Founded in 2007, the London Song Festival takes a different theme each year, often using composers' or poets' anniversaries as a starting point, and fashions an innovative programme of recitals that express great beauty and emotional depth. Audiences can expect to hear rarely performed and perhaps unpublished vocal gems presented alongside new works. The LSF was awarded 'Small Performing Arts Event of the Year 2023.'
The 2019 festival opened with 'The Outsiders Fight Back', commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, when police raided Manhattan’s Stonewall gay bar as part of a routine harassment exercise and got more than they bargained for. It’s centrepiece, was a specially commissioned song cycle by the America composer Ben Moore, who has collaborated for the project with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mark Campbell.
For the first act, I used a mixture of newspaper headlines and found images to focus on the nationwide repression of the LGBTQ community and the 'Lavender Scare' of the 1960's. The second act focused on the Stonewall riots and the impact it went on to have on American culture. Coloured ink splatters were overlayed on reconstructured newspaper reports, that eventually worked together to form a version of the rainbow flag, a symbol of gay LGBTQ solidarity and visibilty.
Credits:
Singers - Lotte Betts-Dean (Mezzo) and Felix Kemp (Baritone)
Piano - Nigel Foster
Speaker - Micheal Harper
Video artist - James Symonds
Guest speaker - Peter Tatchell