Get CLoSer with us this evening

Snap up the last remaining tickets for tonight’s CLoSer – part of the concert series designed to appeal to those who like their live music experiences to be intimate and informal.

We promise performances of the stunningly beautiful and haunting work Night Prayers by Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, as well as the world premiere of Tim Garland’s latest piece Songs to the Night Sky for string orchestra and saxophone with CLoSer favourite, conductor Clark Rundell. You’ll also have the chance to hear a rendition of CLS’ audience choice winner, Schnittke’s Moz-Art à la Haydn.

City of London Sinfonia were able to catch up with the supremely talented saxophonist Tim Garland at none other than Abbey Road Studios! Find out what he is most looking forward to about tonight’s event:

As always tonight’s CLoSer is 80 minutes long with no interval and the bar is open throughout. Please note there is no traditional concert seating. Doors and bar open at 6.45pm.

Adult tickets cost £15 and include one free drink
Limited number of CLS FIVER tickets (£5) available for 16-25 year olds (pre-register at marketingteam@cls.co.uk)

CLoSer: Kancheli & Garland
Wednesday 13 February, 7.30pm (doors/bar open 6.45pm)
Village Underground

Alan Gilbey’s East End

This Winter Festival, East End guru Alan Gilbey returns with a Shoreditch remix of his hit Summer Festival event. “But who knows the East End?”: An Exploration takes audiences through the back streets on a journey of stories and intrigue. We caught up with Alan to find out more…

You’ve lived in the East End all your life, what do you love most about the area?

It’s there when I wake up, which is handy, and I’ve seen a sweep of its story, with all the good bits and the bad bits; the closure of the docks and the coming of Canary Wharf; the ebb and flow of many new people’s washing up on its brick-built shores.

Alan Gilbey at The English Restaurant. Image: Alys Tomlinson.

 And do you have any local recommendations?

 1. The first beigel shop in Brick Lane isn’t as good as the second one, but does do heretical bacon ones, which is fab.
2. Call them beigels not bagels.
3. Eastendbackpassages.com 

 You’ve gathered quite a bit of East End lore and legend in your book East End Backpassages, what’s your favourite tale or strange-but-true nugget of information?

 The founder of the Harlem Globetrotters was a little Jewish man!

 Born just off Brick Lane, Abe Saperstein left for America in 1907 and twenty years later joined the Savoy Big Five, a black basketball team that could only play in segregated leagues. Building on their flare for comedy he renamed them the Harlem Globetrotters (because they came from Chicago and had never been anywhere) and entered the world of show business, where they used a wide repertoire of slick and silly street moves to beat rival teams – who always seemed to be white. A true breaker of racial barriers, Abe died in 1966 and now lies buried in Illinois with a basketball hidden up his shirt.

 When you’re not showing people round East London’s weird and wonderful history, you write for animation. Can you tell us a bit more about what you get up to?

 Well on CBBC I had a hand in the new Pinky and Perky (it’s legal) and Frankenstein’s Cat. And on Cbeebies I’ll soon have a show about philosophy for pre-schoolers and, one day, Dinopaws, my own creation. I’ve also won several animation BAFTA Awards, but they’re only drawings.

 What can people expect in But who knows the East End?

 More than they might be expecting. It’s a journey through stories – starting with Arthur Morrison’s A Child Of The Jago and ending in a secret place where many other storytellers wait with their own tales, and they’ll be all kinds. We’ve got authors and local housewives, historians and Hitchcock.

You’ll learn at least fifty-seven things you didn’t know about Shoreditch before and in ways that will surprise.

“But who knows the East End?”: An Exploration
Monday 10 – Thursday 13 December 2012, 7.00pm-9.00pm
Book your tickets now at spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk or call 020 7377 1362

Gettin’ to know you: Samantha

Samantha recently joined the Spitalfields Music line-up as our new Director of Marketing & Development. Read on to find out more about our Schubert-loving, Kiwi falconist…!

What was the first recording you bought?
The first record I bought (and it was a record) was Nik Kershaw’s album The Riddle.  I was about 11 years old and obsessed with him.

I bought the album after saving up money from my paper-round.  He was also the first concert I ever went to see – I won tickets from a radio competition and took my mum.  The obsession was short-lived though.  I hit the teenage years and my attentions turned to Duran Duran and INXS.

Nik Kershaw – The Riddle

Do you have a favourite composer/artist? If so, who?
I really, really don’t – which is a terribly boring answer to the question isn’t it. But if I were banished to a desert island with the works of only one composer for company, in that instance I would probably choose Schubert.

What was the last concert/gig you went to?
One of the many wonderful benefits of working for orchestras is getting to attend their concerts. So my last concert was with Britten Sinfonia where I previously worked. My last proper gig was the Black Keys at Alexandra Palace, and in a few weeks I’m off to see Tinariwen – a band of Tuareg-Berber musicians from northern Mali who are playing in London. I’m a complete music magpie.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was very little, I wanted to be a vet. I had this idea that being a vet meant you got to play with animals all day. But when we had to put one of our dogs to sleep, not only was heart-broken about losing my pet, I was also heart-broken discovering what a vet had to do sometimes. Not long after I fell in love with music and radio and knew that’s what I’d do. Before working in the arts, I had a long career in commercial radio.

Tinariwen

What were you doing before coming to work with Spitalfields Music?
I was working with the fabulous Britten Sinfonia – a maternity cover position for the Marketing Director. Previous to that I worked for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (APO) in New Zealand.  Until then I’d had a career in commercial radio working in Brighton, Oxford and London, but in 2008 I went back to New Zealand (where I grew up) changed career, heading up the Marketing and Development departments of the APO. I had a wonderful, wonderful time and now couldn’t imagine ever not working in some way with ensembles and orchestras.  Believe it or not, there are many similarities between radio and orchestras.

What’s the nicest or weirdest gift you’ve been given?
I’m bit of a twitcher, so the nicest and weirdest gift I’ve been given was from some colleagues who got me a Falconry experience for my 30^th birthday. It feels ‘awesome’ in the very truest sense of the word to have a powerful buzzard or tawny owl resting on your forearm, eating part of a small rodent. It’s not for the wary or for the squeamish.

Who would you cast as yourself in a movie about your life? And why?
Someone who plays a good geek. I’ve never aspired to be part of the in-crowd. I like a quirkier take on the world.

What excites you most about working with Spitalfields Music?
The companies I’ve loved working for have all had one thing in common:  they are grounded in place and champion their community.  That’s what drew me to Spitalfields Music, it’s an organisation that places as much focus on its learning programme as it does its performance programme. Spitalfields Music is incredibly innovative, more than is realised I think, and I’m excited and proud to be part of the team.

Where’s your favourite place in London?
Coming from New Zealand, which is such a green and mountainous country, I do get homesick for views and elevations.  So my favourite place isn’t a ‘place’ so much as a ‘view’. I will never, ever tire of flying into London, waiting for the moment that the plane finally breaks through the clouds to reveal the splendour of the city stretched out for miles below. Even that high up, you can see immediately that London is the most alive city in the world.

And finally, would you share an interesting fact about yourself with us?

Shortland Street’s early 90s cast

I was once an extra in Shortland Street, a New Zealand soap drama which screened for about two seconds in England during the hey-day of Neighbours. I was a student at the time and payment was all you could drink coca-cola.  Seemed a good deal to me.

Adam Dant: Drawing the crowds

Local artist Adam Dant’s illustrations make up this year’s Winter Festival brochure. We caught up with him recently to ask him a little more about what went into drawing for Spitalfields Music.

Our Winter Festival 2012 front cover

Could you tell us a little bit more about the illustrations you produced for the Winter Festival brochure?

In making pictures for the Spitalfields Music Winter Festival Brochure I decided to adopt the sensibility and style of 18th-century popular prints (the inspiration and starting point for much of my work as an artist).

The heavy black lines, emphatic composition and hastily applied single colours of these prints I thought would fit nicely with the current vogue for the simple elegance and ‘workaday’ vernacular of both the restored ‘Georgian’ architecture of Spitalfields and the ‘Baroque’ musical repertoire.

I thought that by showing different animals encountering period instruments I might, in a very charming fashion, embody references to popular printed pamphlets (such as those of John Playford and the precedents of his books) and perhaps show that though music of the 18th century is well understood and mastered there is in its historical remove something eternal and magical. The animals look at the musical instruments much in the same fashion as their 18th century counterparts would. Is it possible that our reactions to the music might parallel that of our predecessors in a similar fashion?

You’ve produced a very fine map of our venues this Festival, what draws you to making maps?

I’ve drawn a map of the area surrounding my studio in Shoreditch every year since 1995 when I moved there. The maps show the neighbourhood according the dreams of the areas inhabitants, speculation as to its pre-history and how it will look in AD 3000 etc, etc. In my latest exhibition “From the Library of Dr London” I depict various cities ‘personified’ through manipulation of their street plans so Paris becomes a vision of ‘Liberty leading the people’ and Monaco a reclining Picasso nude.

I’m drawn to making maps because they allow for an immediate transformation of how we view the familiar.

How did you approach producing a map for us?

It’s a picture of a map rather than a map. It’s sitting on a Georgian type music stand so it’s somewhere else whilst showing places we need to know if we’re to find the venues for the festival concerts. Maybe when we reach the venue we will be in the realm of this map pictured.

Fox illustration from our Winter Festival brochure

You’re also a local resident, what do you enjoy about the area?

I moved to Shoreditch as all the printers I needed for work were here. It was a very shabby and gloomy neighbourhood but the people who lived and worked here were very straightforward, friendly and understanding and very good fun.

I enjoyed that working and socialising in Redchurch Street, Boundary Street, Chance Street was always a bit of an unpredictable  adventure in a world that seemed completely apart from the rest of the capital. I think that people visiting the area over time must have noticed this, hence its popularity today.

And finally, are there any chances coming up for people to see more of your work?

I have an exhibition until the 6 October at Hales Gallery, 7 Bethnal Green Road: “From The Library of Dr London”.

Also my large commissioned drawing “Bibliotopia” is in Zurich’s Museum Strauhoff (Museum of Literature) as part of their “Book Heavens Book Hells” show all autumn.

Gettin’ to know you: Clare

As we all head ‘back to school’ after the long summer break, we thought who better to put in the hot-seat than our Programme Director: Learning & Participation, Clare! Read on to find out more…

What was the first recording you bought?
Um, not sure I can honestly remember, but do remember listening to ELO’s – A New World Record at a friend’s when I was VERY young – it was great to run around to!

ELO – A New World Record

Do you have a favourite composer? If so, who?
Not particularly, but I love the excitement of new commissions. Others composers that are on my playlist (apart from pieces that I’m studying for choir) are Bach, Poulenc, Xenakis, Mahler, Satie, Mark Anthony Turnage, Britten, Purcell, Julian Anderson, Chris Woods…as you can see, pretty eclectic.

What was the last concert/gig you went to?
The one that I sang in, Sir Mark Elder’s Prom –  Elgar’s The Apostles – the Halle’s Youth Choir were wonderful .  Also recently visited Tate Modern’s latest Turbine Hall installation by Tino Sehgal, brilliant!

What did you want to be when you grew up?
A dancer…but I grew out of that one, hurt my toes too much!

What were you doing before coming to work with Spitalfields Music?
Previously I was Education Director at London Philharmonic Orchestra, I worked there for nearly 5 years and was a fantastic organisation to work with, particularly with the links to Southbank Centre and Glyndebourne and all the inspiring players and staff.

What’s the nicest or weirdest gift you’ve been given?
Our wedding present from our friends – it was a mystery tour to the hotel for our first night  – we ended up at The Portobello in Notting Hill, just sad that we couldn’t stay longer.

Who would you cast as yourself in a movie about your life? And why?
Not sure, but on consultation Kate our Programme Director: Festivals reckons Emma Thompson – she does a fine Nanny McPhee and I particularly liked the warts… so I think that would do for now.

Emma Thompson as Clare Lovett

What excites you most about working with Spitalfields Music?
Working with local partners and people, there’s some extraordinary folks in Tower Hamlets doing inspirational things and it’s a great pleasure to work with them, using music as a catalyst to help progress individual ambitions and projects.  This Autumn I’m really excited by our new partnership with Toynbee Hall, Drake Music and The Map Squad, where we’re putting together a Winter Wonderland weekend for 14 and 15 years olds of all abilities.  This is the first time that we have worked together and it promises to be an exciting collaboration.  Then there’s our tour to Barking and Dagenham and Newham, new projects with Magic Me and our Neighbourhood Schools… and many, many more.

Where’s your favourite place in London?
Too many to list, but current favourite is in the newly refurbished gardens and band stand at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill – for fantastic views across London.

And finally, would you share an interesting fact about yourself with us?
I love MotoGP and TT racing, Valentino Rossi is god and should have a better time now he’s moving back with Yamaha and Guy Martin is magnificent.  Season continues until 11 November in Valencia, catch it while you can!