Cherry Potts's Blog, page 10

Aimee Bender, The Color Master – review by Cherry Potts

Cherry Potts:

My Review on The Short Review of Aimee Bender’s The Colour Master. At some point I will review (though not on Short Review obviously) her novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake which I ADORED.

Originally posted on The Short Review:

The Color Master

by Aimee Bender

Windmill Books, 2013

Reviewed by Cherry Potts

“Do you know the king wants to marry his daughter? Her eyes flashed, for a second, with anger.

What? Put that in the dress too, she said. She dropped her voice to a whisper, every word sharp and clear. Anger, she said. Put anger in the dress.”

The title story of this collection is a clever prequel to a well-known fairy tale which gives you no inkling of where it is going until close to the end, dressed up as it is with fantastical touches such as invoices sent by pigeon, and so on. It has a bitter core for all its surface frivolity, entirely appropriate to its partner tale.

Another story steeped in the language and rhythms of traditional fairy tales is The Devourings, which take several tropes and stitches them together into an exhausting and…

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What You Are Now Enjoying by Sarah Gerkensmeyer: Review

Cherry Potts:

Here is my Review of Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s Short Story collection What you are Now Enjoying, on The Short Review

Originally posted on The Short Review:

What You Are Now Enjoying

by Sarah Gerkensmeyer

Autumn House Press, 2013

Reviewed by Cherry Potts

“The Monster who has been haunting me since I was a kid is depressed. We sit on my kitchen counter in the middle of the night and drink chocolate milk. This is so awkward, he says. Don’t worry about it, I say. But really, he says, I feel kind of bad about this.”

Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s stories inhabit an alternate universe, so close to our own, that for the first few paragraphs of each story you think you know where you are, but quickly the off kilter, not what you thought, creeps in and nudges you.

These are quiet, undramatic stories in which although drastic action is sometimes taken, you never get to dwell on the excitement or the trauma. They sink into your consciousness in such a way that you almost believe that what she’s telling…

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Tall ships and icecream floats

It’s been a manic few days, getting the review copies of The Other Side of Sleep out, sorting fliers for the exhibition, hounding people as nicely as I can to support the crowd funding for Solstice shorts. taking the cat the vet, rehearsing the songs Vocal Chords are singing at The Tall Ships Festival in Greenwich at the weekend…

So it’s been lovely to take a break now and then, to track the progress of the ships up from Falmouth on this nifty little map which is updated every hour. We’ve got quite hooked. Most of the ships should be moored up in the Thames at Woolwich and Greenwich by tomorrow, so the thinking is, as we won’t have time on Sunday on account of all the singing, we’ll whisk down to Greenwich in the morning for a quick look, before I head into town for a meeting and some leaflet distribution to likely venues in Highgate.

It’s also been great to read for an hour or two here and there, before sleep, first thing in the morning, or a quiet lunchtime in the garden. I’ve just back-to-backed on Kerry Hudson‘s two novels, Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, and Thirst.

Both excellent gripping books, but the tension racked up in Thirst was so great at times I had to stop reading and return to work to calm my nerves!

Secret shortlist?

Thanks to

Folk. Always

I  have been singing folk carols for something like 6 hours today, because Vocal Chords, my regular (as opposed to occasional forays elsewhere) choir, are doing a recording. Carols in August, why not?

I love folk music. It’s something to do with the ability to tell a story, and not be afraid of really going for it, whether it’s the Dunstan Lullaby which gets its point across in 3 verses (one of which is repeated) of 4 lines, in which only 2 lines change, or something like Anarchy Gordon which goes on telling its deadly tale of lost love, brutality and despair for verse after verse after… (I’ve not counted – 24?) And then there’s the deceptively simple tunes, some designed to be sung solo, some raucously joyful harmonies. I like loads of types of music – I sing in operas, I was in a punk band briefly, but you could say that folk is my default setting.

So when the idea for Solstice Shorts Festival landed pretty much fully formed in my head in January, as soon as I realised that there would be music, folk rose steadily to the top of my list of possibles. Partly because the theme is Time, and I was struggling to find much classical music that was suitable and that I liked whereas folk is chock full of it; partly because it became clear there wasn’t going to be much room so the musical groups needed to be small; partly because so many pop/rock songs we thought would work turned out to have seriously dodgy verses (either plain bad, or offensive).

(Help us get the festival to happen – contribute to our crowd fund)

Folk is adaptable. That’s why folk carols exist – when the church took against the gallery musicians and insisted on carols that could be directly linked to the bible, the people who had been singing and playing carols since who-knows-when, stood outside the church and sang in protest, moving to the pub when it turned chilly. (Is this really how it happened? Or is it just another good folk story?)

Anyway, the point is, FOLK. so I contacted our friends Sue & Nyge at The Goose is Out and asked for suggestions. So, provided we get our funding, we have folk music happening on 21st December – the Winter Solstice – from Sunrise to Sunset, interspersed with new short stories.

Let me introduce you to our musicians:

(Help us get the festival to happen – contribute to our crowd fund – think of this as the chorus)

Ian Kennedy and Sarah Lloyd

Ian and Sarah are local musicians who delight in blending their voices in live unaccompanied harmony. Their repertoire covers traditional folk songs, including nursery rhymes and the occasional long ballad. Having warmed their vocal chords at The Goose is Out Singarounds, they now regularly sing floor spots at the Goose club nights in Nunhead, Tooting, Sharps and Islington folk clubs and as far afield as the Towersey Festival. In the last year, they have supported both Thomas McCarthy and the Copper Family for sell out nights at the Ivy House Community Pub in Nunhead. Earlier this year, Ian and Sarah performed as a duo at Cecil Sharp House for the launch of the EFDSS Yan Tan Tethera textiles and song project. They are also founder members of the Dulwich Folk Choir.

Shadrack Tye

Shadrack Tye have won critical acclaim from audiences and promoters alike for their performances at venues and festivals in London and around the country. All members of the same family, they perform folk arrangements and original songs bringing to both a multitude of musical influences.Tina and Paul have had long careers playing for top London orchestras and as music educationalists, while Sony artist Sam also sings with vocal jazz harmony group Vive, recently featured on both BBC television and radio.

I look forward to hearing some more of their stuff because it’s different and very, very interesting…..like it very much …

Mike Harding- Folk Show

In their first year out Shadrack Tye were invited to play in the Folk Rising series at Cecil Sharpe House and also performed at the Purbeck, Wessex and Folk Thing festivals.In 2013 they debuted most successfully at the Rochester Sweeps and Broadstairs folk festivals, while this years firsts included Gate to Southwell and  the London Folkfest at the Bedford, Balham as well as an invitation to return to the main stage at the Wessex Festival. More recently they have headlined at venues in London and the south, most notably at the famous Bush Hall in west London.

Last year they achieved multiple radio plays on the Tom Robinson Show, BBC Introducing Mixtape and Mike Harding Folk Show and in addition, after being heard live by the producer of the International Ronnie Scott’s Radio Show, they were given the opportunity to record their much-loved cover of “Big Yellow Taxi” for the Joni Mitchell Special aired in the UK, USA and Canada.

They were also the featured band for Spiral Earth’s “Introducing” article in November 2013.

Their self-released EP – “The Lovers Tale”, was described by Mike Harding as “damn fine” and they are currently creating their next album due for release in 2014.

Rosemary Lippard

Rosemary has been singing British Traditional Music in folk clubs for nearly 3 years now. She often sings unaccompanied but is also in folk duos, with consummate guitarist Tim Graham, and as Country Parish Music with Steven Collins, founder of the Owl Service and Stone Tape Recording. She has played at gigs for The Goose Is Out in South East London, Leigh On Sea Folk Festival, Oxford Folk Weekend, The Islington Folk Club (from whom she won the Trad2Mad award in 2012) and the Green Note Cafe, Camden supporting artists such as Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin, Ewan McLennan, Long Lankin, The Askew Sisters, and Jim Causley. Rosemary hopes to be doing a few gigs this September, with Tim Graham, around England and potentially Wales… and for there to be enough gigs to call it a tour…

Pepper and Shepherd

Pepper and Shepherd are James Pepper and Anthony Shepherd. They play intricate, honest folk music on mandolin, guitar, ukulele and harmonies. They formed in 2009 and both live in Peckham, South London.

Their second album, Kings on the Rye was released on last August Bank Holiday. A bittersweet collection of eight original folk songs, written, recorded and produced in a tiny flat on Peckham High Street in the spring of 2013.

(Help us get the festival to happen – contribute to our crowd fund – you are thinking of this as the chorus – yes?)

And finally, and most personally, Summer All Year Long

Summer All Year Long (SAYL) is a group of friends who meet in my living room to sing for the pleasure of it, and sometimes do this in public, usually in connection with an Arachne Press event.

Since January we have been ploughing through what seems like thousands of songs about or related to time, trying things out and rejecting them, or making up arrangements. A lot of wine has been drunk, many, many songs have been discarded, and we are getting very excited about the few that have passed the no-one hates it, we can all sing it, the arrangement sounds great test. Not all of them started out as folk songs, but they are now!

(Help us get the festival to happen – contribute to our crowd fund – We’ll be very grateful and there are loads of fun and interesting rewards…)

 

Additional panel at LonCon3

I’ve been asked to step in last-minute to moderate another panel at LonCon3

Reimagining Families (Thursday 11:00)

In a 2013 column for Tor.com, Alex Dally MacFarlane called for a greater diversity in the way SF and fantasy represent families, pointing out that in the real world, “People of all sexualities and genders join together in twos, threes, or more. Family-strong friendships, auntie networks, global families… The ways we live together are endless.” Which stories centre non-normative family structures? What are the challenges of doing this in an SF context, and what are the advantages? How does representing a wider range of family types change the stories that are told?

Cherry Potts (moderator)

Jed Hartman

Laura Lam

David D Levine

Rosanne Rabinowitz

The other panels I am on are:

Liechester Square: Getting London Wrong

Thursday 19:00 – 20:00, Capital Suite 9 (ExCeL)

If there’s one thing you can guarantee about the reaction to any piece of SF set in London, it’s that British fans will delight in nit-picking the details: you can’t get there on the Piccadilly Line! So who are the worst offenders? Whose commodified Londons do we forgive for the sake of other virtues in their writing? Do we complain as much about cultural errors as geographic ones, and if not, why not? And given London’s status as a global city, is it even fair to claim ownership of its literary representation?

Alison Scott (Moderator)

Cherry Potts

Leah-Nani Alconcel

Mike Shevdon

Russell Smith

We Can Rebuild You

Sunday 10:00 – 11:00, London Suite 2 (ExCeL)

SF medicine regularly comes up with “cures” for disabled bodies — from Geordi LaForge’s visor to the transfer of Jake Sully’s consciousness in Avatar — but the implications of such interventions are not always thought through as fully as we might hope. How does a rhetoric of medical breakthroughs and scientific progress shape these stories, and shape SF’s representation of lived physical difference? In what ways can SF narratives address dis/ability without either minimising or exaggerating such difference?

Cherry Potts (Moderator)

Neil Clarke

Tore Høie

Helen McCarthy

Marieke Nijkamp

Last Blackheath performance of Count Ory this afternoon

Barnaby J Munday making notes

It is the last performance! After Friday’s sold out but sweltering performance, it is cooler this afternoon, and I can consider the wearing of my (quilted!) tail coat fairly calmly. I hope the sweat in the wimples has dried …

There’s a nice enthusiastic review on Classical Source.

Lena Kern (official photographer) has been having fun, and taken a few thousand pictures. I’ve had a quick look and winnowed out these particularly good ones of ME, making a fool of myself variously as:

Barnaby P Munday, Regional Reporter for the Camberwick Courier, a member of the B*llingd*n club, and said Hooray Henry disguised as a nun, and as a returning soldier.

Showing my nasty side as a drunken hooray henry

Enjoy – I’m listening to the excellent recording by Juan Diego Flórez as I type, singing along to all the bits I DON’T sing on stage, so I’ll be nicely warmed up by 2pm.

Drunken disguises

exhausted from battle (and quick change in the bar)

Third night for Count Ory

It’s the third performance of The Adventures of Count Ory tonight, with a chance that we get a real thunderstorm, and a certainty that those nun’s habits will be unbearably hot!

Apparently I’m a very convincing nun (that’s me far left) and a number of people have said they are reminded of their school days… hmm. Just because I can get a wimple on straight. I have a queue of tenors and basses asking me to put theirs right in the interval!

Some pretty silly alternative titles for the show have been flying about my favourite so far is the Baritones of Wimple Street. (If you don’t get it, you aren’t old enough.)

Joyce di Donato sent us a good luck message, and we tweeted her back a picture of the nuns, much to her amusement. We are even more funny in motion and song – come and find out!

Blackheath Count Ory gets 4 stars from What’s On Stage

That’s a headline a girl like to write.

read the whole thing here, but a little taster -

…proves once again that the words Blackheath Halls and triumph are synonymous.

…easy as it would be to dwell on the delights of the principals, it’s the magnificent chorus that deserves most attention…

Opera up close has come into its own in recent years, but usually without the thrill of having a full chorus just inches from the audience. In terms of breaking barriers, the Blackheath project achieves what many would like to, but rarely can, by putting opera at the heart of the community.

 

And here’s a couple more pictures. (Official photographer Lena Kern has done a much better job, and taken literally thousands of pictures. When I have some of those I’ll post them.

We’re on again tonight. I think there might be a couple of tickets left…

Paul & Susanne, a pair of cads if ever I saw one

Lucasz, Andy, Alix and George doing their best to look like drunken toffs. More convincing on stage…

Count Ory first night tonight

Here’s a sneak preview of what you can expect: the villagers from act I scene I. It’s all very Camberwick Green – until ‘The Hermit’ shows  up…