Pete Oxley and Nick Meier of the Oxley-Meier Guitar Project
THE Oxley-Meier Guitar Project play the National Centre for Early Music, York, on May 18 in the wake of releasing new album Mercurial Indigo on the MGP label today.
In the line-up are Pete Oxley and Nick Meier, guitars, Raph Mizraki, bass and percussion, and Paul Cavaciuti, drums, who specialise in melodically and texturally driven contemporary jazz.
Oxley-Meier bring ten differing guitars to each concert, including fretless nylon, acoustic and electric 12-strings, sitar-guitar and 11-string fretless.
“These instruments – with these players – allow for a huge variety of textures and soundscapes, from Middle Eastern-influenced music to Brazilian-inspired sambas,” says Pete.
The Oxley-Meier Guitar Project in concert
The Oxley-Meier Guitar Project has – either in duo or quartet formats – performed hundreds of concerts in myriad venues, such as Ronnie Scott’s and the Wigmore Hall, in London; Sage Gateshead; Musicport World Music Festival, in Whitby, and the London Jazz Festival. They have toured widely across Europe too, presenting music from their five albums.
Outside of this project, Nick Meier has toured the world in late guitarist Jeff Beck’s band and has recorded with such A-listers as Vinnie Colaiuta (Sting, Frank Zappa) and Jimmy Haslip (The Yellowjackets).
Pete Oxley has recorded 15 albums of original music and, as a composer, was among only a handful of British musicians to have been included in the European Real Book [Sher Publishing]. For the past 20 years, he has hosted and been the house guitarist in the Oxford jazz club The Spin.
Tickets for this 7.30pm concert are on sale at ncem.co.uk or on 01904 658338.
Dionne Warwick: Nothing stopped her at York Barbican
FIND out in Episode 95 of Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson’s culture podcast Two Big Egos In A Small Car.
Under discussion too are: Temple Newsam’s concert revival in Leeds; Graham and something rotten in Denmark…or not; This Is A René Magritte book update; DJ Charm at Knaresborough BedRock and the media on Johnny Depp & Jeff Beck Watch in York.
“It’s a magical feeling we can only get from live music. Let’s go! ” says Imelda May as she returns to York Barbican
IRISH singer-songwriter and poet Imelda May plays York Barbican tomorrow in the only Yorkshire show of her first major UK tour in more than five years.
“I cannot wait to see you all again, to dance and sing together, to connect and feel the sparkle in a room where music makes us feel alive and elevated for a while,” said the Dubliner when announcing the Made To Love itinerary last April. “It’s a magical feeling we can only get from live music. Let’s go!”
Imagine how she feels, a year on from that “Let’s go!” invocation, as Imelda at last has the chance to promote her sixth studio album, last April’s 11 Past The Hour.
“I’m absolutely chomping at the bit to perform these songs live because normally you put out the album, go out on tour at that time, and see the songs grow as you play them,” says Imelda, 47.
“But until now, I’ve not really played any of them live, apart from Made To Love at a couple of things. When you start playing them, it can change suddenly what you might release as the next single, as you see what people enjoyed, but with this album I had to release them blindly as there couldn’t be any comeback from audiences. So, it’ll be interesting to see which ones they most react to, now I’m touring again.”
The cover artwork for Imelda May’s 2021 album, 11 Past The Hour
On a record that “brims with sensuality, emotional intelligence, spirituality and intuition”, Imelda collaborated with Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, Noel Gallagher, Miles Kane and Niall McNamee.
“Niall is a wonderful Irish musician and actor and it was Ronnie [Wood] who introduced him to me because he was acting in a play by Ronnie’s wife, and we got on so well, we started writing together,” says Imelda.
The duet Don’t Let Me Stand On My Own resulted, with its theme of mental health, sticking together and holding on together. Lo and behold, Imelda and Niall are indeed not standing alone. “We fell in love over the kitchen table and we’re still together,” she says.
Imelda is grateful to Ronnie Wood for that post-show introduction but more besides. “It’s great to have Ronnie on the record, playing on Just One Kiss and Made To Love. I’ve known him since I was 16,” she says. “I’d never gone to music college or state schools; I just jammed at clubs, and I’d just started playing at this little club when Ronnie turned up and we ended up playing Rollin’ & Tumblin’ together.
“Later, I toured with Jeff Beck, who introduced me to Ronnie, saying ‘I don’t if you remember Imelda’, but he did!”
Artwork for Imelda May’s 2017 top five album, Life. Love. Flesh. Blood
Noel Gallagher co-wrote and sings on Just One Kiss while Miles Kane features on What We Did In The Dark. “Miles has been a friend for a long time and Noel is a good friend too,” says Imelda.
Feminist thinkers and activists Gina Martin and Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu contribute to Made To Love. “Gina does incredible work and it’s the same with Dr Shola, who is so eloquent and elegant and makes so much sense,” says Imelda.
“I was writing this song about how we’re made to love, because if we don’t look for love, what are we aiming for, especially now? I’m a living thing! Love is a living thing!
“I was looking for backing vocalists and decided I’d get in touch with Gina and Shola after they really captured our attention and hearts at this beautiful event for International Women’s Day.
“I said, ‘do you sing because I need your heart and passion on this song?’, and they agreed to do it with. We had to be [socially] distanced for the recording with all the doors open. Absolutely freezing, but it was worth it.”
Imelda’s record company, Decca Records, were favouring Diamonds for a single, but Graham Norton asked specifically for Made To Love for Imelda’s performance on his BBC One chat show, and it duly became the single.
Imelda loves being creative. “The writing process is like giving birth. Suddenly something exists that didn’t exist this morning,” she says. “I love it when my brain fires up and a song flows out.
“Then you start working on the artwork and the videos, the songs get to live and that’s another chapter starting. Then you work on how the songs will sound live, which is a very different creative process from studio recordings, especially when we were recording remotely in lockdown.”
Imelda’s creativity has expanded to poetry, as heard on her 2020 EP, Slip Of The Tongue, and printed in last October’s A Lick And A Promise. “Absolutely 100 per cent, poetry will feature in the show,” she says. “When the book came out, the reaction was unprecedented, I was told. The print runs sold out three times. They flew out the door!
“Working on poems for the EP with beautiful string arrangements behind them, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, I can tell you.”
Now is the time for May in April, songs, poems and all, at York Barbican tomorrow.
Imelda May: Singer, songwriter, poet and multi-instrumentalist
Imelda May fact file
Full name: Imelda Mary Higham.
Born: July 10 1974, in The Liberties area of Dublin.
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, poet and multi-instrumentalist who plays bodhrán, guitar, bass guitar and tambourine.
Breakthrough: Discovered by boogie-woogie pianist Jools Holland, who asked her to tour with him.
Performed duets with: U2, Lou Reed, Sinead O’Connor, Robert Plant, Van Morrison, Jack Savoretti, Noel Gallagher and Elvis Costello.
Featured on albums and live tours with: Jeff Beck, Jeff Goldblum and Ronnie Wood.
Studio albums: No Turning Back, 2003; Love Tattoo, 2008; Mayhem, 2010; Tribal, 2014; Life. Love. Flesh. Blood, 2017; 11 Past The Hour, 2021.
Branching out: In the cauldron of 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, she released her poem You Don’t Get To Be Racist And Irish. Sentiment adopted by Irish government’s ReThink Ireland campaign on billboard displays.
What Imelda did next: Released reflective nine-poem Slip Of The Tongue EP, set to uplifting soundscape. May addressed themes of home and love, feminism, harsh realities of life, defiance, lovelorn longing and escapism.
Book: A Lick And A Promise, debut collection of 104 poems, including two each by her father and young daughter, published in October 2021.
York gigs: February 2009, at The Duchess, in bequiffed retro-rockabilly days; November 2011, York Barbican debut; May 2017, York Barbican, promoting post break-up album Life. Love. Flesh. Blood.
Imelda May plays York Barbican tomorrow (6/4/2022) at 7.30pm on her Made To Love Tour. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk, gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk or on 0203 356 5441.
Jeff Beck: playing York Barbican for the first time this spring
GUITAR great Jeff
Beck will play York Barbican on May 19 on his nine-date British tour.
Tickets for the two-time Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame inductee and serial Grammy Award winner will go on sale on Friday, February 14 at 10am.
Joining blues,
rock and jazz guitarist Beck on tour will be Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, Rhonda
Smith on bass and Vanessa Freebairn-Smith on cello.
Beck’s tour will begin on May 17, taking in a second Yorkshire show at Sheffield City Hall on May 23 and climaxing with a London finale at the Royal Albert Hall on May 26 and 27.
Over the
course of a career stretching beyond 50 years, Beck has won eight Grammy awards;
been ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of
All Time and been inducted into the Rock’n’Roll
Hall of Fame, both with The Yardbirds and solo.
Beck replaced
Eric Clapton as The Yardbirds’ lead guitarist in 1965, going on to form The
Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart on vocals and Ronnie Wood on bass. So much has
followed and, now 75, the Wallington-born guitarist is working on new music for
release in 2020 on Rhino/Warner Records.
From Friday, tickets for Beck’s York Barbican debut will be available at yorkbarbican.co.uk and myticket.co.uk, on 0203 356 5441 or in person at the Barbican box office.Sheffield tickets: sheffieldcityhall.co.uk, myticket.co.uk or 0114 278 9789.
