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Kate Westbrook voice   Chris Biscoe saxophone   Karen Street accordion/saxophone
   Simon Pearson drums   Andy Tweed saxophone Chris Caldwell saxophone  
Mike Westbrook piano / M.D.

‘THE SERPENT HIT’
Mike Westbrook music   Kate Westbrook texts

The new Mike Westbrook Band made its debut at Kings Place, London on April 2nd 2011. This concert, marking Mike Westbrook’s 75th birthday, saw the World Premiere of THE SERPENT HIT, a composition for voice, saxophone quartet and drums, as well as the first live performance of music from the Westbrooks’ latest album FINE ‘n YELLOW.

Composer/bandleader Mike Westbrook has led a succession of big bands and small groups since the 1960s. His collaboration with vocalist/librettist Kate Westbrook began in the’70s. The line up of the current band crosses all musical boundaries and represents, in Mike’s words, “ a new door opening.”

In THE SERPENT HIT elements Jazz, Rock, Contemporary Classical Music, Opera, Music Theatre and Agit Prop are brought together in the latest manifestation of the colourful and uniquely challenging Art of Kate and Mike Westbrook.

“No one has succeeded in creating a more distinctive body of work than Mike and Kate
Westbrook. Their mixture of jazz, music- theatre, poetry, street entertainment and
visuals is rich and unique.” Dave Gelly The Observer

Derek Warby Artist Management: derekwarbymanagement@derekwarby.co.uk

Listen to
THROW
from "The Serpent Hit"

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T H E   S E R P E N T   H I T

The Music

There are five verses - Throw, Lob, Hurl, Pitch (an instrumental) and Trigger.
Each verse follows a similar word pattern which I have broken down into five sections. Settings of all verses are based on one set of five musical ideas. But, to avoid the predictable and ensure that no two verses are alike, the order in which these ideas are used, is different every time. For example, the refrain ‘Round, round, round’ which occurs in each verse, is heard against a rock figure in ‘Throw’, set as a ballad in ‘Hurl’, be-bop in ‘Trigger’, and so on. The piece finishes with a sixth section, a ‘Coda’ which adds new musical ideas to the cycle.
My intention is to present the words, the musical elements and the voices of the six participants in a variety if permutations, and to create a coherent piece which yet follows no obvious pattern.
Mike Westbrook

The Words

The fable of the Serpent Hit is rather like a children’s circle game. The tale starts with a small act of violence against innocent pleasure (on the merry-go-round), then proceeds to a wanton gesture against art (at the potter’s wheel), the next one against nature (in the whirlpool). ‘Pitch’, is concerned with the threat to abstract virtues. In ‘Trigger’ a political impasse leads to the destruction of our planet (with the spinning of the earth). With the ‘Coda’, in Biblical imagery, we fall and wheel from Armageddon to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. And, somewhere in our universe, the whole story begins over again.
Kate Westbrook

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