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Details
Penarth Pier Pavilion
The Esplanade
Penarth
Vale of Glamorgan
CF64 3AU
Wales
Programme
Michael Gordon – A Western
Heiner Goebbels – Worstward Ho
Performers
Paul Hillier – Conductor
Theatre of Voices
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
The 2020 Vale of Glamorgan Festival starts with your opportunity to see one of the world’s leading vocal music ensembles, Theatre of Voices, in the art deco splendour of Penarth Pier Pavilion.
The Copenhagen-based collective specialises in performing contemporary music, and takes us on a journey West in this concert of two dramatic pieces for unaccompanied voices.
Premiered by Theatre of Voices at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, A Western is the latest piece by Michael Gordon, founder member of legendary new music group Bang on A Can. This playful work is inspired by the classic Western film High Noon and dramatises a showdown on the dusty streets of Somewheresville, USA.
Heiner Goebbels’ Worstward Ho! sets Samuel Beckett’s short novel of the same name to music. Itself a pun on the title of the 19thcentury adventure novel Westward Ho!, Beckett’s text includes his famous line, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Goebbels is known as a director as much as a composer, and his trance-like setting of Beckett’s words is as much a piece of theatre as it is music.
