Wandering through the city of Leeds bumping into art and culture, or going to the things you’ve heard about via Facebook or the brochure, reminds you of what a city could be like, if only . . .
My night went like this:
Half an hour with my friends who are organising the Leeds Summat on the 18th floor of a sky-scraper in Albion Street (we were previewing the session Leeds Taking Soundings will be doing with Doreen Massey on the infernal power of The City of London)
Then to the beautiful Trinity Church on Boar Lane where I listened and watched and exulted while Leon Thomas Johnson (tenor) and Paul Hession (drums) meditated on Albert Ayler, silhouetted by films made by Eoin Shea and Derek Horton of the water around East Street Pier (where Ayler’s body was found in 1970)
Then I clapped and whistled in Briggate as RJC (Reggae Jazz Contemporary) spectacularly performed a slice of their Carnival show to greet the Olympic torch (costumes designed by the fabulous Mango Creative Arts), accompanied by FunkAfro drummers. [Click here for 13 seconds of RJC in Briggate, Leeds, 7/10/11]
Another 200 metres on to New Briggate, to the gorgeous Howard Assembly Rooms, an innovation at Opera North, where Purcell’s ‘O Let Me Weep: Titania’s Dream’ was beautifully performed live (and the recording looped) against projected black and white photos of leaves (apologies: names of performers not available in the programme or on the web)
Then a pause for food before a trip to Leeds’ monument to civic pride, its Town Hall, for 90 minutes of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu, breathtakingly accompanied by Simon Lindley on the auditorium’s splendid organ
To remind myself of my youth I then took the opportunity to revisit the Town Hall’s cells, but they had only opened the grizzly Nineteenth Century pits (complete with manacle hooks); these were delightfully transformed by mini art installations and story tellers. (But my memorable night in 1975 with the supporters of George Davis was in the lovely post-war cells, where you could easily fit 40 people, if we lay very close together.)
Light Night was an uplifting example of what a city can do when it puts the skills of its Arts team together with the huge number of creative organisations the city possesses (my guess is that they didn’t get paid though). Seventy three different events, all free, from 5.30 to 12pm. Sound and image infused my night – where else could I soak up 16th century opera and 20th century free jazz brilliantly bridged by Town Hall organ music (which occasionally sounded like Albert Ayler or African percussion), all set off by sensational black and white photography and the careful colours of the Carnival costumes? In these austere times we will need more than art to get us through, but art has to be one of our vehicles.
