The Music department is preparing to deliver an ambitious production of Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Dream Play next week, bringing to life a musical stage adaptation of Carroll’s classic tale first performed in 1886 and written with Carroll’s close involvement. The University Cecilian Choir, soloists and ensemble lift the curtain on Alice’s mysterious, magical and musical world on Friday 21 February at 7.30pm.
Alongside the production, there are two art exhibitions on campus celebrating the bicentenary of Sir John Tenniel, illustrator, and cartoonist, whose illustrations graced the pages of the first publication of Alice in Wonderland in 1865. The production of the Musical Dream Play will feature many of Tenniel’s ilustrations projected above the stage during the performance, and these are currently on display in Colyer-Fergusson Gallery throughout February, allowing visitors the opportunity almost to walk through pages of the book…
Our colleagues over in the University Special Collections and Archives have also responded to the project, creating a special exhibition celebrating Tenniel’s contribution to political cartooning in his own work for Punch, and also in the lasting influence his Alice illustrations have had on subsequent generations of political cartoonists.
Politics in Wonderland: Sir John Tenniel at 200 features original cartoon artworks, cuttings and publications from the British Cartoon Archive by cartoonists including Nicholas Garland, Vicky, Strube and E.H. Shepard, and can be viewed in the Gallery, A Block Floor 1 of the Templeman Library until 20 March; more details here.
Tickets for the performance available here.
To complement Summer Music Week, Special Collections & Archives invites you to learn more about how music is represented, recorded and explored through its collections between 2-4pm that day. Visitors will be able to view a wide range of material including items from the John Crow Ballad and Song Collection, rare books from the Pre-1700 Collection, artwork held in the British Cartoon Archive, and alternative cabaret performances found in the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive, and much more.
You don’t need to book, just drop in on the day; we are hugely grateful to Joanna Baines, Senior Assistant in Special Collections and Archives, for putting this all together, a terrific enhancement as Summer Music Week unfurls next week.
On Thursday 10 November, a special performance by the Cecilian Choir, conducted by Your Loyal Correspondent, commemorates the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme with a new choral piece written by American composer David Lang in Studio 3 Gallery. Memorial Ground is an evocative, haunting meditation on the Battle of the Somme, but also reaches beyond it to commemorate all those who have lost their lives in conflict ever since. The piece was commissioned as part of the nationwide 14-18NOW project.
On Friday 11 November at 11am, third-year Music Scholar and trumpeter Alex Reid will play the Last Post in the Registry Garden; this is followed at 1.10pm by a lunchtime concert focusing on poet and composer Ivor Gurney. Arranged by Dr Kate Kennedy, the event dramatizes Gurney’s life as musician, soldier and eventually asylum patient, following his progress in his own words and music, with humour and poignancy.