Trombonicle 78 / Blue – Trombone Poetry

It was in Trombonicle 68 that a gig with Roland Perrin’s Blue Planet Orchestra was mentioned, along with the hope this was the start of a new phase. It has been a long wait, but maybe that phase is launching this month.

Ever since I auditioned to augment his quartet into a quintet, sometime in the mid-1980’s, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have been in a series of Roland’s bands: the sextet after the quintet, then Evidence, and then the various versions of the Blue Planet Orchestra. The music didn’t get the recognition it deserved but now there is a new collection of compositions and arrangements, played by a new line-up.

Excerpts from that 2024 gig are now on YouTube: Roland Perrin’s Blue Planet Orchestra: A taster

Albums on YouTube:

Evidence; See You Later

An auto-generated Roland Perrin channel has Introducing the Blue Planet Orchestra (the two-trombone line-up with Mark Bassey), Songs from the Cage (settings of Bukowski poems for choir and band) and Suite Dreams.

There’s a lot more of Roland’s music online, including a trailer for his outstanding work: Lansky: The Mob’s Money Man

The best thing to do, of course, is to catch the Blue Planet Orchestra in action this month.

Over in the scribbling and scheming corner, sometimes staring across the river, work continues on a handful of poetry books, including a fast-developing collaboration with John Robinson, author of Other Ranks and other works.

Some kind of deviant South London book is nearly finished and a book about Northern roots is halfway there, not to mention the much-delayed book about food. We press on.

Perhaps all these bands and books will benefit from Creative Network Southwark‘s next meeting and networking event, Bitesize Business Skills at Peckham Levels on 20th March?

Things worth seeing this month:

a wonderful exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute of London celebrates the 40th anniversary of Viaggio in Italia, the photographic project conceived by Luigi Ghirri in 1984, considered a milestone of the history of contemporary Italian photography – ends March 28th
MMX Gallery in New Cross presents East of Eden, a solo exhibition by David George’s photographs and photogravures that document the Rivers Tees, Tyne and Weary – ends March 22nd

Two talks from last month:

Professor Matthew Santer, Co-Director for Space, Security and Telecoms and Professor of Aerospace Structures gave his inaugural lecture at Imperial College London, discussing how structural nonlinearity, origami, and tape measures are influencing the design of deployable structures like the James Webb Space Telescope.

Sir John Pendry gave the Dean’s Annual Lecture from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College, explaining how metamaterials—revolutionary materials with novel electromagnetic properties—can redefine imaging, communication, energy technologies, and even invisibility.

I’m still working on visibility.

GIGS