Mike Westbrook: Glad Day: Live (2007)
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- Synopsis:
William Blake was born in Soho in 1757. A poet and artist regarded in his lifetime as eccentric and politically dangerous, Blake is now acknowledged as one of the great visionaries in British Art whose work resonates strongly in the 21st Century. Many of the songs that form the basis of Glad Day derive from 'Tyger', Adrian Mitchell's musical about Blake, which was staged by the National Theatre Company in 1971, with specially commissioned music by Mike Westbrook. In 1977 this material formed the basis of Mitchell's Glad Day, a Thames TV music-drama which marked the 150th anniversary of Blake's death, in which the Mike Westbrook Brass Band participated. By then the Blake songs has become an integral part of the repertoire of the Brass Band on tours throughout Britain and Europe, on radio and TV, and particularly associated with singers Phil Minton and Kate Westbrook. Four of the songs were included in the Brass Band's 1975 album For The Record. In 1996 The Brass Band re-assembled for a revival of the Blake programme at the Greenwich Festival. For the first time a choir took part in a 'live' performance - the Senior Girls Choir of the Blackheath Conservatoire of Music and the Arts. Subsequent performances which included festivals in Salisbury and Dublin, always involved a local children's choir. The album Glad Day, which includes six pieces not on the original recording, was released on Enja Records in 1997, funded by an award from the Airshaft Trust. Mike Westbrook's first fully choral arrangements were written for the Flemish Radio Choir, for a festival in Antwerp in 1998. These formed the basis for a radically new approach to the Blake material when, in 2007, Glad Day the Choral Version was given its first performance at the Foundling Museum, London, as part of the St. Pancras Festival of Contemporary Church Music. This concert marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake. Tracklisting: 1. London Song 2. Let The Slave, incorporating The Price Of Experience 3. Lullaby 4. Holy Thursday 5. The Tyger And The Lamb 6. A Poison Tree 7. Long John Brown and Little Mary Bell 8. The Human Abstract 9. The Fields 10. I See Thy Form - Studio:
- Cadiz Music
- Genres:
- Documentary, Music & Musicals, Performing Arts, Special Interest