 | Summer 2012 monthly round-up
Welcome to the Barbican’s Summer Special – a bumper round-up of press information, highlighting the key events and activities taking place between June and September. For immediate release: Friday 8 June 2012
Summer 2012 event guides
Find out about what’s going on in the Centre in our summer event guides:
Download the June guide
Download the July/August guide
CROSS-ARTS
Designing 007 – Fifty Years of Bond Style
6 July – 5 Sept / Barbican Centre /
Media View 5 July 10am - 1pm
This summer the Barbican marks the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise, from 1962’s DR NO to this year’s SKYFALL, by joining forces with EON Productions to create a unique exhibition designed by Ab Rogers, produced by the Barbican and guest-curated by fashion historian Bronwyn Cosgrave and OSCAR®-winning costume designer Lindy Hemming.
With unprecedented access to EON’s archive, Designing 007 – Fifty Years of Bond Style is a multi-sensory experience, where screen icons, costumes, production design, automobiles, gadgets, special effects, graphic design, exotic locations, weapons, stunts and props combine to immerse the audience in the creation and development of Bond style over its auspicious 50 year history.
Read the full press release
THEATRE AND DANCE
Carousel – Opera North
15 Aug – 15 Sept / Barbican Theatre / Press night 17 August
After a successful residence at the Barbican in 2011, Opera North returns to London to present its critically acclaimed production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical Carousel . Voted best musical of the 20th century by Time Magazine, the show includes hit songs 'You'll Never Walk Alone' and 'June is Bustin' Out All Over' and received 5* reviews from its opening in Leeds in May. For the first long run in London, Opera North presents performers of the highest calibre, including opera singers Sarah Tynan, Yvonne Howard and Michael Todd Simpson, with an outstanding production team – director Jo Davies, designer Anthony Ward and choreographer Kim Brandstrup.
Ganesh Versus the Third Reich – Back to Back Theatre
28 June – 1 July / Stratford Circus / Press night 28 June
In association with London International Festival of Theatre, the Barbican presents Back to Back Theatre’s Ganesh Versus the Third Reich at Stratford Circus. Never afraid of confronting difficult issues, the Australian company follow their acclaimed 2010 LIFT production, Food Court, with an equally complex and uncompromising work. Ganesh Versus the Third Reich is a multi-layered tale weaving two narratives: it follows the Hindu God Ganesh on a quest to reclaim the swastika (the Hindu symbol for luck and wellbeing) back from Hitler, and also tells the story of a struggling group of actors wresting power from an overbearing director. Back to Back Theatre's ensemble of actors with intellectual disabilities won the award for best Ensemble Performance at the 2011 Green Room Awards in Melbourne.
You Me Bum Bum Train
19 July – 19 Sept / Stratford / Press performance slots 24 July
Cult hit You Me Bum Bum Train returns with a long-awaited new work, co-commissioned by the Barbican and CREATE and presented in association with Theatre Royal Stratford East. In an exhilarating and participatory adventure, the sole audience member becomes a passenger who journeys through a maze of live scenes. You Me Bum Bum Train caused a sensation when first seen at the Barbican in 2010 and artists Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd won the 2010 Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award and the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Outstanding Newcomer.
On 21 July the Barbican looks east as Hackney welcomes the 2012 Olympic torch with two free outdoor events:
Dance Nations Dalston
21 July / Gillett Square, Dalston, London N16
The third edition of Dance Nations Dalston presents a jam-packed day of free live music and dance in Gillett Square, compered by comedian and writer Christopher Green, performing as Ida Barr. Confirmed acts include dance company Bollywood Vibes, acrobatic performers The Black Eagles, swing band King Candy and the Sugar Push, 1920s dance class Lah di Dah, and street dancers Slum Civilians. The afternoon will be filled with Latin rhythms, urban grooves and family activities including hip-hop dance workshops, drumming and swing, plus dancing until late in the summer evening.
Shoreditch Festival
21 July / Along the Regent’s Canal, off Kingsland Road
Just a few yards away, along the Regent’s Canal, the Barbican and Shoreditch Trust collaborate for the fourth year running to present Shoreditch Festival, a mix of live music, theatre, dance, storytelling and art. With performances on floating stages and along the tow path, as well as family activities, Shoreditch Festival is a celebration of the creativity of East London.
MUSIC
Back2Black Festival
29 June -1 July / Old Billingsgate, London
Hosted by and featuring Gilberto Gil, with Macy Gray, Luiz Melodia, Marcelo D2, Linton Kwesi Johnson & Dennis Bovell, Emicida + Rio Baile Funk, DJ Sany Pitbull, Passinhos, and MC Fininho (29 June); Roots Manuva, Hugh Masekela, Criolo, Mulatu Astatke, Femi Kuti, Fatou Diawara, Tono, Flavio Renegado, Roberto Frejat, Vieux Farka Touré, and Lucky Peterson (30 Jun); and Gilberto Gil + special guest, Amadou & Mariam, Toumani Diabaté + Arnaldo, Antunes + Edgard Scandurra, Mart’nália, Natasha Llerena, DJ João Brasil and Jupiter & Okwess International (1 Jul).
The three-day Back2Black festival (part of the London 2012 Festival), arrives in the capital at the end of June in the first ever iteration outside Brazil. Hosted by and featuring Gilberto Gil and produced by the Barbican, Zoocom Events and Serious this unprecedented, urban curated festival is a celebration of African roots in music and culture. It features an eclectic line-up of more than twenty Brazilian, UK and international artists in a heady mix of funk, reggae, dub, hip hop, samba, and blues. Back2Black takes place across three stages (outdoor terrace, main stage in the Grand Hall and club stage in The Vault) at Old Billingsgate Market in East London, which is transformed for the occasion by Brazilian visual artists.
Launched in Rio de Janeiro in 2009, the annual Back2Black festival has quickly established itself as one of the foremost cultural events in Brazil attracting over 35,000 visitors to date. This first London Back2Black festival features a strong emphasis on UK-African connections and communities including Afro-Caribbean artists. During the weekend, Back2Black will host a series of live interviews and panel sessions with artists and leading cultural commentators, including a conversation between Gilberto Gil and Hugh Masekela around the subject of musicians in exile. Additional sessions cover the themes of “Literature and Cultural Change”, and “Cultural Politics and Communities”.
The festival also includes drumming displays and workshops involving Drum Heads – an ensemble of young musicians from East London and the Pracatum School from Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.
Read our press release for further information or visit the mini-site here: http://www.barbican.org.uk/back2blackfestival/home
Gilberto Gil with the London Symphony Orchestra
Strings and Rhythm Machines
4 July / Barbican Hall / 7:30pm
Following the Back2Black Festival, Gilberto Gil plays the Barbican Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Francois-Xavier Roth. The evening features new arrangements of Gil’s infectious songs by Jaques Morelenbaum, and music originating from and influenced by Brazil, including works by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Darius Milhaud. Part of the London 2012 Festival.
Read more about the concert here
Paul Heaton’s ‘The 8th’
5 July / Barbican Hall / 7:30pm
Former Housemartin and Beautiful South frontman, Paul Heaton, brings to London his acclaimed project The 8th, one of the hits of last year’s Manchester International Festival.
Heaton will be accompanied by artists including: star of US hit series The Wire Reg E Cathey, Ivor Novello winning artist Cherry Ghost, ex-Beautiful South singer Jacqui Abbott, and Los Campesinos! vocalist Gareth Paisey. Given a theatrical narrative by award-winning playwright Che Walker (Royal Court and Young Vic) and directed by Paines Plough’s joint artistic director George Perrin, it looks at the Seven Deadly Sins in a single poverty-stricken neighbourhood, where an additional, thoroughly modern sin is able to insinuate itself into every person’s life.
Read more about this concert here
Goran Bregović : Margot, Diary Of An Unhappy Queen
6 July / Barbican Hall / 8:00pm
Celebrated composer and bandleader Goran Bregović presents his wonderful new project Margot, Diary Of An Unhappy Queen . Combining music and drama, the evening revolves around the topics of war, loss, love and life, and features a gypsy brass band, a string quartet, a six piece Bulgarian choir and an actress.
Desdemona
19 – 20 July / Barbican Hall / 7:30pm
Rokia Traoré and Toni Morrison, two women of African and African American origin, come together to create a work inspired by an 'invisible' character from one of Shakespeare’s most racially charged plays. In response to Peter Sellars’ 2009 Othello, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison and Malian singer/songwriter Rokia Traoré collaborate to create an intimate and profound conversation between Shakespeare’s Desdemona and her African nurse, Barbary, from beyond the grave. Moving beyond centuries of colonialism and racism, two women share stories, songs and hope for a different future.
Read the full press release
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis Residency
10 - 26 July / Barbican and East London venues
The world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis return to the Barbican for their second International Associate residency in July 2012, giving audiences the opportunity to experience music performed by some of America’s finest jazz musicians in concerts, workshops, master classes, professional development events and talks.
The residency features two European premieres: Congo Square (10 July) – a composition written by Wynton Marsalis and Ghanaian drum master Yacub Addy; and Wynton Marsalis’ Abyssinian Mass (13 July), first performed to celebrate the bicentenary of New York City’s Abyssinian Baptist Church in 2008 and bringing together the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with a 100-voice choir, conducted by Damien Sneed. The third concert on 16 July sees the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis joined by Cuban percussionist Pedrito Martinez, and musicians Ariacne Trujillo and Jhair Sala, for Afro-Cuban Fiesta, a concert exploring the connection between the American jazz big band tradition and Afro-Cuban jazz. In the midst of the concerts will be A Midsummer Night’s Swing Dance on 14 July, an unmissable evening of red-hot swing for dance-lovers featuring a UK all-star Big Band with special guests from Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in the stunning setting of the newly refurbished Bishopsgate Institute.
The residency culminates with the UK premiere of jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis' symphonic meditation on the evolution of swing, Swing Symphony (Symphony No. 3). The new work can be heard at the Barbican on 25 & 26 July performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
Africa Express
September 2012 / Nationwide
As part of the London 2012 Festival, Africa Express teams up with the Barbican for its most ambitious event to date. Travelling through cities across the UK by train, Africa Express will bring together African and Western musicians in its typically freewheeling and inventive manner, taking some of the world’s most exciting musicians to communities in Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff and Middlesbrough.
VISUAL ARTS
Bauhaus: Art as Life
Until 12 August 2012 / Barbican Art Gallery
Bauhaus: Art as Life is the biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years. From its avant-garde arts and crafts beginnings the Bauhaus shifted towards a more radical model of learning uniting art and technology. A driving force behind Modernism, it further sought to change society in the aftermath of World War I, to find a new way of living. Bringing together more than 400 works, the show features a rich array of painting, sculpture, architecture, film, photography, furniture, graphics, product design, textiles, ceramics and theatre by such Bauhaus masters. Set in a dynamic installation designed by award-winning architects Carmody Groarke with graphic designers APFEL, Barbican Art Gallery is transformed into a series of dramatic and intimate spaces.
Read the full press release
Bauhaus: Art as Life
Events Programme - summer highlights:
Bauhaus by Day, Bauhaus by Night
23 June / 12pm – Midnight / Various locations including the Garden Room
Join us for a one-day event to celebrate art, life and friendship, inspired by the joyous Bauhaus community. Festivities run throughout the day and include workshops on kite-making with specialist Karl Longbottom, creating puppets with Bauhaus stage expert Melissa Trimingham and an accessories making class led by designer Fred Butler, as well as the launch of artist Ian Whittlesea’s newly illustrated book – Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture. Start the evening with the lecture demonstration Play Bauhaus – Jam Out by Torsten Blume director of the Bauhaus Stage in Dessau and dancer Yun-Ju Chen. Then see out the night with the Bauhaus Art as Life Costume Party with special prizes for the best dressed guests.
Talk: Building on the Bauhaus Legacy
12 July / Cinema 2 / 7pm
Louisa Hutton of Sauerbruch Hutton, designers of the Federal Environmental Agency in Dessau, speaks about working in direct relation and proximity to Gropius’s landmark school building and masters’ houses as well as the award-winning practice’s recent and current projects.
Read the full events press release
Designer Jewellers Group
Until 21 June / Barbican Centre Level G
The Designer Jewellers Group showcases the beautiful work of 21 of the UK’s contemporary jewellers. Established in 1975 as a co-operative, all members are designer jewellers, bringing together an exciting diversity of styles, in a variety of materials including precious metals, gemstones, hardwoods, Perspex and textiles. Continuing their tradition at the Barbican, all work on display will be available to purchase and there is the opportunity for visitors to meet with the makers and commission designs.
Coming soon…Barbican Art Gallery’s major autumn exhibition:
everything was moving: photography from the 60s and 70s
13 Sept 2012 - 13 Jan 2013 / Barbican Art Gallery /
Media View: 12 Sept 10am – 1pm
This major photography exhibition surveys the medium from an international perspective, and includes renowned photographers from across the globe, all working during two of the most memorable decades of the 20th Century. everything was moving: photography from the 60s and 70s tells a history of photography, through the photography of history. It brings together over 350 works, some rarely seen, others recently discovered and many shown in the UK for the first time.
It features key figures of modern photography including Bruce Davidson, William Eggleston, David Goldblatt, Graciela Iturbide, Boris Mikhailov and Shomei Tomatsu, as well as important practitioners whose lives were cut tragically short such as Ernest Cole and Raghubir Singh. Each contributor has, in different ways, advanced the aesthetic language of photography, as well as engaging with the world they inhabit in a profound and powerful way.
Read the full press release
FILM
That Was The Year That Was… 1962
Part of the City of London Festival 2012
July 2012 / Cinema 1
To celebrate the City of London Festival’s 50th anniversary, Barbican turns the cinema clock back to relive golden movie moments of 1962 and some of the films that helped shape the decade:
A Hard Day’s Night (U) (UK, 1964, Dir. Richard Lester 87min)
14 July / Cinema 1 / 2pm
Having released their first single in 1962, The Beatles rapidly became a world-wide sensation, and this exhilarating, fast paced rock-com captures the frenzy of Beatlemania. + The Rock ‘n’ Roll Years: 1962 (clip)
Jules et Jim (PG) (France, 1962, Dir. François Truffaut, 105min)
14 July / Cinema 1 / 4pm
Truffaut’s seminal example of the French New Wave charts the development of two men who fall in love with the same woman. A joyous celebration of love and obsession which launched Jeanne Moreau as an international film star.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (12A) (UK, 1962, Dir. Tony Richardson, 104min)
15 July / Cinema 1 / 2pm
A classic of British Free Cinema focuses on the plight of the working class in the British industrial North, a million miles from the Swinging Sixties’ metropolitan revolution. Tom Courtney plays the rebellious teenager in a young offender’s institution, who must compete with the local public school in a cross-country race.
+ Tomorrow’s Saturday (U) (UK, 1962, Dir. Michael Grigsby, 18min)
The Genius of Hitchcock: The Lodger (UK, 1927, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 74min) –21 July / Cinema 1 / 7.30pm
The world premiere of the restoration of The Lodger and Nitin Sawhney's new score will take place in the Barbican Hall on 21 July, as part of London 2012 Festival and performed live by Sawhney with the London Symphony Orchestra. Hitchcock’s third feature, and first suspense thriller, stars Ivor Novello as the mysterious lodger who might also be a serial killer terrorising fog-shrouded London.
Presented by the BFI in conjunction with Network Releasing, ITV, and Park Circus. Part of London 2012 Festival.
Koyaanisqatsi u (US, 1982, Dir. Godfrey Reggio, 86 min)
21 July / Gillett Square (N16) / 10pm
Following a day of music and dance in the square Barbican Film presents a free screening under the stars of this achingly beautiful tapestry of scenes from around the globe with an atmospheric score by iconic minimalist composer Philip Glass.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
Press Information
For further information, images or to arrange interviews contact:
Lorna Gemmell, Head of Communications, +44 207 382 7147, lorna.gemmell@barbican.org.uk
Jessica Dare, Communications Assistant, +44 207 382 7321,
jessica.dare@barbican.org.uk
Barbican newsroom
All Barbican Centre press releases, news announcements and the Media Relations team’s contact details are listed on our website at www.barbican.org.uk/news/home
About the Barbican
A world-class arts and learning organisation, the Barbican pushes the boundaries of all major art forms including dance, film, music, theatre and visual arts. Our creative learning programme further underpins everything we do. In 2012 we celebrate the Olympic year with many of our projects forming part of the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival – it is also our 30th Birthday year. Over 1.5 million people pass through our doors annually, hundreds of artists and performers are featured, and more than 300 staff work onsite. Our architecturally renowned centre opened in 1982 and comprises the Barbican Hall, the Barbican Theatre, the Pit, Cinema One (with Cinemas Two and Three opening in Beech Street in September 2012), 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 Barbican is home to Resident Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra ; Associate Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra ; Associate Ensembles The Academy of Ancient Music and Britten Sinfonia , and Associate Producer Serious . Our Artistic Associates include Boy Blue Entertainment , Cheek by Jowl and Michael Clark Company . International Associates are Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam , New York Philharmonic , Los Angeles Philharmonic , Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and Jazz at Lincoln Center .
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June 2012 Events Guide