Trombonicle 89 / paint – Trombone Poetry

Harry Strutters and the Lindy Hop Dance Company did a fine job at the annual Cadogan Hall concert and at John Dankworth’s venue, The Stables, but there’ll be nowt with them now until May. There will be another couple of congenial gatherings with Sugarfoot Strut in Greenwich in March, with more traditional jazz gigs in the company of Paula Jackman and Hugh Crozier over the next couple of months.

Somewhat different group improvisation continues at the Hundred Years Gallery, where A Bigger MOUTH has enticed Pascal Marzan and Steve Noble into its maw while Mark and Lu wander the planet with PiL.

I don’t recall Snowboy & The Latin Section ever playing in a pub in Lewisham, but that will be happening this month, as the Fox and Firkin seems to have been rebooted in some way.

And The Blue Planet Orchestra heads for the seaside!

Tickbird&Rhino hosted a talk about the dark, in the dark, at which a poem was duly scribbled and eventually deciphered. This item will emerge from the shadows onto their website, one fine day.

Seeking inspiration from about 500 years ago, in the work of a long-standing favourite writer, Rabelais, I was lucky enough to invade a symposium on Raphaële Garrod’s new book, Francois Rabelais and the Renaissance Physiology of Invention, put on by, of all things, The Imagination Research Network and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at Queen Mary University of London, somewhere Out East. Participants included a Professor Scholar and were a pleasure to be with.

The books from Redriff Press that we endlessly bang on about here should now be seen as the marvellous bargains that they are, when we contemplate that Garrod’s book, which will be well worth reading, is priced at £99.

Meanwhile, in the world of paint, three shows visited in February are well worth a peep.

Ella Wright’s Still Moving is at Cedric Bardawil until 28th March.

Sean Scully’s The Nature of Art is at Lisson Street until 9th May.

Siphiwe-Nokukhanya Mnguni’s Look! BIG WHIP!!! is at Oliver Projects Gallery until 21st March. If East Dulwich is too far south of the river for you, here’s a poem:

UBUMNANDI

we read between the lines
of bright dialogues
in waves and weaves

an idiolect of forms
that charm each other
verb for verb

pastel play in folds of paint
inner vision reticulae
Africa bold.

GIGS