Brampton musician Phil Furneaux has hand-picked a team of fellow artists to present a ‘multi-sensory’ tribute to the River Gelt.
Old Water New Water will be staged at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle next month. The show is a collaboration bringing together music, poetry and a video of the river which runs through Brampton.
Phil was inspired to create the show following his previous work with friend and pianist Krys Markowski, with whom he has the band FuMar.
“We set up a workshop where artists would come and we would play and they would do their art, and we would do musical interpretation of their art,” says Phil. “I wanted a way to follow on from that and I decided to do a musical journey down the Gelt.”
Old Water New Water will feature music by The Red Stone Trio, which comprises Phil on saxophone, Penny Callow, a professional musician from Newcastle, on cello, and Rosh Singh, a music graduate from Gateshead, on the tablas.
Their music – described as a blend of soft jazz with a classical foundation and indo beat – will be accompanied by poems specially written for the event and recited by Clare Crossman a poet and writer formerly of Brampton who now lives in Cambridge. The music and poetry will overlay a video of the River Gelt created by Phil.
“I have hand-picked this team and I took my time over it,” says Phil, who is a retired William Howard School physics teacher and a consultant for the Institute of Physics.
“I thought if people were watching the visual, and had musical input, and if there was the spoken word in there as well it might be sensory overload and have a real impact.”
Old Water New Water is at Tullie House, Carlisle, Saturday November 30, 7.30pm. Tickets £10/£7.
