Shirley Collins & The Lodestar Band | Brian Catling | Matthew Shaw - SOLD OUT - RESCHEDULED
Saturday 31st July 2021
Sold Out
At Charleston Outdoor Stage
Doors 6:00 pm
Price £25 + booking fee
*Note this show is sold out but do follow the above ticket link in case of any returns.
We’d like to thank you all for your understanding and patience and we are very grateful to Shirley, Charleston et al for their continuing support and cooperation in getting this wonderful early evening garden promenade with soundscape followed by a live show to you.
The grounds at Charleston are ‘absoBloomsbury’ blooming at the moment, but like many venues they are in danger of closing permanently, to donate to the Charleston Appeal please follow this link: https://www.charleston.org.uk/charleston-emergency-appeal/
Shirley Collins update:
This concert has been rescheduled twice due to the ongoing situation with Coronavirus. Please check your ticket details below, please only attend on the night where tickets have been purchased.
· Tickets originally purchased for either Saturday 2 May 2020 or Saturday 18 July 2020 will be valid for Saturday 31 July 2021 only.
· Tickets originally purchased for either Sunday 3 May or Sunday 19 July will be valid for Sunday 1 August 2021 only.
We are pleased to announce that the concert will now take place on the outdoor stage at Charleston (subject to weather). Please note that this space is uncovered and in the open air, so please dress accordingly.
More tickets will be released from today through Charleston
If you have tickets and are planning not to come along please do let us know, at the earliest opportunity, as we’d love to give others the opportunity to see this unique event.
A bus will leave Lewes station for Charleston at 6pm and return at 10pm. Places are limited so please book in advance by emailing [email protected]. Tickets are £5 return.
Leaving from the lower Charleston Car Park (allow 5-10 minutes to walk there from the Hay Barn)
Arrive from 6pm to explore the unique sound installation in the garden by sound artist Matthew Shaw features recorded words and poetry from Shirley Collins and Brian Catling, and many more luminaires. The performances starts at 7.30
Journey with us from Firle Church as we walk up over the Downs to the edge of the cliff at Crowlink 1.916. Looking out to sea, listening to the song of the skylarks, the wind whipping through the bent over trees, the waves crashing against the white cliffs, the pull of the tide across chalk, shingle and stone.
Shirley Collins leads us with her recital of the English folk songs collected over seventy years. With poetry from Brian Catling and Matthew Shaw and fragments of letters, diaries and prose from Virgina Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury group in Sussex.
These poems and extracted writings voiced in order of appearance by by Shirley Collins, Hannah Peel, Jeremy Deller, Lally MacBeth, Benjamin Zephaniah, Heather Leigh, Laura Barton, Zakia Sewell, Peter Owen Jones, Amy Grantham, Matthew Shaw, Mark Fry, Sam Lee & Virginia Woolf.
All music performed by Matthew Shaw with special guests Ossian Brown on hurdy-gurdy and Penny MacBeth on recorders.
The garden sound installation will be on site for a further week following the Shirley Collins events.
Please be aware the gardens can accommodate only a limited capacity. Those wishing to promenade the grounds may experience a wait to allow the previous group to exit the gardens.
The café will be open, serving delicious Italian street food from Caccia & Tails, or feel free to bring a picnic to eat in the centenary gardens/by the pond.
The galleries will be open and free to ticket holders, subject to capacity, with exhibitions by Nina Hamnett & Lisa Brice.
Keep an eye on the facebook book page for further updates:
31st July 1st August
We are looking forward to seeing you at this unique event in the heart of the downs.
And finally…
Shirley will be in conversation with Stewart Lee on Wednesday 7 July at 7pm, giving a first-hand account of an extraordinary life. For more information and to book: https://www.charleston.org.uk/event/shirley-collins-in-conversation-with-stewart-lee/
Once the event is sold out/if you need to resell your ticket:
We would strongly recommend that if you are purchasing re-sell tickets that you buy through SEE tickets re-sell option than from a person directly. If you are buying re-sell physical tickets, previously bought at Resident record shop, send through an image to Melting Vinyl on messenger or an email of the tickets for them to confirm they are genuine ([email protected]). If you are unable to attend and have bought tickets through Charleston please get in touch with their box office directly.
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More details on this unique event:
Melting Vinyl have the absolute privilege and pleasure of bringing one of music’s most luminary artists Shirley Collins alongside collaborators Brian Catling and Matthew Shaw for two dates to the extraordinary setting of Charleston Garden and Barn.
“Never are voices so beautiful as when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day.” Virginia Woolf ‘Night and Day’
Lodestar in 2018 was a reawakening of one of folk music’s most important voices. Now the journey continues as Shirley Collins makes a pilgrimage to the heart of the landscape that fuels her work. Performing together again with the Lodestar band, Shirley sings songs of love and songs of the land in this most beautiful and extraordinary of places.
On the 24th July 2020, Shirley Collins released Heart’s Ease, her second album for Domino.
The first song to be shared from Heart’s Ease is “Wondrous Love”; it’s tune comes from an 18th Century English ballad about the infamous sea captain William Kidd, who was hanged for piracy in 1701.
‘An album of true stature, and one that’s destined to remain in your affections.’ David Kidman, Folk Radio
‘Heart’s Ease is a glorious reminder that Shirley Collins is still in a class of her own.’ – Boomkat
The evening is a collaboration with long-time friend, artist, writer and performer Brian Catling, and acclaimed sound artist Matthew Shaw. They present CROWLINK 1.916, an immersive soundscape and site-specific performance in the grounds at Charleston; the country meeting place of the Bloomsbury group. Original poetry by Catling and traditional songs from Collins are interwoven with field recordings from Matthew Shaw. You are invited to wind your way through the gardens and lose yourself in a landscape of song and voice.
Conjured from that most startlingly original imagination, CROWLINK 1.916 culminates in a performance by Catling in response to the intense creativity of the place.
About Charleston:
Charleston is a house, garden and art gallery situated in the spectacular South Downs National Park. From 1916 it was the home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, two of the most radical and influential British artists of the twentieth century.
Grant were both members of the Bloomsbury group and their house and garden became the country home and meeting place of some of the twentieth century’s most pioneering artists, writers and thinkers – people who rejected the status quo and imagined new ways of living and working. Regular visitors included Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forsters, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Clive Bell and Lytton Strachey, among others. Today, Charleston continues to be a place of creativity, discussion and debate, with a year-round programme of exhibitions, festivals and events featuring leading contemporary artists, writers, performers and thinkers.
Bell and https://www.charleston.org.uk/
About the artists:
Shirley Collins
‘Shirley Collins is without doubt one of England’s greatest cultural treasures’ Billy Bragg
‘Shirley is a time traveller, a conduit for essential human aches, one of the greatest artists who ever lived, and yet utterly humble’ Stewart Lee
‘Fifty years since she last performed live at The Roundhouse alongside her late sister Dolly, Folk’s grande dame Shirley Collins makes a triumphant return, evidentially having lost nothing in the art of stark storytelling over the preceding years.’ Folk Radio January 2019
A performance of unwavering and revelatory intimacy: Guardian ****
http://www.shirleycollins.co.uk/main.html
Brian Catling
“Brian Catling is simply a genius. His writing is so extraordinary it hurts, it makes me realize how little imagination I have.” —Terry Gilliam
“I am glad to have the book as a companion on my own dark quest.” —Tom Waits
“There are not many books that rearrange the molecules of your being, turning your eyes inside out. The Vorrh, this saturnine post-traumatic testament, is one of them. A work of genius.” —Iain Sinclair
www.briancatling.net
Matthew Shaw
‘A beautifully understated, fragile affair. Bewitching and addictive.’ The Times
‘Shaw conjures the ghostly afterimage of ritual song forms and reassembles them as lucid, revenant forms animating particular landscapes’ David Keenan
‘His multi-levelled music is immersive and captures the ‘genius loci’ or spirit of place with awe-inspiring sensitivity.’ Gary Cook, The Ecologist
http://www.texlahoma.com/
We look forward to seeing you next Summer at Charleston with the beautiful backdrop of the downs.
Please refer to the Facebook Event page for up to date information.