Chris says of the penultimate track from the None the Wiser, “Written by John Clare as he lived out his days in Northampton asylum this lyric was edited by Hugh Lupton for a choral commission we worked on together”.
I am, yet what I am no one cares or knows. My friends forsake me like a memory lost, I am the self consumer of my woes. They rise and vanish in oblivious host.
John Clare Clare’s muse was the natural world while most men see it as a resource to claim, to own and turn to a profit. His poetry chronicled England’s Parliamentary enclosure and, took his wits. His committal papers give the reason for his madness as “an addiction to poetical prosing.” I arranged it for an S.A.T.B (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) choir and my friend Martin Butler (Professor of Music at Sussex) took my arrangement and adapted it for piano. I was exhausted when we recorded it and my voice is spent but the performance is full of love.”
Clearly heartfelt and echoing the lyrics as quoted. Chris adds with sly irony, “I expect it to appear as an illegal download any day now.” Touché perhaps, but one can only hope that enough of you are convinced of the spirit that Chris has brought to this work to make such concerns all but irrelevant.
Review by: Simon Holland
BUY THE ALBUM
None the Wiser will retail on 1st July 2013 or you can order it now from Chris Woods own website
17 May Canterbury Cathedral Lodge, The Precincts, CANTERBURY, Kent CT1 2EH
01227 831493 / www.folkinthebarn.co.uk / Box Office info@folkinthebarn.co.uk
21 May St George’s Hall Liverpool, St George’s Place, LIVERPOOL Merseyside L1 1JJ.
0151 709 3789 / www.liverpoolphil.com
22 May The Glee Club, BIRMINGHAM
Box Office: www.glee.co.uk/birmingham‐music / 0871 472 0400
23 May Union Chapel, Compton Avenue, Islington, LONDON N1 2UN.
08444 771 000 / www.pulluptheroots.co.uk
24 May The Guildhall Derby, Derby Assembly Rooms, Market Place, DERBY DE1 3AH.
01332 255800 / www.assemblyrooms‐derby.co.uk
25 May Winchester Discovery Centre, Jewry Street, WINCHESTER, Hants, SO23 8SB
01962 873603 / www.hants.gov.uk/wdc
26 May The Basement, 24 Kensington Street, BRIGHTON, East Sussex, BN1 4AJ.
www.thebasement.uk.com