Recently, legendary producer/musician/all-round genius Brian Eno was unveiled as the guest artistic director for the Brighton Festival this year, and now some of his 'programme' for the event has also been unveiled. Good news. Here's a brief run-down of what Eno's got planned over the course of the festival:
May 1 and 2: Apollo: This Is For All Mankind: A live soundtrack of Eno's music performed by the Icebreaker Ensemble to the Al Reinert documentary of the Apollo missions, along with an introductory talk by Eno himself. Also features a special guest appearance by Steel Pedal player BJ Cole.
May 9: This is Pure Scenius! A magnificent seven of Brian Eno, Karl Hyde, Leo Abrahams, Jon Hopkins and The Necks (Lloyd Swanton and Chris Abrahams) "come together to imagine new forms of music, realised over three consecutive performances altogether forming a 6-hour music experience". Sounds pretty intense, doesn't it? Improvisation ahoy!
May 7: This is Acappella! will see Frank Zappa's Persuasionists, New York's Naturally 7 and Reggie Watts for, well...Acapella stuff, as you'd expect. So, this will obviously be devoid of instruments, but plenty of the aforementioned improvisation, mostly emanating from the vocal chords.
May 14: This is Afrobeat! features Tony Allen/Seun Kutu and Egypt 80. Tony Allen was the drummer and unofficial musical director of Fela Kuti's Africa 70 for about ten years. Fela Kuti's son, Seun, also makes an appearance with Egypt 80, his dad's band.
The 44th Brighton Festival runs for an awfully long time, from Saturday May 1 to Sunday May 23, and sees 113 events take place, 30 premieres and exclusives, 8 of which are commissions. Whatever the hell that means. Eno, as well as being one of the pioneers of ambient music, is currently working with Coldplay, and made the Windows 95 start-up sound.
Tickets are on sale from March 5. More information here.
