“… a very important influential musician.”
Giles Peterson (on Robert Mitchell)
We’re thrilled to be hosting not one, but two of the most easily recognisable and well-respected names on the UK jazz scene: Shirley Smart and Robert Mitchell, the latter long established as one of the country’s finest jazz pianists and composers and the former boasting a formidable reputation as one of our most versatile and innovative cellists. They will perform music from their upcoming release ‘Zeitgeist²’.
This joint venture was originally born as a result of conversations had by the pair whilst working on Robert’s Invocation project way back in 2014. Sharing a history of classical training, both musicians found that they were in agreement that the lack of opportunity for improvisation became “both a frustration and a source of inspiration”, finally teaming up to explore their personal journeys in searching for this seemingly “lost aspect of the classical tradition”, as well as their individual experiences of eventually learning to embrace it. The project also sees Robert for the first time reading his self-penned poetry aloud, here focusing on a response to the Windrush scandal, a tribute to his mother and the search for global peace.
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to see two titans of the jazz genre intimately explore the artform they’ve made it their mission to exhaustively investigate.
Shirley Smart // Cello
Robert Mitchell // Piano
‘A charming kaleidoscope and jazzy showcase of her global folk music-inspired compositions’
- Jazzwise on Shirley Smart
“This is not at all easy to categorise and is all the more powerful for that. Pulling on jazz traditions from the deep South through to today’s European scene, hip hop and adding in a knowledge of modern classical back to Baroque, Mitchell creates music that doesn’t allow the listener to sit back and relax into familiarity…. Throughout the evening, there was no way of knowing what route he would take, what musical colours he would paint, what soundscapes he would invent.”
- Oxford Times on Robert Mitchell
To buy tickets for this event please visit our events page: Zeitgeist2 tickets from Skiddle.