26 Oct 2022,7:30pm
Bloomsbury Theatre,
Shout at Cancer in concert with Zara McFarlane
and Peter Edwards Trio:
Tickets here
Zara McFarlane
Sensational vocalist and Jazz performer with an impressive list of awards:
Urban Music Award Nominee Best Jazz Act 2020, Jazz FM Award Winner Vocalist of the Year 2018 / 2015, Worldwide Award Winner - Session of the Year 2018, Urban Music Award Winner - Best Jazz 2015, and MOBO Award Winner - Best Jazz 2014
Peter Edwards Trio
Peter Edwards is a pianist, composer and bandleader whose ‘guileless, soulful music…[is] full of emphatic chording, Latin grooves and romantic, cinematic themes’ (Guardian) . He is a 2014 MOBO Best Jazz Act nominee and his debut album 'Safe and Sound' is among MOJO's top 10 jazz albums of 2014
More about the concert...
Outspoken Jazz still Growing was created through a series of collaborations with spoken word artist Bruce Sherfield, jazz vocalist Zara McFarlane and the Peter Edwards Trio.
The evening features compositions from the From Silence into Song project from British director and composer Philip Clemo, The project combines the voices of the Laryngectomy Choir, whose members have had radiotherapy in combination with a laryngectomy, with a choir of trees that survived the catastrophic nuclear bombs detonated over Japan in 1945.
Telling the story of the destructive and healing power of radiation, From Silence into Song uses specialist microphones and highly sensitive sensors to capture the sounds of these Hibakujumoku, ‘Survivor Trees’, many of which are still alive today and continue to be a symbol of hope and overcoming adversity.
The choirs will be heard together in harmony, spreading their joint message of resilience and survival. Picture of a survivor tree in Hiroshima:
What can we learn from Nature's social networks?
We went a step further and made recordings from nature’s ‘Wood Wide Web’. This Web is a complex underground network of roots, fungi & bacteria, helping connect trees & plants,
to convey stress & share support. What can we learn from how trees are looking after each other?
we developed highly-interactive voice and beatboxing workshops, targeting two under-represented groups who can be challenged in finding their own voice and integrating socially: throat cancer survivors (Shout at Cancer) & prisoners (Talent Unlocked).
Want to join the discussion afterwards?
The performance will be followed at 8.45pm by a Q&A moderated by Prof. Evangelos Himonides, with the Laryngectomy Choir participants, Prof. Martin Birchall (UCL Laryngology) and Shout at Cancer founder and director, Dr. Thomas Moors.
A unique, symbolical and very special extra addition...
When Bloomsbury Theatre was refurbished in 2016-2017 the original teak wood that was covering the stage was salvaged by the wonderful team at the UCL Institute of Making. Prof Evangelos Himonides, a member supervisor at the IOM, secured a small number of lengths of this precious teak.
He recycled it and gave it a new purpose, by transforming it into a beautiful musical instrument.
This unique guitar was made for Shout at Cancer for two reasons:
1) Evangelos was inspired by how our choir members, despite having lost their larynx, are able to create a new voice and deliver moving performances. Most of them never sang before the operation, yet against all expectations they have added this extra dimension to their voice.
2) The wood on which so many famous artists had been performing for countless years, will make its return to the Bloomsbury Theatre. This time to be played and take part in the actual concert by our very own laryngectomy choir!