Dear friend/fellow artist/arts-media worker et al,
Re artworks: my 76.5 x 63.5cm oil painting on canvas of ‘Shelley – The Sensitive Plant’ is work number 601 in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, open daily until 18th August. It is hanging in the Small Weston Room. The sub-title & some of the picture’s themes allude to Shelley’s early poem The Sensitive Plant which includes the lines:
“A sensitive plant in a garden grew,/And the young winds fed it with silver dew,/And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,/And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.//And the Spring arose on the garden fair,/Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;/And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast/Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest . . . //And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,/As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,/Till the fiery star, which is its eye,/Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky . . . //For love, and beauty, and delight,/There is no death nor change: their might/Exceeds our organs, which endure/No light, being themselves obscure.”
Both poem & painting deliberately touch on the perennial challenge presented by nature to literature and art so frequently enlightened in Shelley. I’m attaching a reproduction. As well as the original which is available for purchase [@ £7500] via the Academy, there is a limited edition signed print of which a dozen of the 30 prints remain available for purchase via me [@ £300 unframed, £450 framed].
Another artwork of mine is about to be hung as part of this year’s Ruth Borchard Self-Portraits Competition exhibition which will grace the King’s Place Gallery, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG, just round the corner from Kings Cross, from 20th June to 22 September – whereafter it will be touring to Newcastle (more details via www.kingsplacegallery.co.uk).
My original 47 x 33cm Pen & Indian ink ‘Self-Portrait with Muse (pre-feminist, pre-smokeless)’ will be on sale via KPG [@ £12000]. A limited edition signed print of this drawing is also available for purchase via me [@ £175 unframed or £250 framed]. Some 45 of the edition of 150 remain available. I’m attaching also a reproduction of this. The print version has been slightly altered from the original, which was used as a poster for my 1971 ‘wild bunch of Love Poems’ (New Departures #11) which I put together for the late unforgettable Frances Horovitz when she was pregnant with Adam Horovitz.
Gearbox Records have just released three interesting vinyl recordings, namely:
Jazz Poetry SuperJam #1 with jazz, poetry, & jazz poetry by Pete Brown, Stan Tracey, Bobby Wellins, Laurie Morgan, John Mumford, Laurie Morgan, Jeff Clyne and myself, plus
– Jazz Poetry SuperJam #2, a Single featuring concerted improvisations by Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Paul Weller and me, with Side A a rural ballad, and Side B a kind of off-cut from
– Jazz Poetry SuperJam #3, an extended surreal/polemical rant, Bankbusted Nuclear Detergent Blues on a 12” LP, again enlightened by scintillating interplay between Albarn, Coxon & Weller, & (tho I say it myself) myself.
I’m attaching a page touching on a recent performance of excerpts from the Single which a recent issue of NME ran:
– Here’s hoping a few discerning musical poetry lovers & listeners will order and enjoy our labours of love.
Both happily & unhappily, I’ve been told that JPS#2 & #3 are nearly sold out – so the only way you could purchase either of the remaining Quartet recordings is either via e-Bay at inflated prices, or at more ideologically sound ones via certain record stores – mainly it seems specifically Independent ones.
I’m trying to discover exactly which ones still have copies of the Single &/or LP – and once discovered, will circulate infos in a subsequent Newsletter – and/or the glad tidings that both Single & LP are once more universally available.
Meanwhile you should be able to order the 1962 JPS #1, Blues for the Hitchhiking Dead, via any decent music store – there is supposed to be more info if you click Store on http://www.gearboxrecords.com/Site/gearbox.html
You can get an inkling of our concerted sounds on Side A of the Single (JPS #2) from this not technically at all hi-fi version of the way Jarvis Cocker played it on his BBC Radio 6 Music Sunday Service at around 4.50pm on Sunday 20th April:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12649566/BBC%20Radio%206%20-%20J.%20Cocker%27s%20Sunday%20Service%20-%20%20RSD%20Round-Up%20-%2021%20April%202013%20-%20M.%20Horovitz%20et%20al.%20-%20Ballade%20of%20the%20Nocturnal%20Commune.wav
You can also browse further infos regarding all three recordings via: http://checkthis.com/2q95
– although my part of the performance with Damon, Graham & Paul at Albert Hall linked via Gearbox’s PR was not at all up to the standards that illustrious trio demonstrated, or near as satisfactory as I feel my performances on the recordings are.
Lastly for now, early notice of this year’s National Poetry Day Jazz Poetry SuperJam Live, as ever at London’s 100 Club, 100 Oxford St, W1, from 7.30 till late on Thursday 3rd October, for which the alumni booked so far include Annie Whitehead’s massed World Music Workshop bands, the William Blake Klezmatrix band, jazz maestros Bobby Wellins, Jennifer Maidman, Pete Lemer & Martin Davison, plus performance poetry specialists John Hegley & Adam Horovitz, and singer-songsmith-poets Pete Brown, Vanessa Vie & myself, among diverse others tbc – keep this date, unless you are sane.
Ergo, I very much hope that any of you interested in art, music, literature &/or the future capacities of Adam Horovitz, myself and our associates to produce further New Departures publications and recordings, Poetry Olympics festivals, and Jazz Poetry SuperJam productions might spread the word about any/all of the above, even if not able to consider purchasing/supporting our historic mission yourselves.
If anyone getting this wants no more such bulletins, do let me know & will hope not to reappear on your inbox.
Wishing you all joy of the summer, Michael H
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/fran-landesman-poet-lyricist-and-performance-artist-famous-for-her-jazz-standards-and-infamous-for-her-open-marriage-2341592.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/inge-laird-poet-who-was-a-guiding-light-of-new-departures-publications-and-the-poetry-olympics-2208490.html
http://londongrip.co.uk/2011/08/art-retrospective-exhibition-michael-horovitz/
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