Topic: kurt weill

Duke Special and friends at the Fringe

September 9, 2008 in Charity, News - Comments

Gavin Friday will be joining Duke Special on stage in Dublin tomorrow evening (10th Sep) at 21:30pm in the ‘Hennesy Spiegeltent’.
The show is called ‘The Silhouette Old Time Mystery Radio Show’ by Duke Special and friends and is part of Dublin’s Fringe Festival. Duke and friends will ‘explore the murky world of deception, crime and reluctant heroism in a night only made less noir by the stellar quality of his guests.’
Tickets are 20 euro and are available from the festival website.

Watch a video of this show.

Freedom of Expression

July 22, 2006 in Interviews - Comments

From the Irish Times:
Gavin Friday has formulated his lifelong passion for German music, art, literature and film into a personal tribute show – with the help of a German beer, he tells Brian Boyd

In a typically idiosyncratic reaction to the rise of punk rock, David Bowie moved to Berlin and recorded three albums that were, by his own standards, simple and stripped down. One half of one of the albums, Low, was entirely instrumental. One other gave birth to the song about two lovers meeting by the Berlin wall – Heroes. Musically, all Bowie’s work from this period was overtly influenced by German electronic band Kraftwerk and when he toured these albums he would use clips from classic German films as a stage backdrop.
In Dublin, Bowie fanatic Gavin Friday, still in his pre-Virgin Prunes days, was noting all these new developments and having his eyes opened to a whole new set of cultural influences.
“Bowie introduced me to Germany, there’s no doubt about it,” says Friday. “It’s not just the albums he recorded in Berlin but also the ones he worked on with Iggy Pop at the time – The Idiot and Lust For Life. I couldn’t get enough of this stuff. I even remember finding out that the pose Iggy Pop uses on the cover of The Idiot was inspired by a German painter called Erich Heckel. And Bowie was getting into Fritz Lang and German Expressionism. At about the same time, the film Cabaret came out and I started to learn about Christopher Isherwood. I found so much there”.

FRIDAY’S CAREER-LONG INTEREST in the music, film, literature and art of Germany has now been shaped into a theatrical show called Tomorrow Belongs To Me”. “It’s my own personal tribute to the art of the country” he says. “It’s going to be a musical and visual journey into a remarkable period of creativity. It’s me with a live band and the show will be divided into themes: “The Gothic”, “Electronica” and “German Expressionism”. It will be everything from [ the groundbreaking 1920 silent film] The Cabinet of Dr Caligari” up to [ Kraftwerk founding member] Florian Schneider”.

Friday has previous form with German music. Five years ago, he had a theatre show called Ich Liebe Dich based on the work of Kurt Weill commissioned by the Dublin Theatre Festival. Back in 1989, and working with Maurice Seezer, he released an album called Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves which was, in part, a musical exploration of Bertolt Brecht.

“I had been asked to do another show based on Brecht and Weill but I said no,” he says. “I had done that before and in this show there is nothing by Brecht or Weill. What turned this around for me was being approached by Beck’s [ the beer company that is sponsoring the show]. I was interested because I knew they had been behind works by the artists Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin, so I thought I could do something different with them.

“I WANTED A different take on the German angle and the idea for the show first came to me when I realised how many books on German Expressionism I had, how many albums of German music I had and how many films by German film-makers I had. People such as Warner Herzog, Fritz Lang, George Grosz and Kraftwerk still fascinate me and I wanted a show that expressed that fascination.”

Born Fionan Hanvey, Friday has always been an experimental figure on the music/theatre scene. A founder member of the Dublin avant-garde, post-punk group the Virgin Prunes, he was known back then for his uncompromising approach to how music should be composed and presented in a live setting.

“It was with the Virgin Prunes that I first got to Berlin,” he says. “We always had a good following in Europe and I remember taking the “corridor” to Berlin in the days before the wall came down. It was an exciting time in the city – there were bands such as Einstürzende Neubauten around at the time, but it was nothing like what it used to be”.

What struck Friday most about Berlin was how its once very rich and vibrant culture had come to a shuddering halt due to the second World War. “If you look at what happened there before the war, it was incredible. It really was more important artistically, in a sense, than New York. It’s remarkable how it stopped so quickly but also how much was there originally. And the stuff from this time still influences – whether it be in art or film or music,” he says.

It’s been a busy few years for Friday. He collaborated with noted producer Quincy Jones on the soundtrack to Jim Sheridan’s 50 Cent biopic, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ and he also had an acting role in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast On Pluto.

“When I was working with Quincy Jones, I spent a lot of time trying to convince him that the origins of hip-hop music can be traced back to German electronic music. The whole “Krautrock” movement really impressed me – not just Kraftwerk but bands such as Can and Neu,” he says. “With German film, what I’m doing is cutting up some classics to use as visuals in the show. There was so much there to look at – “The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Nosferatu among others but there were some copyright problems with some of the directors. Fassbinder is one director I really wanted to use but couldn’t”.

HE’S HAPPY THAT neither Brecht nor Weill feature in this particular show. “There’s been a lot done on them,” he says. “The idea here is to look into different areas. And it’s not just songs by German musicians. There’s the Randy Newman song In Germany Before The War for example”.

He feels that this slew of artistic activity in Germany in these years was helped, not hindered, by the fact that a lot of the names he features in the show were denounced as “degenerates” by the Nazi regime. “To be so outside of official sanction must really have been something for these people” he says.
The show runs for only two nights in Dublin, but he hasn’t ruled out touring it to different countries. Because it’s such a personal venture for him, he thinks the performance will be of the all-or-nothing variety. “When I do this stuff, I really bleed it . . .”

Tomorrow Belongs To Me is at the Liberty Hall Theatre, Eden Quay, Dublin, on
July 27 and 28.
© 2006 The Irish Times

‘Unsanitised account of the world of Kurt Weill’

October 15, 2001 in Shows - Comments

‘I wanted a title that said everything and nothing at the same time,’ says Friday about ‘Ich Liebe Dich’, a musical theatre show based on the work of Kurt Weill, commisioned by the Dublin Theatre Festival. ‘They asked us to put together anything we wanted once it involved the music of Kurt Weill.’

For their first performances in Ireland since 1996, Gavin and Maurice were joined on stage by Renaud Pion (wind instruments), Michael Blair (drums/percussion), Julia Palmer (cello) and Des Moore (guitars/banjo).
It is in some sense a return to their roots, as they have used Weill as a touchstone since their earliest collaborations (The Blue Jaysus, 1986). Friday was first introduced to Kurt Weill through the late great Agnes Bernelle, in 1978, and has included Weill’s songs in his live performance over the years, notably ‘Benares Song’ and occasionally ‘Alabama Song’ and ‘Mack the Knife’. Though the songs are of another era, they have not lost their relevance and many of the lyrics to Weill’s music fit the current climate.

Friday: ‘We’re working on about 21 songs and various instrumental extracts, but won’t decide on the final song list till mid band rehearsals. There won’t be much talking and I’d say that about 75 percent of the songs we’ll be doing will be from the Weimar era, with the rest coming from the Broadway era. There won’t be the same theatrics as there was in the Prunes, as in there’ll be no pigs between my crotch. But then again, I’m a theatrical whore — I was born with a spotlight on my head. Anything could happen.’

Fergus Linehan, director of the Dublin Theatre Festival on ‘Ich Liebe Dich’ in The Irish Times: “It is an “unsanitised” account of the world of Kurt Weill which promises to bring him “back into the gutter where he belonged”.

Tivoli Theatre, Dublin
October 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14 – 2001

Excerpt from review by Peter Murphy (Hot Press)
‘But really, you have to hand it to the man Friday; he shows no fear. It’s one thing to dominate an audience willing to be dominated, quite another to face the intimacy of a club with your Ich Liebe Dich hanging out.’
Review by Caroline van Oosten de Boer
Gavin, Maurice and the Friday/Seezer ensemble played their second to last sold out ‘Ich Liebe Dich’ show in the Tivoli theater on October 13th, 2001
Somewhere between madness and serenity lies the perfect performance. This was a night where the band was ready for anything and Gavin was in control.
A stillness fills the room, the singer’s on a chair in the middle of the audience, a single light outlining the man who is looking more and more like his 1983 Prune-self.
Renaud breathes into his instrument, conjuring a moribund rattle – a lonely foghorn. From the depths of his imagination, Gavin paints us a corpse, still drowning, a new form of beauty. Then, surfacing, he is Pirate Jenny – prodding people, that’ll learn ya, an I’m not me for the 00′s.
We were dragged along in Gavin Friday’s world where sex is always obsessive, love never bland. There’s never a meaningless note, and there’s an edge to every joke: ‘You are Irish, sir, you can tell by the jumper… sorry.’ Whether raging against the ‘Ibiza-mentality’, a loss of morals, or lamenting a lost love and exorcising the loneliness of an empty house, he’s 100% there. In the moment, living the song.
In the afternoon, at a public interview conducted by RTE’s John Kelly, Gavin stated he wants to ‘get lost in the music’. Consider us equally afloat.

Setlist:
Lost in the Stars
Benares Song
Alabama Song
September Song
Bilbao Song
Speak Low
Lonely House
Mandalay Song
Ballad of Immoral Earnings
Mack the Knife
What keeps mankind alive?
Pirate Jenny
The Drowned Girl
Cannon Song
Oh Heavenly Salvation
Lilly of Hell
Pirate Jenny.

Ich Liebe Dich premiere

October 9, 2001 in Concert, News - Comments

On his 42nd birthday, Gavin Friday returned to the Dublin stage, pony-tailed and clad in hip hugging black slacks, black shirt and vest, playing an array of known and lesser known Kurt Weill material. Highlights of this first night of six were the venue itself (decorated a la Friday), the return of the Julia Palmer scream, the irrepressible ‘Pirate Jenny’, ‘Speak Low’ – a tender whisper of a lost love song, and the off kilter, eerie ‘The Drowned Girl’. Singing right into your face, Gavin defies the fourth wall, while Maurice Seezer’s arrangements always seek the road less travelled. Come and experience it: tickets for the rest of the shows can still be bought at the Theatre Festival Box Office (Dublin, Powerscourt Centre, top floor)

Ich Liebe Dich poster

Ich Liebe Dich poster


Press release: Ich liebe dich

September 19, 2001 in Shows - Comments

Ich Liebe Dich
Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer’s tribute to the music of Kurt Weill
Release date of article
2001-09-19

Eircom Dublin Theatre Festival
Ich Liebe Dich
conceived by Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer

Music adapted and arranged by Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer
Directed by John Comiskey

OPENS MONDAY 8TH OCTOBER
TIVOLI THEATRE
Performances 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th and 13th October

Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer mark their first high profile return to the live stage since 1996 with Ich Liebe Dich (“I Love You”), a production based on the music of Kurt Weill. The show, which encompasses songs from 1920s Berlin to the Broadway musicals of the ’40s, will be staged in the Tivoli Theatre from Monday October 8th to Sunday 14th (except Wed 10th) and will also be filmed and recorded for a live album.

The pair have put together an ensemble that includes Michael Blair, the percussionist best known for his contributions to the blue-lit soundscapes of Tom Waits’ mid-80s classics Swordfishtrombones and Raindogs, and also long-time Friday/Seezer collaborators such as multi-instrumentalist Renaud Pion and English avant garde/classical cellist Julia Palmer. The line up is completed by Irish jazz veterans Dave Fleming on double bass and guitarist/slide/banjo player Des Moore.

For Gavin Friday, Ich Liebe Dich is the fruit of a fascination that stretches back to the days of The Virgin Prunes. During his later days with the band, the singer “was travelling a lot in the early 80s around Germany and France, and I really started delving into the world of Brel, Brecht and Weill. I became an obsessive, getting every recording I could, finding different translations from American recordings, European recordings, whatever. I’m proud to say I must have one of the strongest collections of Weill’s stuff in the country. It’s just a labour of love.

“It’s as awkward and idio-centric as anything I ever do but that’s the way we do it,” he continues. “I’m determined to make it so that if you’ve never heard of Kurt Weill you’ll be able to relate to this. It won’t be just art for art’s sake. It will be a headfuck.” Or, if you like, an artfuck. Aside from Friday and Seezer’s three albums (Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, Adam & Eve and Shag Tobacco) their extracurricular activities over the past couple of years have included scores for the films The Boxer and Disco Pigs, their collaboration with Pat McCabe on Emerald Germs Of Ireland and Friday’s narration of Peter & The Wolf . More recently, Gavin also appeared on the latest Howie B album, and he and Seezer collaborated with Bono on ‘Children Of The Revolution’ from Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge.

“Ich Liebe Dich is so on the Moulin Rouge trip,” Friday says. “Baz was quizzing me about it, and I says, ‘I wanna bring people on a fantasy, a trip for two hours, sorta tiddle them and fuck with their brains at the same time.’ And within that there are some incredibly evocative and emotional songs as well as some ridiculously camp and aggressive ones. It’s just like getting lost for two hours. I do think it’s quite of the moment in the way that Moulin Rouge is so out of kilter but it’s not. I love putting on a show or making an album as a form of escapism that haunts the fuck out of ya, makes you think, makes you feel happy/sad, or question shit, y’know?”

Ich Liebe Dich runs in The Tivoli from Monday October 8th to Sunday 14th except Wed 10th.

Friday-Seezer present Ich Liebe Dich

August 13, 2001 in Concert, News - Comments

Gavin and Maurice will be playing ‘Ich Liebe Dich’ (DAS KABAROTICA! die Amusier-tragodiekabarett…eine sexuele musickal mit eine kleine Reich’n'Roll fur Weill) directed by John Comiskey, at the Eircom Dublin Theatre Festival on October 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14. Booking starts August 29.

The shows will be performed at the Tivoli Theatre. Chairs and tables will be moved in to provide an intimate setting of around 350 people.Tickets are 22 Irish pounds + 1 pound booking fee

The Kurt Weill Jukebox

December 20, 2000 in News, Radio - Comments

Welcome to the happy end! Just a reminder that Gavin and Maurice will be presenting ‘The Kurt Weill Jukebox’ this Friday, 9pm GMT on RTE Radio 1:

“Presenters Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer delve into the world of music over the 50 years since Kurt Weill‘s death to highlight his far-reaching influence on musicians as diverse as Nina Simone and Nick Cave.”