AN ORKNEY TRIPTYCH WITH SOLOISTS FROM THE LONDON CONTEMPORARY ORCHESTRA AND MARY ANNE HOBBS
LIMITED TICKETS AND LIVE STREAM: DETAILS
LINGA HOLM SINGLE / 9 OCTOBER 2020
RESCHEDULED 2021 TOUR CONFIRMED
“An unmitigated triumph and, with Hether Blether, he saves the best for last …” THE QUIETUS
“Sometimes hope is exactly what you need …” LOUD & QUIET
ERLAND COOPER has announced a very special performance at LONDON BARBICAN on SATURDAY 10 OCTOBER. The event, designed for live broadcast, is part of Live from The Barbican – a new series taking place over the autumn. Erland will be the first contemporary artist to perform at the series, and the show will present elements of his Orkney Triptych live for the first time.
Erland will collaborate with a small ensemble, consisting of his NEST of musicians supplemented with a quartet of additional soloists and new arrangements from the London Contemporary Orchestra, along with director of photography and close collaborator, Alex Kozobolis, to perform special versions of songs from his Orkney Trilogy of albums: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/erland-cooper-live-from-the-barbican
The show will feature an introduction from Mary Anne Hobbs and will incorporate film, spoken word contributions from Scottish artist Kathryn Joseph, real-time live performance and pre-recorded projected materials to bring nature, and the outside, into the Barbican. Erland explains: “An audience should always feel transported somewhere else for a moment, whether real or imagined. I’d like the Barbican Hall itself to feel like a ferry, crossing the North Sea to Orkney. To be able to broadcast simultaneously to a remote community north as well as a large city south, feels like a bird’s migration.“
Hailing from the archipelago of Orkney in Scotland, the contemporary composer and multi-instrumentalist recently completed his triptych of work shaped by the islands, exploring the birdlife [SOLAN GOOSE in 2018] the sea [SULE SKERRY in 2019] and, on this year’s latest album, HETHER BLETHER, the land and its people. Inspired, in essence, by Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown, filmmaker Margaret Tait and composer Peter Maxwell Davies before him, this final album is a celebration of the islands’ memories held in timeless landscape, community, myth and mythology. The album looks to the past through the stories of the island, and to the present and future through its people.
HETHER BLETHER weaves elements of the first two albums in the trilogy, bringing them together in a full circle around the cycles of the changing seasons. Throughout the triptych, Cooper explores a restorative path in the rhythm and poetry of the everyday, deep within a land and community at the edge of the world.
Cooper recently unveiled a specially created piece featuring over 300 field recordings sent into Chris Hawkins’ BBC 6 Music programme. The field recordings, all sounds that listeners had noticed since lockdown began, appear on A Nightingale Sings Outside Our Window alongside the voice of Florence Nightingale, Galya Bisengalieva [Solo Violin], Robert Ames [Solo Viola] and Paul Weller.
ERLAND COOPER is delighted to announce details of his rescheduled tour dates for 2021. Starting in Belfast in May, the dates continue through the UK and include two nights at Edinburgh’s Summerhall. Full dates as follows:
MAY 2021
Thu 06 BELFAST Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival
Wed 26 EDINBURGH Summerhall
Thu 27 EDINBURGH Summerhall
Fri 28 BIRMINGHAM St. Paul’s Church
Sat 29 MANCHESTER Hallé St Peter’s
JUN 2021
Tue 01 BRISTOL St George’s
Wed 02 CANTERBURY Gulbenkian Theatre
Thu 03 BRIGHTON St. George’s Church
SEPT 2021
Sun 26 STROUD Hidden Notes
Tickets are on sale now from: https://www.erlandcooper.com/
SKREEVAR video: https://youtu.be/iB4uqD1IOiw
PEEDIE BREEKS video: https://youtu.be/iB4uqD1IOiw
LONGHOPE video: https://youtu.be/KLs6nPu0wWw
PRAISE FOR THE TRIPTYCH
“At once calming and euphoric, with a beauty that’s its own justification …” UNCUT
“Magical and moving, Hether Blether is as homely as a ceilidh and as awe-inspiring as a storm …”
Q MAGAZINE
“The unbroken sense of place is acutely apt for our current times; the message is that people will always endure …” ELECTRIC SOUND
“A record of simple beauty, exploring the place where electronic and classical music can co-habit …” THE QUIETUS
“A meditative, transportive experience, an ethereal swoon which imagines Sigur Rós remixed by Bibio; it makes you wonder where Cooper will take you next …” Q MAGAZINE
“Considered, crafted and explorative of details that only someone with A true affinity can delve into; if the intent was to create a kind of magic, he does so …” LOUD & QUIET
“With Sule Skerry, he’s expanding his palette, retaining an ambient quality, while bringing in a more epic, moving scope …” THE 405
“Wonderfully nuanced songwriting matched to lung-bursting string arrangements …” CLASH
“Nature’s songwriter …” THE GUARDIAN
Listen to / purchase HETHER BLETHER: https://erlandcooper.ffm.to/hetherblether
