WAYS WITH NO GLORY - PHIL MINTON AND VERYAN WESTON: SELECTED SONGS AND IMPROVISATIONS

Event information

On 4th August 2014, exactly one hundred years ago Britain and Germany went to war. On the eve of that day the Cafe Oto will be hosting a performance by Phil Minton and Veryan Weston to cast a different perspective on that war. - The focus will be on the courageous stance that some men took in refusing to kill their fellow working-men when they were conscripted in 1916. One of these was Harry Patch, the oldest First World War survivor, who said of war a few years before he died at the age of 111:

“To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak?”

Phil Minton's grandfather felt the same. As a coal miner he was not conscripted, but to demonstrate his opposition to the war he courageously refused to wear the official armband that showed he was a worker that was contributing to the war effort.

The themes of Minton and Weston's selection of songs and improvisations relate to 'No Glory' . They will range from ironic renditions of songs written to rally the troops, through to the out-and-out polemics of the timeless anti-war song.

Their collaboration stretches back over twenty five years and the 'Ways' project has been a main thread, consisting of songs whose diversity verges on the absurd, and can be found on four “Ways” recordings. Improvisation is always a main dimension in their song programme for which selected texts often provide the framework. There will be references to Improvisations from Minton's recording “A Doughnut in Both Hands”, (tracks titled - I Fought, Cenotaph, Orders for the Pals).

Their work together has also included choral projects such as “Songs from a Prison Diary”- which uses text by Ho Chi Mihn - and various commissions, including settings to Joyce's Finnegans Wake with Roger Turner and John Butcher. Several pieces for Four Walls with Luc Ex and Michael Vatcher were also co-composed using texts contributed by friends like Lou Glanfield and Paul Haines.

From this sizeable repertoire with its colourful 25 year-old history, Minton and Weston's music will bear witness to the atrocities and pointless slaughter of human life in the "war to end all wars" and all the imperialist, capitalist wars there have been since.