Schwa - a lark

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Sally Bavage writes:

Richard Ormrod, Jacqui Wicks, Peter Spafford

The intimate piano bar atmosphere was well-established and we were nearly ready to start yet another lovely opportunity to hear Schwa showcase for us their highly original mix of poetry adapted and enhanced by music and voice.  A hubbub outside reveals crowds of would-be audience members.  Quickly sourcing more chairs and tables, we are finally able to slide into the first number delivered to a packed room.   A really packed room!

The Pasture by Robert Frost, adapted by the ever-inventive Peter Spafford, washes over us and relaxes us with its gentle references to nature. Its reassuring riff 'I shan't be gone long' segues perfectly into Robert Browning's Home Thoughts from Abroad.  Jacqui Wicks' powerful, almost operatic, voice conveys a sense of such longing  for the homeland.  'Goodnight, my friends, I'm off, I'm done' swept us along to a section focusing on the birds referenced in the title of their set.

Who killed Cock Robin was different again, bringing in yet more instrumental talent from Richard Ormrod (more of that later) and a hint of Inti-Illimani's Chilean mournfulness hung in the air as a lament for the dead bird.  The final lines: 'All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing, When they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin' were delivered to an audience which was absolutely spellbound by a familiar nursery rhyme delivered in such an unfamiliar and original way.

Blackbirds was also nursery-rhyme related – although purists describe them as English folk poems, correctly in my view.  Was it inspired by a William, either Cobbett or Shakespeare;  who knew?  It made the audience smile before the more sober mood engendered by Christina Rossetti's Dead in the Cold about a 'song-singing thrush' and the final line, 'Raise him a tombstone of snow' seemed very appropriate after the last week of extreme weather.  Bones, by Carl Sandburg, continued with the mournful mood as we explored burial at sea.  'Sling me under the sea, Pack me down in the salt and wet' provided the refrain that was strangely hypnotic. 

We moved into a lighter mood with a trio of songs - Six o'Clock, Roe Deer and Bliss, based on T S Eliot, Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie and Stevie Smith.  Who said Stevie was a celebrated celibate? 

I like to laugh and be happy

With a beautiful kiss,

I tell you, in all the world

There is no bliss like this.

That gives you an idea of just how versatile, wide-ranging and eclectic the poetry is that Schwa adopt, adapt and translate into entertainment that is both easy on the ear, stimulating for the brain and completely engrossing.

More of the birds in the second half as Edward Thomas' Cock Crow, then The Dipper and Two Peewits – whose name imitates their cry – flutter over our heads. By this time the piano bar ambience has moved to a jazz cellar, with a bit of torch singing, the occasional virtuoso instrumentalism and  many changes of mood. 

 Autumn Birds was inspired by John Clare, whose observations of the natural world are still some of the most evocative.  Perfect inspiration for a poet.   A book of spells – yes, really – set Peter to writing Churn, from an incantation to keep the milk flowing in cows.  The love for this many-layered trio was flowing too; how much more impressed could we be by the range, the inventiveness as well as the respect they show for each other and the cheery rapport that makes what they do appear seamless.  It isn't; it's based on a lot of thought, work and practice.

A delightful reprise of both I Am Alive by Emily Dickinson and Slow Cooker from last year's show are greeted warmly, and serve to illustrate once again both the jawdrop quality of Jacqui's voice and Peter's playful inventiveness.  Richard Ormrod played the bubbling stewpot to perfection, with a slight samba rhythm coming through.

We canter towards the end with Ferry – crossing from Staten Island to Manhattan on a dark night with Edna St Vincent Millay's 'Recuerdo' (only the second woman to be awarded the Frost Medal for poetry).   The opening line of 'We were very tired, we were very merry' could have summed up the audience who had enjoyed an emotional roller-coaster through the changing moods generated by Schwa.

The encore, Happiness, is based on a Chinese poem from the eighteenth century describing 33 moments of happiness.  The chorus of 'Ah, is this not happiness' was joyfully taken up by the audience as we croon the final moments of complete engagement with a wonderful trio.

You simply cannot sum up what Schwa represent.  Apart from Wiki's 'Schwa is a very short neutral vowel sound, and like all other vowels, its precise quality varies depending on the adjacent consonants. In most varieties of English, schwa occurs almost exclusively in unstressed syllables.'   Unstressed, clever and thoughtful adaptations of a wide and eclectic range of poetry sources to music and song, as well as huge talent, camaraderie, brio and sheer joy; that's what they represent.  Next time you see Schwa are on, anywhere, make sure you go.

Richard Ormrod does deserve a special mention for the sheer range of instruments that he plays to enhance the atmosphere of any piece.  Is there anything he can't pluck, strike or blow!?  Drums, guitars and saxophones of various ranges, clarinet, ukelele, accordion, Indian bells, shakers … even the piano. And he sang.  And I'll have forgotten quite a few.

Audience Comments

Audience Comments

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Wonderful performance – a joy to be part of it – thanks!

Love it!

Very good and good musicians

Very good exceptional talent

A lovely evening with a great blend of poems and music. A nice warm atmosphere. Very enjoyable.

Fine tunes make firebirds?

Lyrical, beautiful, otherworldly

Haunting and funny and celebratory and exhilarating – thank you! Fantastic to have events like this on our doorstep, and lovely how many different members of the community are here!

A delightful evening with three very talented musicians. Beautiful mix of poetry and music made very accessible. Thank you.

Really great.

A wonderful blend of words, music, songs and instruments and emotions.

Lovely evening – going to go home and read some poetry now! Especially cock robin.

Wonderful innovative percussion. Jacqui’s voice/delivery beautiful. Great venue. Words evocative and thoughtful. Great atmosphere – fine song to leave us with – ‘Happiness’

Lovely singing, playing, writing – as always.

Words aren’t the form for describing an evening with Schwa. I don’t want to break the spell of spaces, shapes colour of feeling.

Brilliant.

V. good

Great event. Nice evening.

Excellent lovely mixture of sounds. Original concept using poems as a starting point. Beautiful evocative voices and sounds.

A nice combination of sounds. Friendly. Original.Inventive.

Liked venue. Good to hear new literary stuff and music together. Envious of the person playing so many instruments. Liked bird theme… not ‘Slow Cooker’.

Very enjoyable. Loved the poetry choices.

Excellent!

This was an extremely enjoyable event with very talented performers.

Great! Very inventive, melodic and harmonious. Loved the new songs (and the old). Uplifting.

Wide ranging – material and instruments – clever and captivating.

Extraordinary, as ever.

Even better than last year.

Talented people. Really love it!!!

Excellent musician. Great atmosphere. Very convivial.

Excellent performance. Musically brilliant.

Robin Lustig - Is Anything Happening?

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Robin Lustig
Photo: Richard Wilcocks

Robin Lustig lived up to all expectations, especially for those of us in the audience who had read his compelling memoir in advance. It is difficult to improve on the accurate descriptions of it in the quotes printed on the dust jacket, which come from people who know what they are dealing with. Richard Sambrook, for example, Cardiff University Professor of Journalism, describes the author as ‘intelligent, shrewd, witty, civilised and great company’. Quite so. This was the man we saw in front of us in the historic Leeds Library on Saturday afternoon, amongst gleaming oak panels and myriads of books.

So why write another one? Lustig explained. He is reassuringly old-fashioned at the same time as au fait with what is happening in the world at this moment. His experiences are important in the history of journalism, sometimes exemplary. Beginning with the news agency Reuters, he moved to The Observer for twelve years, then signed up with the BBC, presenting The World Tonight, Newsstand, Stop Press and File on 4 for Radio 4, and Newshour on the BBC World Service. In 2013, he received the Charles Wheeler award for outstanding contributions to broadcast journalism. Surely worth preserving in a book.

The ‘craggy-faced, white-haired’ Charles Wheeler was one of his role models, ‘whose integrity and professionalism exemplified all that is good about journalism’ and who was at various times a presenter for Newsnight and Panorama. His other role model was William Boot, protagonist in Evelyn Waugh’s comic novel Scoop, who is sent overseas by mistake to report on a war he knows nothing about. Lustig thinks that he had more in common with Boot, and his anecdotes show that he might be right, that he is not taking a consciously self-deprecatory stance. His memoir is largely about a time before the internet and smart phones, when a foreign correspondent’s first task was to find a public phone, often in a hotel, to make sure that stories of about two hundred words could be dictated to someone back in London. He still relishes the occasions when he beat other correspondents by getting to the hotel’s apparatus first to make sure a crucial story appeared first in Britain.

He gave us insights into what it was like when the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989: at first it was not clear that the pickaxes and sledgehammers were just about to come out, because the momentous event was preceded simply by a garbled announcement from an announcer on East German television that citizens were now free to cross from East to West. Lustig attempted to cover the event from an obvious standpoint - the top of the television tower on the edge of Alexanderplatz in Berlin-Mitte. Just about every correspondent and media crew from around the world, and assorted others, had the same idea, so his report was made in the middle of a cacophony of voices, cheering and singing. On another occasion, during an election in Pakistan, the hotel driver was ferrying him around Karachi when the car was shot up, flying glass injuring him. The perpetrators of the attack later apologised (‘We didn’t know you were from the BBC’) and the driver expressed his shock, because he usually just took guests to the airport.

He was ‘controversial’ when he spoke about his time based in Jerusalem, though I would think that just about any report or opinion from Israel might count as controversial, either by what is said or what is left out, because of the all-consuming passions which tend to take over. Lustig was there for some time in the eighties, covering plenty of what was happening. He reported from Lebanon, interviewed Israelis and Palestinians of all extremes and none, described his run-ins with military censors and related how the first thing people asked him when he told them his name was ‘Are you Jewish?’ He was not sure how to reply because although his parents managed to escape from the Nazis, they were not religious. He did, however, marry a woman who wanted a ceremony in a synagogue, which he agreed to, even though he was not acquainted with such places. The rabbi asked him if he could prove that his mother was Jewish. He could. He produced her old German passport from when the Nazis were in power, helpfully inscribed with a prominent J for Jude. He made the point that most Jews in the world do not live in Israel, and that the creation of the State of Israel in May, 1948 was ‘probably a mistake’. Read the book!

The final part of his talk was about the threats to newspapers and to serious journalism today. The paying readership of most papers is a fraction of what it was a decade or two ago. He took a straw poll. Yes, a majority sometimes got the news and various features from their iPad or smartphone. Few bought a paper every day. Journalists and other staff were being discarded all over the place. One solution was to subscribe to online versions of the press. The readers should pay for what they are getting. The BBC is outpaced by Netflix in terms of finance, and it is essential to support it, in spite of its faults. We should be very wary of fake news. He gave us a few worrying examples. We nodded in agreement with him: the audience at question time was with him as near-completely as made no difference.

Is Anything Happening? (2017) by Robin Lustig. Biteback Publishing Ltd.

Audience Comments

Very interesting and entertainingly presented

First class in content and deliver.  Also well organised

Excellent, informative, entertaining talk

Really interesting - thought-provoking and made you realise the value of serious journalism

V interesting.  Enjoyed the width of subject

Excellent talk, thank you very much for organising it!  Will be definitely looking out again for your talks!

Perfect. Journalist describing journalism

Excellent.  Very entertaining but also informative and inspiring

Interesting, informative and entertaining

Very stimulating and interesting, especially as my son works for BBC News – is it like that for him?  Robin sounds exactly the same as when I listened to 'The World Tonight', usually in my bath.  Still his broadcasts

I learnt a lot about the way journalism and the BBC work.  Very informative

Delightfully interesting and entertaining talk

Very interesting.  Good speaker

A great event, v interesting and insightful discussion & a wonderful venue

Fascinating, entertaining and well worth coming to.  Thank you

Insightful, entertaining talk from an excellent speaker

Excellent afternoon!

Very interesting.  Really enjoyed it.  Missed the beginning because I went to the Leeds City Library – I never even knew this library existed!  It's an amazing place.  Love it

Very interesting, informative and entertaining

Absolutely excellent!

Really enjoyed this!

The event was very good.  Your publicity is strange!  Your brochure says this is the last year but yet you ask for donations for future events

Ed:  we still have the majority of the 2018 programme to deliver, as well as plenty of future one-off 'Between the Lines' events