Barbican announces Beck: Song Reader Live A stellarline up of

Barbican announces Beck: Song Reader Live
A stellar­line up of artists including Beck, Jarvis Cocker,
Franz Ferdinand, Beth Orton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Joan As
Police Woman, Conor J O’Brien (Villagers), Michael
Kiwanuka, The Staves, The Guillemots, Pictish Trail and
James Yorkston bring Beck’s critically acclaimed catalogue
of sheet music to life
Thursday 4 July 2013, 7.30pm, Barbican Hall, Tickets: £35/30/25/20
The Barbican in association with Faber Social and Glenn Max events brings
together an eclectic mix of high profile musicians for a very special night of live
music, in which they perform Beck Hansen’s unique publishing project Song
Reader. The line­up includes: Beck himself; Pulp frontman and solo artist
Jarvis Cocker; Glasgow’s finest Franz Ferdinand; singer­songwriter Beth
Orton; French icon Charlotte Gainsbourg; Joan Wasser aka Joan As
Police Woman; Villagers front man Conor J O’Brien; acoustic indie trio The
Staves; indie mavericks The Guillemots; soul stylist Michael Kiwanuka and
singer­songwriters James Yorkston and The Pictish Trail, with more guests
to be announced. At the heart of the evening will be a specially­assembled
house band featuring Seb Rochford (drums), Tom Herbert (bass), Dave
Okumu (guitar), with music direction by Ed Harcourt and David Coulter.
Beck has always been one of music’s great pioneers and Song Reader is an
experiment in what an album might look like in the digital age: 20 songs,
including two instrumentals, existing only as a book of individual pieces of
sheet music, never before released or recorded. The songs are meant to
come to life in a new golden age of home performance, leaving the listener,
essentially, to be the performer. Current interpretations can be found at
http://www.songreader.net
Ten years in the making, Song Reader was published by Faber at the end of
last year, and comes complete with full­colour, heyday­of­home­play­inspired
art for each song and a lavishly produced hardcover carrying case (and, when
necessary, ukulele notation). Beautifully illustrated by Marcel Dzama, Leanne
Shapton, Josh Cochran, Jessica Hische and others, Song Reader was
designed by Beck with the help of McSweeney’s publishing Company in San
Francisco. Beck says:” These songs are meant to be pulled apart and
reshaped. The idea of them being played by choirs, brass bands, string
ensembles, anything outside of traditional rock­band constructs — it’s
interesting because it’s outside of where my songs normally exist. I thought a
lot about making these songs playable and approachable, but still musically
interesting. I think some of the best covers will reimagine the chord structure,
take liberties with the melodies, the phrasing, even the lyrics themselves.
There are no rules in interpretation.”
In the lead up to, and at the event, the Barbican and Faber Social will celebrate
the life of Becks’ Song Reader so far, with an exhibition of the artwork and a
presentation of a selection of some of the very best amateur interpretations of
the songs.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
Barbican Box Office: 0845 120 7550
www.barbican.org.uk
Faber Social
www.fabersocial.co.uk
Press Information
For any further information, images or to arrange interviews, please contact
the Barbican’s music media relations team:
Annikaisa Vainio­Miles, Media Relations Manager
t – +44 (0)20 7382 7090
e – annikaisa.vainio­[email protected]
Sabine Kindel, Senior Media Relations Officer
t – +44 (0)20 7382 6199
e – [email protected]
Eleanor Chapman, Media Relations Officer
t – +44 (0)20 7382 6196
e – [email protected]
Sagar Shah, Media Relations Assistant
t – +44 (0)20 7382 6138
e – [email protected]
For more information about Beck’s Song Reader please contact:
Becky Fincham, Manager of Faber Social
t – +44 (0)20 7927 3908
e – [email protected]
About the Barbican
A world­class arts and learning organisation, the Barbican pushes the
boundaries of all major art forms including dance, film, music, theatre and
visual arts. Its creative learning programme further underpins everything it
does. Over 1.5 million people pass through the Barbican’s doors annually,
hundreds of artists and performers are featured, and more than 300 staff work
onsite. The architecturally renowned centre opened in 1982 and comprises
the Barbican Hall, the Barbican Theatre, the Pit, Cinemas One, Two and
Three, Barbican Art Gallery, a second gallery The Curve, foyers and public
spaces, a library, Lakeside Terrace, a glasshouse conservatory, conference
facilities and three restaurants. The City of London Corporation is the founder
and principal funder of the Barbican Centre.
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About Faber Social
Faber Social is bright to you by Faber & Faber, one of the last of the great
independent publishing houses in London.
Faber Social exists in the place where music and literature meet. A forum for
ambitious publishing, a live events programme, an online hub, Faber Social
celebrates experimentation in a landscape where stories, music and
performance cohabit. The first Monday of each month, we invite you to us in
London for an evening with artists who are assembled by theme, who so far
have included Jarvis Cocker, Viv Albertine, SJ Watson, David Peace, Edwyn
Collins, Edna O’ Brien, Olivia Laing. In recent months we have celebrated
Dissent, the Occult, Vinyl, Rivers and Power, Corruption & Lies and our
events continue to spread to different locations and in different forms.
Faber Social has published a range of music books including Beck’s Song
Reader, Julian Cope’s Copendium, Jarvis Cocker’s Mother Brother, Lover,
Nicky Wire’s Death of a Polaroid and will publish the forthcoming memoir by
Beastie Boys.
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Resources
More about Song Reader here:
http://www.faber.co.uk/catalog/song­reader/9780571299409
Beck quote taken from McSweeney’s Q&A, full version can be found here:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a­qa­with­beck­hansen­author­of­song­re
ader
Beck wrote “A Preface to Song Reader” for the New York Times:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/beck­a­preface­to­son
g­reader.html