of the blue, asking: ‘Do you want to do it this time?’, for the second series. I had to do a little interview on Skype, being asked questions about my work, my passions in life, and if I was going to be OK with being on camera. Luckily, they really liked me!”
Filming took place pre-Coronavirus days last September and October when Cathy competed against a metalwork sculptor and a painter. “The programme makers wanted to wrack up the tension as the filming for our episode progressed, but we all got on very well, all wanting each other to do the best we could, so it was all very amiable,” she says.
“But having said that, it did get very tense at times, when each making our pitch for what piece we would make, so there was tension within me to come up with the best pitch and the best work.”
Rooted, by Cathy Needham
On the BBC series, Cathy will be hoping to catch the commissioner’s eye with her textile skills in 2D framed and unframed wall hangings and 3D sculptural pieces. “Like a lot of artists, most of my work is inspired by nature and the natural form,” she says. “Colour is my thing: I love colour and texture, and these days my style tends to be abstract, stylised and bold.”
Looking ahead, amid the uncertainty that persists under the dark clouds of the Covid-19 pandemic, Cathy is still working towards a series of upcoming exhibitions. “I’m due to do a joint exhibition with ceramicist Kate Buckley at the Angel On The Green, in Bishopthorpe Road, in September, but that may be put back,” she says.
“Ten of us in the York Textile Group have a show coming up in the York Cemetery Chapel in November, and Diverse Threads, who do shows around Yorkshire, have an exhibition lined up for Nunnington Hall in November and December.”
Watch this space for updates on those shows…and watch Cathy on BBC One on Friday.
Cathy Needham with two of her framed works at the York Marriot Hotel last September
Did you know?
CATHY Needham had a career in education and interpretation at the Science Museum, followed by teaching and performing Egyptian dance.
A year living in Peru re-ignited her love of textiles, prompting her to undertake a City & Guilds creative textile course, completed in 2012.
Since then, Cathy has been active in the York art scene, exhibiting widely around Yorkshire; making commissions; taking part in York Open Studios in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2019 and joining the York Textile Group. Last year, she became a member of the York Art Workers Association, participating in YAWA’s latest exhibition at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York.
Her textile work uses techniques of wet felting, tapestry weaving and fabric applique, often combined with rich hand embellishment. Creating 2-D framed and unframed wall hangings and 3-D sculptural pieces, Cathy’s style is vibrant and bold, employing plenty of texture and detail on closer inspection.
Once Seen Theatre members at Theatre@41 Monkgate, York
THEATRE @41, Monkgate, York, is honouring the memory of Sandra Gilpin by re-naming its main rehearsal space after the late York philanthropist.
Room One will become The Gilpin Room in an homage to Sandra, whose life was dedicated to supporting and working with adults with learning or physical challenges.
Sandra, who died in April 2019, is remembered with great affection by Once Seen Theatre, a fully accessible theatre company, based at Theatre@41, that evolved from Sandra’s original project, York People First.
Carole and David Metcalf, who now run the company, praised Sandra as an inspirational woman who dedicated her whole career to supporting and working for others.
“We first met Sandra ten years ago and we have seen first hand what a wonderful person she was,” says Carole. “Sandra was passionate about making changes to the social system to make sure everyone was treated equally.
“As a disabled person, I feel it’s imperative to make theatre a place inclusive of people with learning and physical disabilities,” says comedian and Theatre@41 patron Rosie Jones
“All Once Seen members think about her with affection and we’re determined to keep going as a company in her memory. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we can get back into the theatre. We look forward to working in The Gilpin Room: a very special place named after a very special woman.”
This will be the third name for this rehearsal and performance space that started life as the Infants Room when the building was used as a Sunday school.
Once Seen is one of three “associate companies” housed at the Monkgate theatre, along with Nik Briggs’s York Stage School and Robert Readman’s Pick Me Up Theatre. They help Theatre@41 to further its charitable objectives in education and accessibility in the arts.
Comedian, actress and scriptwriter Rosie Jones, settling into her new role as a Theatre@41 patron, is a firm believer in the objectives that Sandra heralded. “My main passion in life is to make media, and the arts in general, a place that is both accessible and representative of our brilliantly diverse society,” says the disability in the arts campaigner, who has cerebral palsy.
“As a disabled person, I feel it’s imperative to make theatre a place which is inclusive of people with learning and physical disabilities. Theare@41 does just that.”
Jade Montserrat in a still from her Covid-19 lockdown film Chronicle ia. Picture: Jade Montserrat/Webb-Ellis
JADE Montserrat’s lockdown film, Chronicle ia, goes online from July 7 as the latest digital commission for Scarborough Museums Trust.
“When 60,000 people are dead and a disproportionate amount are disabled, elderly and black and brown people, that’s a eugenic project,” says Montserrat in her 13-minute film as she considers the impact of lockdown.
Filming during a period of physical and “social” distancing caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, she chronicles the process of making and the new ways of being that encourage mutual support and acts of care as Montserrat searches for a methodology to apply Eve Sedgwick’s theory of “reparative reading in a visual form”. In a nutshell, that means envisioning the interconnectivity of art practice, public space, responsibility and care.
Working with art film-makers Webb-Ellis, Montserrat interprets reparative reading as a “process of decoding, describing and discussing imagery, visual and human relationships, to interrogate and challenge political structures and frameworks”.
“With a title that plays with processes of recording and documentation, Chronicle ia explores the personal and inter-personal impacts of lockdown through the documentation of a collaborative making process, emphasising new ways of co-existing that are based on support,” explains Montserrat, whose films reveals the process of making through making, using the online platform Zoom for a series of digital conversations.
As Montserrat says in the film, in response to the Corona crisis: “When 60,000 people are dead and a disproportionate amount are disabled, elderly and black and brown people, that’s a eugenic project…When is it that we rebel? When is it that we say ‘No’?”
Here’s one she made earlier: Jade Montserrat, working on her The Last Place They Thought Of installation, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. Picture: Constance Mensh
Within the film are references to Scarborough Museums Trust’s collection of photographs by James Harrison, taken during numerous hunting trips in Africa and India between 1892 and 1910, in particular Harrison’s “debasing images of atrocities towards local peoples and the slayed bodies of innumerable animals”.
As Montserrat prepared to research this collection of photographs, diaries and taxidermy animals, she asked British/Canadian filmmakers Caitlin Webb-Ellis and Andrew Webb-Ellis to explore this with her to sustain her through the trauma of engaging with the material as an act of mutual care.
“Reflecting on the geographic, experiential, cultural and social spaces inhabited by the artists – filming is located in their respective isolations within Scarborough Borough – the film presents a discussion aiming to define global imaginaries that traverse histories, nations, ideologies and time to help us conceive a new world that is built on principles of equality, support and social justice,” says Scarborough Museums Trust.
“The film’s imagery demonstrates glitches in communication, revealing how reparative reading involves a gradual – and sometimes incomplete – piecing together of practices and subjective viewpoints, but that, ultimately and beautifully, a common goal can be achieved.”
As Scarborough Museums Trust continues to improve access to its online content, Chronicle ia includes audio descriptions embedded in the film as part of the creative process, along with subtitles. Please note, the film contains photographic documentation of colonial atrocities and explicit images of violence and nudity. Consequently, the trust strongly recommends viewing for adults only, or those aged 12 and over with parental or guardian supervision.
Montserrat’s film can be seen on the trust’s YouTube channel, www.bit.ly/YouTubeSMT, from Tuesday, July 7.Chronicle ia is one of a series of new digital commissions from Scarborough Museums Trust as part of its response to the pandemic crisis. The trust has asked artists Kirsty Harris, Jane Poulton, Wanja Kimani, Feral Practice, Jade Montserrat, Lucy Carruthers and Estabrak to create digital artworks for release online across social media platforms throughout the summer.
The man who fell to Earthling: Steve Evans in one of his many David Bowie guises in The Bowie Collective, replicating the Earthling album cover
CH-CH-CHANGES. The Bowie Collective tribute show at York Barbican on August 21 this summer is being re-scheduled for May 20 2021 in yet another Covid-enforced ch-ch-change.
“All tickets remain valid for the new date,” says the Barbican. “Please get in touch with your point of purchase if you have any questions.”
Fronted by Steve Evans, The Bowie Collective “delivers a stunning and ambitious two-hour multi-media show worthy of the man himself. The mission is simple: To evoke the feeling of being at a Bowie gig, re-create the amazing studio recordings on the live stage and create a unique and intoxicating mix of dance and visuals, taking you on a sensory rollercoaster ride into the mind of the Rock’n’Roll Alien.”
Visuals, choreography, costumes, design, even holograms, go into the “first serious attempt to respectfully curate Bowie’s legacy”. Tickets are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
“BUMPED” into Britain’s second most performed living playwright, John Godber, as our paths crossed while stretching a leg at Pocklington Canal this afternoon.
“Must be plenty of material for a play about Covid-19, John?”, I mused.
The loneliness of the socially distanced singer: Countertenor Iestyn Davies will have only lutenist Elizabeth Kenny for company, rather than the Dunedin Consort, at his York Early Music Festival concert
YORK countertenor Iestyn Davies should have been performing Bach: Countertenor Arias with Scottish instrumentalists the Dunedin Consort next Wednesday at the 2020 York Early Music Festival.
Instead, in a revised, streamlined, online version of the event now running from July 9 to 11, Iestyn switches from the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall to the National Centre for Early Music for a socially distanced concert with lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, streamed from an otherwise empty St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, at 7.30pm next Thursday. Empty save for technical manager Ben Pugh recording the performance from across the floor.
“When Delma [festival administrative director Dr Delma Tomlin] got in touch, initially she wondered, ‘Could you still do the concert with the Dunedin?’, but they’re based in Scotland and we couldn’t have the whole consort down here under lockdown rules, so we decided that I’d rather re-schedule that concert,” says Iestyn.
“But I said, ‘look, I’m already doing a concert with Liz at Wigmore Hall, we could do one at the NCEM too, where I could do the readings as well as sing and we can have the building to ourselves for the day’.”
Consequently, Davies and Kenny, a former artistic adviser to the York Early Music Festival and frequent performer at the NCEM, will present A Delightful Thing, Music and Readings from a Melancholy Man, wherein the music of Elizabethan lutenist John Dowland will be complemented by Davies’s renditions and readings of poetry by Robert Burton, Michael Drayton, Rose Tremain, Leo Tolstoy and Dowland himself. Kenny will play theorbo.
“Dowland is known for his music of extraordinary misery but utter beauty,” says Delma Tomlin. “He knew that in love, the only thing sweeter than happiness was sorrow. Few living interpreters understand his music more profoundly than Iestyn, who has devised this evening of poetry, music and drama for voice and lute to explore a composer for whom a single teardrop can hold a universe of emotion.”
Davies and Kenny’s Wigmore Hall concert was broadcast live from London on BBC Radio 3 on June 22, drawing 750,000 listeners to their 1pm performance of works by Purcell, Dowland, Campion, Johnson, Mozart and Schubert.
Lutenist Elizabeth Kenny: Iestyn Davies’s socially distanced accompanist on theorbo for A Delightful Thing
“Phew, it’s over,” Tweeted Iestyn immediately after the Lunchtime Concert, one of a series of 20 recitals presented in the stillness of a Wigmore Hall devoid of an audience every weekday in June as part of BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine initiative.
“It was an absolute joy,” says Iestyn, of his first concert performance since performing to a packed Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center in New York City on March 7.
“But what was strange was that it felt like taking an exam. We did the rehearsal in the hall the day before, and you think, ‘it’s not going to change that much’, but Martin [presenter Martin Handley] was seated at a desk like an examiner, and there was just the hush of an audience listening on their radios, where normally there’s applause.
“The great thing about live music is that it’s ephemeral, you perform, then it’s over, and people remember it differently afterwards even though they were together. But this was more of an exam experience, where you have to wait for your results, and the only way you can tell how you did is in the reviews…though two people I know in York said straightaway they enjoyed it!”
Marking his 40th birthday on September 16 last year, Iestyn was only one concert into a four-concert residency at Wigmore Hall when Covid-19 intervened, but he was delighted to take up the invitation to partake in the season of BBC Radio 3 recitals, each featuring a singer and a musician, all from Britain.
“My regular recital partner, [French lutenist] Thomas Dunford, lives in Paris, so that ruled him out, but Liz and I have performed regularly together before, and she’s one of those wonderful multi-strings-to-her-bow musicians, what with her being director of performance at the University of Oxford and professor of Lute at the Royal Academy of Music,” says Iestyn.
“I learnt that it’s good to give your voice a rest for three months,” says countertenor Iestyn Davies
New York in March, then silence, before the Davies-Kenny concerts this summer. “What’s been wonderful in lockdown has been there’s been no fear of missing out,” says Iestyn. “I also learnt that it’s good to give your voice a rest for three months.”
Rested…and now that pure, pure voice is in fine working order again: “Like getting back on a bike, or going back to the gym, it all starts to flow, though they say it’s one day’s work for every week you have off, but generally I try to pace things out anyway,’” says Iestyn. “When you’re busy with work, you press ‘Start’ and you know how to run the engine.”
Before the Wigmore Hall concert, he was able to “get back into the swing of singing” when recording 20 Schubert songs over four of five days in Suffolk, “singing carefully” five to six hours a day.
Iestyn may be happy to be performing once more, but he is perturbed by the Covid cloud hanging heavily over the performing arts world, the alarm bell clanging ever louder with the rise of the Let The Music Play campaign amid the calls for urgent financial support for venues and artists alike.
“No-one chose this situation, so it shouldn’t be about a popular vote, but Boris Johnson and [Culture Secretary] Oliver Dowden are playing to the gallery, the Prime Minister trying to win points by saying you can go to the pub,” says Iestyn.
“What they’ve done to the arts is devolve responsibility both financially and philosophically, and of course it doesn’t help that some people think of the arts the way they do.”
Before it is too late, you can play your part in supporting the arts by buying tickets for the online York Early Music Festival at tickets.ncem.co.uk and boxoffice@ncem.co.uk, with a festival package at £30, individual concert tickets at £10 each and illustrated talks at £3.50 each. Access to the festival events is via ncem.co.uk, where full details of the July 9 to 11 programme can be found too.
