Thursday 10th December sees Jeremy Harmer and I presenting our show “Touchable Dreams” in Cambridge, at the Emmanuel United Reformed Church in Trumpington Street.
Subtitled “Words and Music in the Key of Love” the show has had great success so far this year, and lots of our friends and colleagues in the Cambridge area were asking when we’d do it locally: So here it is.
This show blends my playing, using my usual blend of looping, electric violin, pedals and acoustic violin; with Jeremy’s expressive readings from poets as diverse as Shakespeare and Carol Ann Duffy (with a little singing thrown in!). The words frame the music, the music illuminates the words. And when they happen together, the effect is spellbinding….
If you’re anywhere near Cambridge do come along! Tickets will be available on the door, but can also be purchased online from http://www.stevebingham.co.uk/shop/. Just click the “ticket” link.
I hope to see you there…..
Touchable Dreams
After several very successful outings over the summer, “Touchable Dreams“, a poetry and music show with the excellent Jeremy Harmer, will be playing at the Halesworth Arts Festival this coming Wednesday, 14th October at 7.30pm. The venue is the Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth.
I have a number of completely free tickets for this event, so if you’d like to see this unique show all you need to do is email or phone me as soon as possible to secure your free tickets.
“Touchable Dreams” takes its title from a poem by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. It is an exploration of the symbiosis between the expressive beauty of words and the ethereal poetry of music. Both aim to express the passion, tenderness and agony of deep feeling, and when they complement each other, the effect can be extraordinarily intense.
Sometimes, in Touchable Dreams, words follow the music, echoing its plangent harmonies; at other times music follows the words, transforming their individual power into raw emotion. And sometimes the words and the music are intertwined in an almost physical interdependency.
Touchable Dreams describes romantic love, transient love, ridiculous love, bitter love, lost love, and sublime love in the music of J S Bach, Steve Bingham, Nick Drake, Andrew Keeling, Johann Pachelbel, Astor Piazzolla, eugene Ysaye and other, and in the words of poets and playwrights such as W H Auden, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Bishop, e e cummings, Carol Ann Duffy, Jeremy Harmer, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Jennings, Jenny Joseph, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, William Shakespeare and others.
In the words of Steve and Jeremy, “we want to show how music and words – the very bases of human emotion – can co-exist and enhance each other’s power for one of the greatest emotions – love – of the human experience.”
I hope to see you there….
Friday saw me playing with the band No-Man in their first live gig for 15 years, and my first gig with a ‘rock’ band.
- L to R: Mike Bearpark, Steven Wilson, Pete Morgan, Tim Bowness, Andy Booker, Steve Bingham, Stephen Bennett (photo: Lisa Smith)
Bush Hall, in West London, was full to capacity, plus recording engineer and film crew (the gig was being recorded for a live CD and DVD film).
- (photo: Lisa Smith)
- (photo: Chris Bingham)
The first song in the set was the haunting ‘Only Rain’, vocals and violin alone, and starting with a minute or so of solo violin live loops: 400 fans, some of whom had waited 15 years since they last heard the band live, eager to hear their heroes Tim Bowness and Steve Wilson perform – and the first thing they get is me! I have to admit to being a little nervous….
But all started well, and at the end of the evening I don’t think that any of the fans were disappointed:
A mixture of songs from old and new albums made for an interesting and varied set. I await the live CD and DVD with interest, but meanwhile we’re off to Europe on Tuesday for repeat performances in Holland and Germany. There are more photos from the London gig here.
Email news arrived yesterday of the release, by Bohemian Productions, in collaboration with Sony, of their Jeff Beck tribute CD – entitled ‘El Becko’ (was that a groan I heard?) – to which I contributed a cover of the song ‘Scatterbrain’. I hope to have some copies of the CD available on the shop soon, but the track will also appear on my ‘Ascension’ solo CD (when I get it finished!).
