Folk at The Atkinson with Chris Wood
The Atkinson folk programme continues this spring with the award-winning Chris Wood on Sunday 4 May.
With his song None the Wiser having been nominated for Best Original Song this year’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards
Criticised by an art school lecturer as having “a remarkable eye for trivia” Chris Wood’s love of small things has made him one of England’s most vivid and arresting song writers. With gentle intelligence he weaves the tradition with his own contemporary parables. Hollow Point is his chilling ballad of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezez and Wood’s feel for the sheer “one thing after another-ness” of life allows us, for the first time, to see the event through the eyes of the victim.
Joan Armatrading presented Chris with the 2011 BBC Radio Two Folk Singer Of The Year award before inviting him as special guest onto her Autumn 2012 tour. They played 51 cities and Wood found himself eavesdropping on conversations from pound shops to tea rooms, army recruiting centres to hotel saunas collecting the poetry of recession. His response is, None The Wiser, a fourth solo album released in Summer 2013. With humble hymns and sweeping statements from Alzheimers to William Blake, Wood lovingly takes the pulse of his homeland in what could be his best album yet.
Wood has worked and collaborated with a long list of artists, most recently Dizraeli, Billy Bragg, Eliza and Martin Carthy in Simon Emerson’s Imagined Village. His duet with Eliza added to the “Villager’s” winning another Folk Award for “Best Traditional Song”.
The Irish Times dubbed him ‘the renaissance man of English folk’ because his work extends beyond song writing into commissions for Radio 3 Between The Ears, Late Junction and The Essay. He has written for The Times and lectured at Newcastle and Limerick Universities. His setting of Blake’s Jerusalem features in Paul Gilroy’s lecture on poetry and music at Kings College London and Wood’s lyric Walk This World With Music is included in Michael Morpurgo’s latest collection.
“The title track alone is a masterpiece” Independent PPPPP
“Wood has honed his songwriting to perfection here… heartbreaking purity.” – Express PPPPP
“Remarkable for the settings as much as the lyrics.” The Guardian PPPP
“Nobody comes even close to equaling his bird’s-eye-view” – The Irish Times PPPPP
“a rarefied talent, both as writer and interpreter.” – MOJO PPPP
“a quietly powerful, astute and vivid set of songs…A folk–soul album” – SONGLINES
Chris Wood performs at 8pm on Sunday 4 May at The Atkinson. Tickets are £14 advance / £16 doors.
You can book your tickets online at theatkinson.co.uk or by calling The Atkinson Box Office on 01704 533333. You can also purchase your tickets over the counter during The Atkinson’s opening hours.
*Please be advised there is a £2 booking fee for booking over the phone and online bookings.
Ends:
LISTING INFORMATION
Chris Wood
Sunday 4 May
8pm
Tickets: £14 advance/ £16 doors
Posted on 30 April 2014 under General news
