Friday, 24 Jan
19:30
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Times
7:30pm
Running Time 2 hours 20 mins (includes interval)
Venue Main House, York Theatre Royal
Price £25
Don’t miss this unique evening of poetry and music featuring Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and his band LYR.
Simon’s new collection of lyrics, Never Good with Horses, and recent Sunday Times best-seller Blossomise, demonstrate the rich range of his repertoire and celebrate his ear for the music of language. LYR’s blend of soaring vocal melodies and ambient instrumentation creates an evocative and enchanting soundscape for Simon’s spoken word passages.
Note: there will be a short interval between the poetry and musical performances.
About Simon:
UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage was born and grew up in West Yorkshire. He is an acclaimed poet and lyricist who also writes extensively for television, theatre and radio. His numerous prizes and awards, include the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and an Ivor Novello for song-writing. Armitage has published over a dozen poetry collections, including Magnetic Field: the Marsden Poems. He is also the author of two novels and three non-fiction bestsellers: All Points North, Walking Home and Walking Away.
A regular broadcaster, Armitage presents the popular BBC Radio 4 series The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed and contributes to Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour (BBC Radio 6 Music). An award-winning dramatist, his play The Last Days of Troy was performed at Shakespeare’s Globe. Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. His much-admired medieval translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has sold over 100,000 copies. A Vertical Art brings together the vibrant and engaging lectures from his tenure as Oxford Professor of Poetry (2015-2019). www.simonarmitage.co.uk
About LYR:
LYR’s story stretches back to 2009 when Walters, an admirer of Armitage’s extensive body of written work, approached the poet’s publisher about the possibility of collaboration. The result was Walters setting Armitage’s poetry to music in his 2011 solo song Redwoods. Realising that their two-part formula had potential to grow, Walters approached musical acquaintance, Pearson, and his joining provided the impetus to create the genre-splicing ‘supergroup’.
Creating LYR Mk.1, Walters and Pearson provided Armitage with a Dictaphone and waited for over two years for the poet to return the machine with spoken verses, fragments of work that had never found any other place to call home. When set to music, Call In The Crash Team came into existence.
Whilst artistically successful, opening the door to greater possibility, the three-piece point to The Ultraviolet Age as the advanced stage of that possibility. Coming together with focused, blended labour to instrumentalise Armitage’s words and vocal delivery, opposing the tag of ‘spoken word project’ or similar, the band ruminates instead on what aural breakthroughs could only be possible with a non-singing vocalist, gifted singer-songwriter and alchemistic musician-producer.
LYR are now a firmly established part of the contemporary music scene, with regular radio airplay across the networks, two critically acclaimed albums, Call In The Crash Team and The Ultraviolet Age, and over five million streams to their name. They have appeared at many major festivals over the past three years including Green Man and Blu Dot and completed UK tours and sell-out events at venues up and down the UK.
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