Clayson Sings Chanson

Event information

Alan Clayson, chanteur and raconteur, explores the most mature
and cultivated form of popular song - in which there is as much
emphasis on words and their literary resonance as melody and
chord structure - throughout a thoroughly diverting soirée centred
on passion, humour, deep emotion and sometimes casually
shocking frankness, embracing love, liberty, tenderness, parting,
death, abandonment, stupidity and further qualities of the human
condition.

CLAYSON SINGS CHANSON has been on the road since 2011,
initially to tie-in with the publication of Alan Clayson’s Jacques Brel
biography, La Vie Bohème - though the presentation’s origins lie
too in 1999's acclaimed Ne Me Quitte Pas: A Celebration Of
Jacques Brel, an all-star album on which Alan's contributions were
highlights.      

With accompaniment and supporting programme from songwriter
and vocalist Andy Lavery, the show is prefaced by an explanatory
talk that is as entertaining as it is educational.  As well as works,
famous and obscure, by chansonniers, Gallic and British, Clayson
ventures into curious but connected realms in a show which will
appeal to both chanson devotees, those interested generally in
Gallic culture - and anyone who wants to be merely entertained by
music that has burned its brand on English-speaking wordsmiths
as disparate as Anthony Newley, Glen Matlock of The Sex Pistols -
yes, really! - and the foremost mouthpiece of Brel’s output, Scott
Walker.

Prior to his renown as a music historian, Alan Clayson was popular
in the late 1970s as leader of the legendary Clayson and the
Argonauts and has since become ‘one of the more extraordinary
figures to emerge from rock 'n' roll.’ (The Independent).
Recent media coverage has been fulsome with phrases like
‘mesmerising’, ‘a man possessed’, ‘a wonderful evening by a
master raconteur at the top of his game’.