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Mercy & Grand
Mercy & Grand
0 - Default Title
Description
'Mercy and Grand' celebrates the music of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and at the same time it expresses something of the great American and European songwriting traditions from which they spring. The project involved setting some 13 songs by Tom and Kathleen alongside other composers: two pieces by Kurt Weill, some folk music, a John Tams fairground ballad, a tango and a gypsy waltz, performed by a unique seven-piece band with singer Jess Walker.
It is put together by Opera North Projects in arrangements by Gavin Bryars, Jim Holmes and Joe Townsend. Bryars says: "It is not a pastiche of Tom's own band nor does it replicate Tom's inimitable performing style. Our singer, Jess Walker, is classically trained, female and English, and this can help to draw a different kind of attention to the words and the music, especially for those more used to Tom's unique qualities as performer."
"In the song 'Whistle Down The Wind' the words 'Mercy and Grand' refer to a place, a corner where two roads meet on the edge of a town. We too have tried to find meeting places: between musicians and between song-writing traditions, making intuitive connections across a range of styles and musical genres. We focused on partiar themes - memory, loss, journeys, the circus - and although there is no specific narrative in the sequence of songs, there is a sense in which the music does take us on a kind of journey."
Tom Waits and Gavin Bryars famously first worked together in 1993 on the hypnotic full-length recorded version of Bryars' Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.
Product details
Release Date:
2012-08-16
Publication Date:
2012-08-16
Publisher:
H'ART Musik-Vertrieb GmbH / Marl
Languages:
Published:
English
ISBN13:
0847108056726
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
Currently sold out