Highlights include:
- Americana trailblazer, k d lang
- Orator, entertainer, rabble-rouser, negotiator and pamphleteer, Billy Bragg
- UK soul queen Beverley Knight, celebrating the songs of Stevie Wonder
- The 50th anniversary of legendary French band, Magma
Transformations: Newcastle Poetry Festival
Thursday 2 May, 8pm, Sage Two
Gone Westering
Inspired by Norwegian folklorist Arne Bjørndal’s visit to Shetland in 1949, Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey joins forces with Shetland fiddler and composer, Catriona Macdonald, to explore, through a complex interweaving of voice and music, ideas of tradition, the dynamics of archives, and our connection to the past.
Catriona Macdonald is senior lecturer and Degree Programme Director of the BA in Folk and Traditional Music at Newcastle University. She currently performs with her own band, as well as with international fiddle band String Sisters whose latest album is Between Wind and Water (2018).
Sinéad Morrissey is the author of six poetry collections. On Balance (2017) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her other awards include the T S Eliot Prize and the E M Forster Award. She is Director of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts at Newcastle University.
Brecht Then & Now
Poet David Constantine and translator Tom Kuhn present the life and times of the great German writer Berthold Brecht in an electric performance fusing poems, narration, songs, music and photographs. Focusing on the years 1922-1933, the pair trace the vagaries of the Weimar Republic and the Rise of National Socialism through the lens of Brecht’s poetry, translated into English for the first time as a complete edition (Norton, 2018). Here is a poet who, in speaking to the crises of his own times, urgently addresses the crises of our own.
David Constantine taught German at Oxford for over thirty years. He has published a dozen volumes of poetry, including Madder, Watching for Dolphins, Caspar Hauser, The Pelt of Wasps, Something for the Ghosts, Collected Poems, Nine Fathom Deep and Elder (2014), as well as two novels, Davies (1985) and The Life-Writer (2015), and five collections of short stories.
Tom Kuhn teaches German language and literature at Oxford, where he is a Fellow of St Hugh’s College. As well as co-translating The Collected Poems of Berthold Brecht with David Constantine, he is also the series editor of the principal English-language edition of Brecht’s plays and other writings with Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/newcastle-poetry-festival52235/
Trish Clowes’ My Iris
Wednesday 8 May, 8pm, Sage Two
This intense and thrilling band led by acclaimed saxophonist and BASCA award winning composer Trish Clowes represents the front rank of the contemporary UK jazz scene.
Lauded for her imaginative approach to improvisation and composition, Clowes provides her bandmates Ross Stanley (piano/Hammond organ), Chris Montague (guitar) and James Maddren (drums) with a unique platform for individual expression, delivering driving grooves and lingering melodic lines, seamlessly morphing between earthy restlessness and futuristic dreamscapes.
The band will be performing material from their new album, Ninety Degrees Gravity, with compelling atmospheres inspired by the idea of a universal language in Denis Villeneuve’s film Arrival.
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/trish-clowes-my-iris/
Madeleine Peyroux
Monday 8 July, 7.30pm, Sage One
Madeleine Peyroux’s extraordinary journey is one of music industry’s most compelling.
Eight albums and 22 years since her debut, Dreamland, Peyroux continues to challenge the confines of jazz, venturing into the fertile fields of contemporary music with unfading curiosity.
Peyroux’s new album, Anthem, finds the singer-songwriter collaborating with writers/musicians Patrick Warren, Brian MacLeod and David Baerwald who are also the basic rhythm section players on the album. Together, they cast a sober, poetic, and at times philosophical eye on the current state of the world.
Anthem weaves the colourful stories of people confronting life’s challenges in a multitude of ways. With pathos and a hint of irony it laments over financial tribulations in Down On Me, speaks of disappointment and unfulfilled dreams in the bluesy Ghosts of Tomorrow, and delivers a scathingly poignant social commentary in The Brand New Deal. Coming ten years after Bare Bones, the singer-songwriter’s previous album of original songs, Anthem finds Peyroux wiser with finer articulation powers.
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/madeleine-peyroux-2019/
k.d.lang – Ingénue Redux – 25th Anniversary Tour
Friday 19 July, 7.30pm, Sage One
Sage Gateshead is delighted to welcome back k.d. lang as its first Summertyne headliner.
k.d. lang has won four GRAMMY® awards, eight Juno Awards, a BRIT, an AMA, a VMA, and four awards from GLAAD. In 1996, she received Canada’s highest civilian honuor, the Order of Canada. In 2013, she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the Juno Awards, and last year, received the Alberta Order of Excellence Award.
She has appeared alongside such musical luminaries as Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt, Elton John, Loretta Lynn, and Tony Bennett. “She’s the best singer of her generation,” observed Bennett, who has frequently toured with lang since their 2002 Wonderful World duets album.
lang has also contributed to numerous soundtracks, has appeared in many films, and in 2014 made her Broadway debut in the seven-time Tony-award nominated musical After Midnight. In 2016, she united with Neko Case and Laura Veirs to create the collaborative record, case/lang/veirs.
This year, she continues to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her platinum selling breakthrough album, Ingénue.
She is renowned for her live shows, prompting the New York Times’ Stephen Holden to observe: “Few singers command such perfection of pitch. Her voice, at once beautiful and unadorned and softened with a veil of smoke, invariably hits the middle of a note and remains there.”
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/k-d-lang/
Archipelago & J Frisco plus The Mark Williams Trio
Tuesday 23 July, 8pm, Sage Two
The Archipelago J Frisco ‘superband’ began as a commission for Lancaster Jazz Festival in 2018 to create one hour of new music in a collaboration bringing together some of the most exciting musicians to emerge from the northern creative scene.
Escaping to Us is a string of songs composed by Faye MacCalman, focusing on the connection between light, colour and sound through tonal explorations of clashes and stillness, minimalist riffs and improvisation.
Mark Williams formed his own trio in 2006 and they recorded their first album, Balaclava Street, in 2007. Since then, they have been gigging throughout the North East regularly, whilst constantly composing new material.
The much anticipated second album, Last Bus to Bensham, was released in 2017, to rave reviews.
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/archipelago-and-j-frisco/
Folk on the Tyne: Billy Bragg
Saturday 27 July, 7.30pm, Sage One
See the orator, entertainer, rabble-rouser, negotiator and pamphleteer Billy Bragg in a very special headline show as part of Sage Gateshead’s Folk on the Tyne festival.
The UK’s foremost political singer-songwriter has topped the singles chart, had a street named after him, been mentioned in Bob Dylan’s memoir and invited to deliver a seminar on accountability at the Bank of England, whilst also creating 13 studio albums, eight compilations and two box sets, touring the world with his individual mix of protest and love songs.
Honoured with the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music award at the Ivor Novello awards in May 2018, Billy Bragg has sealed his status as a statesman, as well as a great musician and chronicler of his time.
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/folk-on-the-tyne-billy-bragg/
Friday night is music night live presents:
The Songs of Stevie Wonder starring Beverley Knight
Wednesday 9 October, 7.30pm, Sage One
After an incredible response to the news that Tom Chaplin will be touring the UK performing the hits of Queen, it is announced today that UK soul queen Beverley Knight will celebrate the songs of Stevie Wonder on a 10-date UK tour this autumn, include a date at Sage Gateshead.
Having performed a special concert recorded for BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night Is Music Night series at The London Palladium at the end of last year, Knight is set to take the show across the UK with the Leo Green Orchestra to pay homage to one of the greatest songwriters of modern times.
Multi award-winning Knight, who this year celebrates 25 year in music, is widely regarded as one of the greatest soul singers of her generation and one of few vocalists with the ability to do justice to the genius of Stevie Wonder’s rich and varied catalogue.
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/fnimn-the-songs-of-stevie/
TUSK Festival Weekend Pass
Friday 11 – Sunday 13 October, Sage Gateshead
TUSK Festival returns for its 9th edition this October, once again bringing its uniquely diverse programme of adventurous international music to the North East of England.
Continuing its partnership with Sage Gateshead, TUSK again makes full use of the landmark building, its flexible public spaces and truly high-end production values to showcase a TUSK 2019 line-up that is as unwavering as ever. Once more, alongside a truly eclectic and international music menu and TUSK’s trademark slew of UK debuts, festival-goers can again enjoy the festival’s renowned film programme, exhibitions, talks, installations, interactions and more.
The first line-up announcements for TUSK Festival 2019 are:
- Legendary French band MAGMA, performing in Sage One in one of only two UK shows this year to celebrate their 50th anniversary
- Electronic music artist and poet MOOR MOTHER and LONDON CONTEMPORARY ORCHESTRA (soundtrackers of countless films by Paul Thomas Anderson and more) premier their new collaboration, first proposed by TUSK and touring after its TUSK premiere
- CEYLON MANGE, the trio of UK underground veterans Karen Constance and Dylan Nyoukis with Bill Nace, best known as half of Body/Head with Kim Gordon
- From Phoenix, Arizona, SUNN TRIO ’s sound merges elements of Arabic guitars, free jazz and experimental rock
- Newcastle duo ACRID LACTATIONS bring their unfiltered utterances and spontaneous concrète to TUSK
- Post-minimalist electro-acoustic group MIR8 add Tyneside’s Faye McCalman to their line-up for their North East debut
Many more acts still to be announced, plus films, talks, exhibitions, workshops and more and after-hours actions and exhibitions at The Old Police House and Workplace Gallery.
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/tusk-festival-weekend/
TUSK Festival 2019: MAGMA
Sunday 13 October, 7.30pm, Sage One
Legendary French band Magma are performing in Sage One in one of only two UK shows this year to celebrate their 50th anniversary.
It seems for most writers, the nearest they can get to a definitive categorisation of Magma is to call their music prog rock. TUSK Festival is more minded to accept that they just don’t fit any stylistic pigeonhole – they’re Magma! How many times do you hear a band that sounds like the unlikely union of Philip Glass and Funkadelic? That sings in its own invented language? That has been going for 50 years? It’s Beefheart meets Mahavishnu, with added symphonic excess.
You can often pick out influences in Magma’s music but the sum they have made of those disparate parts in unlike anyone else.
Led by drummer and founder Christian Vander, Magma this year celebrate 50 years of existence and this TUSK appearance is one of only two UK shows this year to mark that milestone.
Notable fans include snooker legend Steve Davis and dronelord Stephen O’Malley. Arch druid Julian Cope described them as “truly from another planet”. On record and on stage, the Magma nontet sounds and impacts like something twice the size.
Expect a genuine musical spectacular from a band genuinely unlike any other.
Book now: http://www.sagegateshead.com/event/tusk-festival-2019-magma/