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Westward Ho!

Part of the Vale of Glamorgan Festival 2020

Add to my Calendar 15-05-2020 20:00 15-05-2020 22:00 36 Westward Ho! The 2020 Vale of Glamorgan Festival starts with your opportunity to see one of the world’s leading vocal music ensembles, Theatre of Voices, in the art deco splendour of Penarth Pier Pavilion. The Copenhagen-based collective specialises in performing contemporary music, and takes us on a journey West in this concert of two dramatic pieces for unaccompanied voices. Premiered by Theatre of Voices at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, A Western is the latest piece by Michael Gordon, founder member of legendary new music group Bang on A Can. This playful work is inspired by the classic Western film High Noon and dramatises a showdown on the dusty streets of Somewheresville, USA. Heiner Goebbels’ Worstward Ho! sets Samuel Beckett’s short novel of the same name to music. Itself a pun on the title of the 19thcentury adventure novel Westward Ho!, Beckett’s text includes his famous line, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Goebbels is known as a director as much as a composer, and his trance-like setting of Beckett’s words is as much a piece of theatre as it is music. Penarth Pier Pavilion, Penarth DD/MM/YYYY

Details

Penarth Pier Pavilion
The Esplanade
Penarth
Vale of Glamorgan
CF64 3AU
Wales

Programme

Michael Gordon – A Western
Heiner Goebbels – Worstward Ho

Performers

Paul Hillier – Conductor

Theatre of Voices

Other concerts in this Festival ▼

Sacred Voices

Becoming Ocean

Carducci Quartet with Huw Watkins

Lines Made By Walking

Heavenly Harps and Alaskan Dances

Breakfast Beats

Programme Note

The 2020 Vale of Glamorgan Festival starts with your opportunity to see one of the world’s leading vocal music ensembles, Theatre of Voices, in the art deco splendour of Penarth Pier Pavilion.

The Copenhagen-based collective specialises in performing contemporary music, and takes us on a journey West in this concert of two dramatic pieces for unaccompanied voices.

Premiered by Theatre of Voices at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, A Western is the latest piece by Michael Gordon, founder member of legendary new music group Bang on A Can. This playful work is inspired by the classic Western film High Noon and dramatises a showdown on the dusty streets of Somewheresville, USA.

Heiner Goebbels’ Worstward Ho! sets Samuel Beckett’s short novel of the same name to music. Itself a pun on the title of the 19thcentury adventure novel Westward Ho!, Beckett’s text includes his famous line, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Goebbels is known as a director as much as a composer, and his trance-like setting of Beckett’s words is as much a piece of theatre as it is music.

Theatre of Voices: A Western (c) Reinhard Wilting

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