Hawkwood Centre for future thinking
Take seven artists – a dancer, a spoken word film maker and five musicians – a violinist, a guitar player, a singer, a percussionist and a tabla player – all from different parts of the world and different musical cultures. Closet them in a Victorian manor house in the depths of Gloucestershire with wonderful organic food and the best bread I have ever tasted – and see what happens.
What does happen?
Well, what happens, of course, is a performance – which I was lucky enough to hear last week and which you could also hear next Saturday at RichMix in Shoreditch.
But why those seven artists?
And who and what drew them all to Gloucestershire?
The ‘who’ was Soumik Datta as part of his Green Room programme; the ‘what’ was the fact that they were all migrants. Some recent and under traumatic circumstances, some who had come to the UK as students and never gone home, others who had migrated to the UK as children with their families. But all of whom had the lived experience, as Soumik said, of ‘having two different homes, living constantly in two different states, two different languages, two different cultures, two different cuisines – a dichotomy which can best be expressed through art by those who have had that experience’.
Had they met before?
No they hadn’t, and their first week was spent getting to know each other. Hossein the composer/singer from Ukraine; Giuliano the guitar player from Italy; Dips the tabla player who moved to England from Bengal as a child; Mahshid the dancer, a recent refugee from Iran; Preetha the violinist also with roots in India; Héctor the actor, poet and filmmaker from Venezuela and Angela Hui Wai Nok, the percussionist who had come from Hong Kong to study here and never went home.
The second week was spent pulling together this really rather extraordinary piece which shines a light onto each of their cultures and yet was a totally collaborative process. I have assembled a small collection of clips from the piece’s first performance before an extremely enthusiastic group of around 40 ‘Stroud’ees’ who had braved a cold and miserable night to hear them perform last week.
But while my clips will give you some idea of the diversity of their ideas they will not demonstrate how, rather extraordinarily, these came together as a complete – and exciting – performance. For that you will need to hear it for yourself.
Hear it for yourself
If you are free on Saturday, 10th you could do just that – 7.30pm at RichMix in Shoreditch.
And, if you are interested in understanding more of what it is like living as a migrant, no matter how long or short a time it is since you left your home country, then make a day of it. From 3-6pm there will be panel discussions and films involving Soumik, the Green Room artists and guest speakers on:
- Home in Another Country: navigating displacement, identity and belonging.
- Bridging Borders: the role of the arts in celebrating diversity, providing refuge, and platforming migrant and refugee voices.
You can book for them all here.
If you want to know more about any of the performers, they all have active Instagram accounts here:
@preenaraya
@tabla_with_dips
@mahshidea
@modarelligiuliano
@hossein_mirzagholi
@huiwainokk
@hectormanchego
And while booking for the 10th, don’t forget also to book for:
Friday 8th March
Madeleine Mitchell and the London Chamber Ensemble play
- Charles Wood’s Quartet in D Major
- Madeleine’ arrangement of his pupil Herbert Howell’s short Chosen Tune – and……
- Claude Debussy’s sensual, impressionistic and utterly stunning String Quartet in G minor
For more details and to book go here.
Monday April 8th
The Vauxhall Band Bassett Horn Trio
Many more details to come very soon but booking is now open here.
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