The Re-entry of Malcolm Lowry into Liverpool: A Song Tricycle
Saturday 21 November at 8.00pm at the Bluecoat

Sense of Sound’s latest collaboration sees members of the choir working with poet, Ian McMillan and composer Luke Carver Goss.Well known for his work on national radio, notably BBC Radio 3’s language and literature cabaretThe Verb, Ian McMillan - ‘the John Peel of poetry’ – is creating a song cycle about Lowry, whose 1947 novel Under the Volcano is a modern classic, often positioned in the top 100 novels of the 20th Century.

Commissioned for the Bluecoat’s Lowry season and written with composer Luke Carver Goss, the piece will be performed by Liverpool’s Sense of Sound choir.
A ukulele player and jazz lover, music was important to Lowry, who was born on Merseyside. The songs imagine him revisiting Liverpool, and look at three strands of his life: the sea, writing and drink. They also reflect Lowry’s inventiveness as a writer, the dreaminess of his incandescent prose. Bridging the space between poet and choir, speech and song, river and land, the choral music is a metaphor for the River Mersey as it flows through the city and in and out of Lowry’s life and work.
Our new work follows Lowry as he travels dark roads and tortuous landscapes of the mind, from Liverpool to Mexico and back again. It contains songs of drink, doubt, death and despair, but also of stoicism and life-affirming jazz – and gives the audience a chance to ask ‘What if Lowry had lived longer and stayed in Liverpool. What then?’ - Ian McMillan

Tickets £5.00 from Tickets and Information at the Bluecoat, 0151 702 5324 or visit www.thebluecoat.org.uk