The Festival :: Programme Highlights

The Rhythm & Blues Brothers Band will perform in the grounds of St John's Church from 2pm until 2.30pm on Saturday 4th July prior to the opening of the Festival.

 

The Fesitval will be officially opened by Vi Gostling MBE @ 2:30pm.

Vocalist Pinise Saul, guitarist Lucky Ranku, keyboards/harmonica player Adam Glasser and percussionist Thebe Lipere first met in the 1980s touring Europe with Zila, the fiery South African jazz ensemble led by sax legend Dudu Pukwana. Tonight’s rare musical reunion will feature great melodies and danceable grooves from marabi to mbaqanga and classic SA township jazz.

 

Websites: Stratford Circus

A rare chance to see a forgotten classic. "Barney Platts-Mills' debut feature stars an entirely non-professional cast of local teenagers from Stratford, East London. The film grew out of a documentary, Everybody's An Actor Shakespeare Said (1968) made by Platts-Mills about the 'Playbarn' project run by veteran British theatre figure Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Royal in Stratford. The project aimed to divert local youths from loitering and petty crime and into creatively channelling their energy and imagination through acting and improvisation. Inspired by Littlewood, Platts-Mills encouraged the youths to come up with a story based on events taken from their own lives…The young cast give the film an air of authenticity and their sometimes awkward, hesitant performances reflect adolescence in a non-contrived way…The look of the film is reminiscent of the cinema verité/Free Cinema style which had ushered in the 1960s, but any sense of optimism suggested by such films is dashed. The mood of Bronco Bullfrog, shot in black and white against a backdrop of East End bombsites and the new brutalism of urban high-rise flats, closes the decade on a pessimistic note of limited horizons for its working-class protagonists. As evidence that not all of London had been swinging in the 1960s, Bronco Bullfrog foreshadowed the 'no future' ethos which characterised the Punk movement of the mid-to-late-1970s…and anticipated the treatment of disaffected youth which became prevalent in British television dramas such as Mike Leigh's Meantime"

Ian O’Sullivan at www.screenonline.org.uk

 

Websites: Bronco Bullfrog @ BFI Screenonline; Bronco Bullfrog @ modculture.com

Riddim Squad UK is a six piece reggae band with four the hard way up front started in 1990 as a backing band for lots of the English & Jamaicain reggae artists; just to mention some of them, ruddy thomas-daddy fredy brenton king-ras nando -couler red-delroy pinnock-kaya-acro banton- and now the four the hard way gerrie wade-israel-prento p-and last not least sister auldrey scott. After a long break writing new songs been back on the circuit since Jan 2008 playing to international audiences in and out London with a long awaited album due out next year.

 

Websites: Riddim Squad UK

"Emma Scarr is a singer-songwriter from Leytonstone, East London, writing folk music with an Americana flavour. Emma's debut album Angel Way features…songs grounded in first-hand experience and observation of the banalities and triumphs of everyday life…"

Alex Ogg at www.cdbaby.com

The Northern Celts are a band that has evolved from a wide collection of musicians who started playing together in London in the 1980s. They have been instrumental in keeping the traditional music session alive in London pubs, with material that embraces traditional Irish and Scottish dance tunes, Irish and British traditional and contemporary folk songs, and American folk and country music.

 

Websites:

     Emma Scarr

     The Northern Celts

Conventional musical performance often requires a lot of training. In Cornelius Cardew's piece The Great Learning though, untrained performers take part in a far more unusual form of music making. Written in the late 1960's, this mammoth six and a half hour work uses a diverse collection of sound-sources including stones, whistles, cushions, organ, and a chorus of massed voices chanting the philosophical writings of Confucius. The joy of The Great Learning is that it encourages untrained performers to make their own music, rather than simply using them as a musical force. This results in an originality and participation more akin to folk music than the elitist values of composers from the first half of the Twentieth Century. The length of this piece often restricts performances to only a few of its seven paragraphs, but this year's Leytonstone Festival features the rare opportunity to experience the entire piece on one day, with the performance shared between two local churches, the Green Man Roundabout, the Quaker Meeting House and the old Woolworths store. People from the local community will join together with performers from further afield to provide a new realisation of this unique improvisational journey.

 

Websites: InSearchOfSilence; Cornelius Cardew on Wikipedia

"I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death!" Anne Frank began keeping a diary on her thirteenth birthday, 12 June 1942, three weeks prior to going into hiding with her mother Edith, father Otto, sister Margot, and four accomplices, in the sealed-off upper rooms of the annexe of her father's office building in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. This extraordinary concealed life continued for two long years, before the group was betrayed and sent to concentration camps. Only Otto survived, and when he returned to Amsterdam after the war, he found Anne's diary, which has since become an international best seller. In what would have been Anne's 80th year, the Woodhouse Players present a tender account of a typical adolescent in extraordinary circumstances.

 

Websites: Woodhouse Players

The Misfits Comedy Club has just returned to residency at The Sheepwalk. It offers an opportunity to see the cream of up and coming performers, on your doorstep, at credit crunch prices. Promoter Claire Stroud says "It's a relaxed night, with a friendly crowd. We get a lot of people who haven't been to live comedy before but soon become regulars. We invite other promoters along, so the acts use the night to showcase their talents which makes for a great show. We are delighted that so many Misfits performers have gone on to bigger and better things".

Philip Norman, conductor of the Woodford Symphony Orchestra, presents an afternoon of Bach arias, English songs, Spirituals, virtuoso violin music, and more, featuring Keith Gurry, violin, Michael Lessiter, bass/baritone, and Inge-Lise Nygaard Parsons, soprano.

 

Websites:

     Woodford Symphony Orchestra Trio;

     Inge-Lise Nygaard Parsons

John Etheridge rightly enjoys a glowing reputation throughout the jazz world and beyond, and has been described by Pat Metheny as "One of the best guitarists in the world". He is a prodigiously gifted and creative player whose approach to music can only be described as 'eclectic' as he refuses to accommodate or even acknowledge artificial musical boundaries. His range is well illustrated by his years of touring and recording with the iconic Stephane Grappelli while simultaneously doing likewise with the legendary jazz-fusion group, The Soft Machine. John is equally at home on acoustic and electric guitar and has played with John Williams, Yehudi Menuhin, Dizzie Gillespie, Herb Ellis, Mundell Lowe, Nigel Kennedy, Pat Metheny, Birelli Lagrene, Barney Kessel, and countless others.

 

Websites: Sunday Nights at the Luna Lounge; John Etheridge

The German musician Theo Jörgensmann is one of the finest jazz clarinetists in the world. Blessed with an astonishing technique, he has recorded or collaborated with a stellar range of musicians, such as Barre Phillips, Kent Carter, Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, John Carter, Perry Robinson, to mention only a few. Although he has performed at venues and festivals worldwide, he has never once appeared in the United Kingdom – until now, that is. He will appear at the Leytonstone Festival's second Cornelius Night, on July 13th  at the O'Neills pub, at 762 Leytonstone High Road. The 'Cornelius Night' is named after the avant-garde composer, Cornelius Cardew, who lived in the borough until his untimely death in 1981 at the hands of a hit and run driver. It would be wrong to suggest any direct connection between Jörgensmann and Cardew, although both musicians were active in overlapping areas of musical experiment and improvisation in the 1970's. By coincidence Cardew performed at the 1972 Frankfurt Jazz Festival where Jörgensmann made his major debut, but Jörgensmann's development  owes far more to mutual American influences, such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Leytonstone Festival have chosen to pair Theo Jörgensmann with two highly influential figures from the London scene. Drummer Seb Rochford won the BBC Jazz Award for best newcomer in 2004, and was nominated as best musician in 2006. He was twice nominated for the Mercury Prize,  in 2005 and 2007.  Bassist Dominic Lash is a familiar and active figure from London's free improvisation scene, where he has played alongside almost every figure of note. He records on Emanem label.

The blend of musicians echoes the instrumentation of Jörgensmann's highly successful collaboration with the Polish Oles brothers, but we can expect something  quite different and unique to emerge when the veteran free jazz maestro meets up with the snappy drums of Rochford and the wayward musings of Lash.

Read some more about Theo Jörgensmann here >>>

 

The evening opens with a performance by Shabaka Hutchings of Cornelius Cardew's rarely performed virtuoso work for Bass Clarinet, 'Mountains' (1977). The work was composed for the Dutch clarinetist, Harry Sparnaay, and is ostensibly based on Gigue from Bach's Partita No. 6. Sparnaay was, and is, one of the most technically accomplished bass clarinetists, a master of classical, jazz and avant-garde playing, and the piece was intended to tax his extraordinary skill to the limit.  Shabaka Hutchings is a rapidly emerging jazz musician and improviser. He performed  at this year's Cheltenham Jazz Festival with the Jack De Johnette Ensemble, and is a regular member of Courtney Pine’s 'Jazz Warriors – Afropeans' as well as fronting his own group, 'Zed-U'.

 

Websites: openDemocracy; Theo Jörgensmann; Shabaka Hutchings

Photograph of Seb Rochford courtesy of R J Fernandez.

David Ferrard is a young Scottish American singer-songwriter based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His voice has been compared to James Taylor and John Denver, and his writing to Woody Guthrie and John Prine. His songs tell stories about his and others' lives, and are marked by a strong commitment to social justice and peace.

 

Websites: David Ferrard

This a unique opportunity to see award-winners Liane Carroll and Julian Siegel with top pianist and educator Simon Purcell, bassist Roger Carey, and drummer Clive Fenner, performing outside of their normal musical settings. Liane, Julian, and Simon are tutors at Clive's International French Jazz School, and it has been in the relaxed environment of the School's nightly club that they have developed a musical relationship that has explored aspects of their playing not normally seen in their various bands, which will be featured tonight.

 

Websites: East Side Jazz Club; Liane Carroll

"Tonight, I am playing a programme of music for solo cello spanning more than 300 years. Domenico Gabrielli's Ricercari, from 1689, are among the earliest known pieces for solo cello. Judith Weir's Unlocked, 1999, is based on American folk songs, mostly collected from black prisoners in the 1930s. It is beautifully written for the cello, and great fun to play - I get to stamp my feet on the platform at one point. In between, we have György Ligeti's early Sonata, an exuberant, virtuosic work, and Ernest Bloch's Suite No. 3, written a few years later than the Ligeti, but the work of a composer from the previous generation, at the end of his career. Bloch died on July 15th 1959, exactly 50 years before this concert."

 

Websites: Maud Hodson

John Ellis has worked with Peter Gabriel, The Stranglers, Peter Hammill and many more major UK acts.

Looprovisation is the term used to describe the process of creating live guitar instrumentals using improvisation and looping technologies.

 

Websites:

     John Ellis;

     Cult With No Name

Saucy, spiky song and rhyme featuring acrobatics and audience participation. Prior to her debut at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, scalpel-sharp ex-tabloid princess Other Theresa and banjo picking sidekick Russ Chandler perform lyrical autopsies on yoga divas, chavs, suburban 4x4 drivers, gamers, and more. Other Theresa recently launched her debut CD In Other Words and has performed across the UK at venues including The Hackney Empire, The Theatre Royal Stratford East, The Poetry Café, Battersea Arts Centre and RADA. For fun, she teaches in a local secondary school, and is a fitness instructor and a sports massage therapist. Russ Chandler likes stroking his beard, playing hammer dulcimer and other antiquated instruments, in addition to running the Walthamstow Folk Club on Sunday evenings. Everyone needs a bit of the Other! Featuring special guests, plus four open mic slots.

 

Websites: Other Theresa; Other Theresa on MySpace

Drop everything! The 4 Poofs & A Piano are in Town! Hot on the heels of their smash hit UK tour, the fabulous foursome 4 Poofs & A Piano are back with their unique brand of frisky footwork and musical madness. The Poofs have been delighting audiences up and down the country with their musicality and comedic performances, and now invite you to join them as they take Leytonstone by storm. Fun, outrageous, and rarely in the best possible taste, their show is not to be missed. "These boys have enough panache to fill an entire jewel box" – The Scotsman; "Will have you crossing your legs with delight" - The Mail on Sunday.

 

Websites: 4 Poofs & A Piano

Sarah Sayeed is one of the most promising UK based artists out there right now. A singer, producer, and MC, she has encapsulated the essence and roots of Hip-Hop through her own unique interpretation. Her latest album is Black Is.

 

Websites: Sarah Sayeed

East London's most popular live music club presents a fabulous afternoon of country-fried rock'n'roll, with Jawbone ("Rootsy southern country soul"), Graham Larkbey and The Escape Committee ("Faces-esque pub rock with a folksy edge, just like yer back in 1974, and the computer-driven over-processed pop charts hadn't taken over"), The Snakes ("Country rock and some bluesy balladry at its very best, with melodies and harmonies the Eagles would envy and geetar licks that Stoner Keef would fall out of a tree for!"), Little George Sueref & His Band ("Downhome blues and sweet-voiced soul"), The Loving Cup ("Southern rock boogie! The spirit of slick and sexy Southern rock"), The Coal Porters ("The world's first Alt-Bluegrass band… an acoustic act with attitude and the UK's most entertaining bluegrass ensemble"), DJs, beer, food, tea and cakes, and craft and arts stalls.

 

Websites:

     The Jawbone Band

     Graham Larkbey & The Escape Committee

     The Snakes

     Little George Sueref & His Band

     The Loving Cup

     Sid Griffin & The Coal Porters

     ...what's cookin'... rockin' country fried music