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Recital Touring Projects with pianist Ann Martin-Davis
Sound Bites
Sound Bites is a new music-touring project developed from a set of recipe songs by Leonard Bernstein.
Bernstein's 'La Bonne Cuisine' is a collection of tongue-in-cheek songs with gruesome recipes from 'La Bonne Cuisine Française' by Emile Dutoit. The songs are hugely popular with audiences across the board.
Classical duo Ann Martin-Davis and Susan Legg have commissioned two new song-cycles from Graham Fitkin and Howard Skempton, inspired by and based on recipes from 'How to Eat' by Nigella Lawson.
The three song cycles are theatrically presented to form a gastronomically gluttonous programme.
Sound Bites was nominated for the Royal Philharmonic Society's prestigious 2002 Audience Development Award. The project has already taken the duo to Salisbury, Cheltenham, Greenwich, Buxton, Buckingham and Stratford English Music Festivals, with further dates planned, including a tour for Nottingham Festival in 2003.
'…Sound Bites with recipe songs?
Any entertainment of this sort has to be of the highest
quality and Susan Legg and Ann Martin-Davis certainly were; lovely singing with incredible diction and superb accompaniment made the evening, with all its props, great fun.'
Buxton Festival review July 2002
Cycles
A compelling new song-cycle by poet Sophie Hannah and composer Gabriel Jackson is
performed alongside Schumann's legendary song-cycle 'Frauenliebe und Leben.'
With newly written poems by celebrated poet Sophie Hannah, A Woman's Life and Loves is a contemporary reworking of Robert Schumann's 'Frauenliebe und Leben', a setting of eight poems which follow a young woman's journey through adulthood, from first love, to marriage, pregnancy and widowhood. Produced by Ann Martin-Davis, both song-cycles form an illuminating and thought-provoking programme.
The project toured major Poetry Festivals in Autumn 2002, including the Manchester and Bristol Poetry Festivals and dates in 2003 will take the duo to The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, Trinity College, Cambridge, Hebden Bridge, Frome, Lichfield and Leicester Festivals.
'Gabriel Jackson…knows he has something to say and he says it with directness and clarity' The Times
Recital Projects with Robin and Kim Colvill
The Life and Times of Edvard Grieg
The story of Norway's most famous pianist and composer.
Songs, piano solos, duets and narration.
"Susan Legg sang effortlessly, with great purity of diction and beauty of tone."
"The narration was carefully constructed and informative"
Taunton Times, 2002
Recent performances include:
Stag Theatre, Sevenoaks; Hinckley Music Club; Largs Festival; Clacton Arts and Literary Society; The Athenaeum, Bury St Edmunds; Grimsthorpe Castle; Brewhouse Theatre, Taunton; Haywards Heath Music Society
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