---

Mike Westbrook’s new version of his acclaimed settings of William Blake’s poetry brings the distinctive voices of Phil Minton and Kate Westbrook together with Paul Ayres’ chamber choir and a highly original quartet of jazz instrumentalists, accordionist Karen Street, violinist Billy Thompson, Steve Berry on double bass and Westbrook himself on piano.

---

The poetry of William Blake, with its searing commentaries on human greed, cruelty and other failings, has a particular resonance in these uncertain times. Toynbee Studios in Commercial Road in London’s East End last weekend (December 6&7, 2008) were the appropriate setting for the latest manifestation of Mike Westbrook’s songs and musical settings of the poems of the 18th century London visionary. Westbrook’s basic group, featuring the leader on piano, Karen Street (accordion), Billy Thompson (violin) and Steve Berry (double bass) was augmented by the 40-strong London College of Music Chamber Choir, directed by Paul Ayres. At its core is Westbrook’s pared-down, hymn-like piano accompaniment and majestic introductions with Berry’s double bass playing a pivotal role. While Karen Street’s accordion and Billy Thompson’s violin provide effective instrumental colour in the arranged sections, their expressive improvisations raised the overall performance to fresh heights. Westbrook’s talent as an arranger, allied to his strong sense of theatre, is to do just as much as is required and not to embellish or complicate without clear reason. The choir provided a further dimension, whether accompanying, taking the lead or in their choir-only feature The Tyger and the Lamb. But it was the two vocalists who stood out - Kate Westbrook’s for her heart-felt delivery and Phil Minton for his passionate interpretation of every single word and the expressive range of his voice. The audience left Toynbee Studios on this cold December evening, uplifted and warmed by Minton’s extraordinary performance of the two closing songs ‘The Fields’ and ‘I See Thy Form’. - Charles Alexander JAZZWISE

---

Mike Westbrook makes full use of his two striking vocalists, Kate Westbrook and Phil Minton. He finds music to match the ecstacy of ‘I See Thy Form’, the desolation of ‘London Song’, turns ‘A Poison Tree’ into a blood-curdling tango, and fashions a magnificent anthem for ‘Let The Slave/The Price of Experience’, Blake’s great paeans to freedom, dignity and compassion. - THE WIRE

---

Westbrook’s settings are  among the greatest British music of the century… bold, optimistic and inspiring. - THE INDEPENDENT

---

Perhaps the greatest work in all British jazz. - INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

---

Many of the songs that form the basis of Glad Day derive from ‘Tyger’,
Adrian Mitchell’s musical about Blake, which was staged by the National
Theatre Company in 1971, with specially commissioned music by Mike
Westbrook. An original Cast recording was released at the time on RCA.

In 1977 this material formed the basis of Mitchell’s Glad Day,  a Thames TV
music-drama which marked the 150th anniversary of Blake’s death, in which
the Mike Westbrook Brass Band participated. By then the Blake songs has become an integral part of the repertoire of the Brass Band on tours throughout Britain and  Europe, on radio and TV, and particularly associated with singers Phil Minton and Kate Westbrook. Four of the songs were included in the Brass Band’s 1975 album For The Record.

Westbrook Blake Bright as Fire CD Information

More William Blake material was added, and in  1980 Bright as Fire, a programme devoted entirely to Blake settings, was recorded ( available on Impetus Records ) and thereafter performed many times, notably at St. Peter’s Church in New York in 1983 and at the Adelaide festival in 1984. Other artists who  have recorded Westbrook’s settings of Blake include Van Morrison and folk singer Frankie Armstrong.

Glad Day CD Information

In 1996 The Brass Band re-assembled for a revival of the Blake programme at the Greenwich Festival, For the first time a choir took part in a ‘live’ performance - the Senior Girls Choir of the Blackheath Conservatoire of Music and the Arts. Subsequent performances which included festivals in Salisbury and Dublin, always involved a local children’s choir. The album Glad Day, which includes six pieces not on the original recording, was released on Enja Records in  1997, funded by an award from the Airshaft Trust.

Mike Westbrook’s first fully choral arrangements were written for the Flemish Radio Choir, for a festival in Antwerp in 1998. These formed the basis for a radically new approach to the Blake material when, in 2007,
Glad Day the Choral Version was given its first performance at the Foundling Museum, London,  as part of the St. Pancras Festival of Contemporary Church Music. This concert marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake.