COOPER Hall in Frome celebrates St Cecilia’s Day, the patron saint of music each November, and this year they are welcoming Canadian percussionist Adam Teixeira, Italian bass player Michele Tacci and Cumbrian born guitarist, James Kitchman to the hall.
The event, which is taking place on Friday 17th November at 8pm, is curated by cellist and composer Gregor Riddell, an Oslo/London based cellist, composer and founder of SVS online radio station. It’s always an immersive, genre defying gig attracting musicians from around the globe.
BirdWorld, a musical partnership between Gregor Riddell and Adam Teixeira, will present a new album’s worth of music on the night that extends the language from their debut UNDA into a more lyrical, intimate realm, spanning ambient electronic, modern jazz, field recordings to rhythms from around the globe and tightly structured guitar-based songs.
Prior to the gig the band will be spending time at Cooper Hall on a creative residency and Gregor gives a summary of context of the band over the past few years.
In Autumn 2019, BirdWorld released their debut album UNDA on Focused Silence. In the same year, with their respective partners, Adam and Gregor also both became fathers.
Family commitments, Gregor living in Norway, Adam in the UK and the succeeding global pandemic that set the tone for 2020-21, meant BirdWorld weren’t reunited again in person until autumn 2022 where they participated in the Seanse artist residency in Volda (Norway).
Here they distilled ideas that had developed independently throughout this time apart which became material for their second record. They recorded this album with Øyvind Røsrud at Flerbruket Studio (Norway) in early 2023 and finished mastering it in September 2023. They will release the record in Spring 2024 followed by a two-week tour in Europe, Scandinavia and the UK.
“BirdWorld are very grateful to Cooper Hall for giving them the opportunity to arrange, rehearse and perform this new material for the first time,” said Gregor. “This music is a significant step in a new direction from our previous live sets (including, for example, the use of an array of different instruments, vocals, spoken word and live processed electronics – accompanied by two guest artists – Michele Tacci on bass guitar, and James Kitchman on electric guitar – to explore our new sound with a bigger line up.”
Tickets are £16.50 – for more information and booking visit www.cooperhall.org
