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Repertoire fashion reviews12/16/2023 ![]() ![]() This really is Oxford’s musical repertoire at its best, bringing the finest performers to the city, delighting the audiences and then sharing expertise in masterclasses and workshops. Sholto Kynoch who founded Oxford Leider Festival Though my companion and I found the links between the exhibition and the music decidedly tenuous, the talks added enormously to our understanding of the exhibition itself. Colour Revolutionīetween groups of songs, Matthew Winterbottom, Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Ashmolean, gave a series of illustrated talks about the current exhibition “ Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design”. Astounding. As was Simon Lepper’s rich and beautiful accompaniment, often finishing the phrase after the voice died away. Gweneth Ann Rand’s voice could be as soft as a kiss, a butterfly lighting on a flower, the next moment ringing out in anger and passion. Gweneth Ann Rand, with Simon Lepper, performed their repertoire of songs from 2-200 lines long, with an astounding range of tone and mood, from mournful to magical and mischievous, flirtatious to grief-stricken, seductive to enraged. Usually performed in drawing rooms and small halls, with no amplification, they rely on the power and clarity of the performers, and this is exactly what we got on Friday. The songs (or leider) were set to poems, here by Auden, Yeats, Messiaen, Sean O Faolain and more, for one or two voices, accompanied by the piano. This is not music for football stadiums or warehouses. The events take place in Oxford’s many exquisite venues – the Sheldonian, the Holywell Music Room, the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building, the Ashmolean Museum, college chapels, Harcourt Arboretum – over a packed two-week programme. Curator Matthew Winterbottom with Henry Wyndham Phillips’portrait of Owen Jones in Colour Revolution exhibition at The Ashmolean Interspersed by short illustrated talks by Ashmolean curator Matthew Winterbottom, the inspired concert was scheduled half-way through the astonishing 75+ events of the former Oxford Leider Festival), which includes a dazzling array of concerts, masterclasses, recitals, talks, tours, workshops, newly commissioned pieces, dance, poetry, art and so much more. We sat spellbound in the Holywell Music Room as soprano Gweneth Ann Rand, accompanied by Simon Lepper performed a miscellany of songs as part of the Oxford International Song Festival. ![]()
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