Liverpool’s classical guitar virtuoso plays his first solo concert of the year at the Unity Theatre in February 2010, along with some special guests.
Liverpool based composer and classical guitarist Neil Campbell has been a mainstay on the Liverpool music scene as a solo guitarist for many years and will now perform some intimate concerts for solo guitar to include special guests adding cello and soprano.
Neil Campbell has released a series of critically acclaimed albums of original music culminating in 2008’s ‘Particle Theory’ and ‘Ghost Stories’. In 2009 he staged a series of high profile performance events including ‘Ghost Stories – A Night Opera’ at Liverpool’s St Luke’s (Bombed Out) Church (July 2009), St Georges Hall Concert Room (October 2009) and Birkenhead Priory, as part of the Wirral International Guitar Festival (November 2009). He also introduced, at St George’s Hall, a new composition ‘Frankenstein’ for The Neil Campbell Collective and Sense of Sound Choir. These new large scale works married grand concepts with great architecture and stunning visuals, and will continue to be developed and staged at national and international levels throughout 2010.
Following two performances in Palermo and Catania, Sicily in December 2009, Neil is very much looking forward to continuing with a series of solo concerts including two shows at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre.
He says:
“Playing solo brings me back to the source of my music – to the state it is in when it is first composed and before layers of other instrumentation, visuals and other concepts are added. It is about picking up an instrument – in this case the classical guitar- and using it to create a more intimate, more direct communication between myself and the audience”
Performance Details
Neil Campbell in Concert
Unity Theatre, Hope Place, Liverpool, L1 9BG
Thursday 4 and Friday 5 February 2010 – 8.00pm
Tickets £8, concessions £6
Box Office: 0151 709 4988 or in person at the Unity Theatre Box Office or online at www.unitytheatreliverpool.co.uk.
For further information, review tickets, images and interview requests please contact:
Bill Elms at Bill Elms Associates on 07930 454376 (mobile) or email bill@billelms.com or John Bridge at Unity Theatre on 0151 702 7362 or email johnbridge@unitytheatre.co.uk
Press Quotes from CD releases
About ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (2003):
“12 tracks of solo guitar brilliance that creep upon you slowly…Like the seminal Tubular Bells, it’s one of those albums which sets a mood of quiet introspection, occasionally bursting into something more animated”
Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post.
“Music that not only covers beauty and charm, but moves effortlessly into darker and more emotional areas… I suppose if we threw Paco de Lucia, Segovia, John Williams, Gordon Giltrap and perhaps a dash of Martin Taylor into a melting pot why might get out a Neil Campbell…”
Bob Mulvey, Dutch Progressive Rock Pages
About ‘Fall’ (2006):
“a beautiful collection of classical guitar and cello pieces… the two instruments complementing each other wonderfully throughout….Splendid stuff!”
Bob Mulvey, Dutch Progressive Rock Pages
“an outstanding epic album of beautiful and beguiling music…This collection arrives through the pairing of these two accomplished and dedicated musicians who together produce intensely graceful, enrapturing and at times sobering melodies”
Alicia Rose, Nerve
“The music sounds like poetry on a canvas and each time one is able to reveal new dimensions in their songs. The music has a classical setup and yet invites one to explore new boundaries…This is a top-notch CD I truly recommend to any music enthusiast.”
Henk te Veldhuis, Bridge Guitar Reviews
Neil Campbell
The composer, classical guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Neil Campbell has followed a number of seemingly divergent musical paths throughout his musical career including free improviser, singer songwriter, systems music composer, band leader and virtuoso guitar soloist. In 1998 he simultaneously became involved with the free improvisation scene and the acoustic scene in Liverpool. Around this time he also began postgraduate studies in Musical Composition through the University of Liverpool. Through his MA studies he developed an approach to music making based around musical systems or processes which run automatically without ‘composerly’ intervention.
For more information on Neil Campbell visit www.neilcampbell.org.uk
The albums documenting this work are ‘Rotations’ (2003) and the 3 CD set ‘Assembly’ (2005). Much of this music has received airplay on BBC Radio 3′s Late Junction programme and music from ‘Assembly’ has recently been featured in Prof Kyle Gann’s Listening List of minimal, postminimal and totalist music for his Composition students at Bard College, New York.
Neil’s work in the area of minimalist and systems music continues with a large-scale collaboration with Jon Anderson (leader of the progressive rock band Yes) and with the development of a 50 minute long suite ‘The Path’, based on Herman Hesse’s ‘Siddhartha’. Over the last four years Neil has poured his activities as a composer, songwriter and performer into work with the Neil Campbell Collective (NCC).
After twenty-eight years of playing, a virtuoso classical guitarist, Neil has produced two CDs of solo guitar music ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (Mayfield 2003) and ‘Night Sketches’ (2004) and a book of Music for Solo Guitar. He has also recorded, with cellist Nicole Collarbone, a CD of Music for Cello and Guitar – ‘Fall’ (2006) and an album of songs in collaboration with Stuart Todd, entitled ‘Campbell Todd’ (2007). Neil’s latest album ‘Ghost Stories’ (2008), a collaboration with soprano Anne Taft and electro-acoustic musician Michael Beiert, has received excellent critical notices from reviewers. During 2009 Neil’s focus has been to work with producer Bill Elms to stage performances of his music (‘Ghost Stories’ and a new piece ‘Frankenstein’ for choir and ensemble) as events with specially developed visuals presented in the environment of stunning pieces of Merseyside architecture, i.e. St Luke’s (Bombed Out) Church, St George’s Hall Concert Room and the Chapel at Birkenhead Priory.
All of Neil’s music including that of the Neil Campbell Collective is available for digital download at I-Tunes, and physical and digital albums are available at www.cdbaby.com. The NCC’s ‘Particle Theory’ CD is distributed by all the major international distributors of progressive and experimental rock, including Musea (France), Wayside Music (USA), Kinesis (USA), ZNR (USA) and Just for Kicks (Germany).