Posts tagged “mtum”

Hi, Shlo here. So you might know we are hosting our own stage for the Saturday evening at the Glastonbury Park Stage this year. The idea is that my beatbox choir (Shlomo and the Vocal Orchestra) will be the backing band for a series of guest-star collaborations.

Emily Eavis is curating the Park Stage and she has invited several of the festival’s key artists to collaborate with us.

The lineup is a secret but you can probably guess some of the names by looking at previous Unconventional Means lineups, then throw in a few of this year’s headline artists and you have yourself a show!

If you can guess the artists referred to in the following clues, email your name, phone number and answers to competition@shlo.co.uk by 5pm on Friday 20th June and you will be in with a chance of winning two free tickets to the festival.

1. Locating superhero attire
2. Preacher with creators
3. Two offspring of folk-rock dynasties

Southbank have invited me back for another year as Artist in Residence. This is great, as it means I’ll be based there at least until next Summer.

Jane from the Southbank Centre asked me who I would like to collaborate with for “unconventional means” next year. I said Stevie Wonder. She said why not. Then she asked me to write a “brain-dump” list of artists starting with Stevie. Here’s the list so far (it’s not quite finished yet).

- Stevie Wonder
- Paul Simon
- Joni Mitchell
- Keith Jarrett
- Peter Gabriel
- Sting
- Bebel Gilberto
- Björk
- Nitin Sawhney
- Ozomatli
- John Scofield
- Sigur Ros
- Mariza
- Squarepusher
- The Prodigy
- Unkle/ James Lavelle
- Van Morrison
- Alex Turner
- Thom Yorke
- Bobby McFerrin
- Damian Marley
- Danger Mouse
- Easy Star Allstars
- DJ Shadow
- Eels
- Four hero
- Roni Size
- Alex Kapranos
- Fat Freddy’s Drop
- Portishead
- Imogen Heap
- Lauren Hill
- Gilles Peterson
- Heritage Orchestra
- Ojos De Brujo
- Tinariwen
- Susheela Raman
- Mike Patton
- Gonzales
- Gotan Project
- Herbie Hancock
- Ladysmith Black Mambazo
- Matmos
- De La Soul
- Annie Lennox
- The Specials
- Brian Eno
- Candi Staton
- Camille
- Baaba Maal
- Anoushka Shankar
- Tony Allen

Here’s an MP3 of me jamming on my new ‘hernia rig’* (2 loopstations and a kaoss pad) at the QEH last month. It’s from my solo set, before I collaborated with Mad Professor.

I’m calling it ‘Kernia’. Check it out here: Kernia.

the hernia rig

*it was named the hernia rig by Tony Birch (my right hand man, best production manager in world) after he nearly killed himself trying to lift it!

Saturday was an amazing concert, and one of the proudest moments of my career. It was great to perform again with my Vocal Orchestra, but the highlight for me was our ‘Beatbox Chorus’ – 25 kids from a range of backgrounds in South London. Jes and Zani, two beatboxers from my choir, have been working with these young people since the beginning of the year, firstly at the Beatbox Academy that we set up at BAC, and then at Southbank for the weeks before the show.

It was incredible to see these youngsters get up and beatbox in front of a sold-out QEH (about 1,000 people). Some of them had no musical experience whatsoever, and performing on a stage of that scale was a first for all of them. Someone said to me after the show that they loved the performance, but that maybe we should have got some kids who couldn’t already beatbox. I was exasperated: the kids had learnt their skills from scratch, in an amazingly short time. Maybe people didn’t understand how much work had gone into the project, and that drive came mostly from the kids themselves.

The “Beatbox Chorus” looking as mean they can!

Glastonbury and Bestival!

Shlomo’s collaborative concert series ‘Music Through Unconventional Means’ will depart from Southbank over the Summer to hit some of the UK’s festivals! Starting with a massive 2 hour collaborative show headlining the Glastonbury Park Stage, followed by a reprise of Shlomo and DJ Yoda’s collaboration on the mainstage at Bestival. Details below.

Music Through Unconventional Means @ Glastonbury

6-8PM, GLASTONBURY PARK STAGE, SAT 28 JUNE 2008

We are proud to announce that a special collaborative show will take place at this year’s Glastonbury festival, led by acclaimed British beatbox artist SHLOMO with his beatbox choir THE VOCAL ORCHESTRA. The two hour show will feature a secret list of guest acts from across the musical spectrum, with several of the festival’s key artists playing exclusive acoustic performances before collaborating and jamming with Shlomo and each other.

The emphasis of this extraordinary evening is on spontaneous collaboration and improvisation, often pushing the guest artists away from their usual performance zone to create something entirely original and unique.

The title ‘Music Through Unconventional Means’ is taken from Shlomo’s monthly concert series at the London Southbank Centre, where he is currently Artist in Residence. The series has been running since November 2007, and so far Shlomo has collaborated with Martha Wainwright, Teddy Thompson, DJ Yoda, Mad Professor and Polar Bear.

The Glastonbury show came about after discussions between Shlomo and Park Stage curator Emily Eavis. “This is one of the most anticipated shows at this year’s festival…” says Emily, “Expect special guests, unusual collaborations and amazing beatboxing for two hours…This year’s big surprise gig.”

Shlomo vs DJ Yoda @ Bestival

6.30PM, Bestival Main Stage, Sat 6 September 2008

The amazing collaboration between Shlomo and AV artist DJ Yoda will be revisited in front of 30,000 people on the Bestival mainstage in September. The show was originally created for a special show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of Shlomo’s residency at Southbank Centre. It features a crazy mashup of beatboxing, scratching and video trickery, and is one hell of a party starter!

What a night!

I played with my own jazz quintet, featuring my dad Jeremy on guitar, and trombone legend Annie Whitehead.

I also did a special duet with poet Lemn Sissay which made my spine tingle.

Polar Bear played a storming solo set which redefined experimental jazz to me.

Then I joined Polar Bear in the second half for what was my single most incredible experience with free improvisation.

I ‘battled’ their drummer and leader Seb Rochford, had my voice mangled and magnified by Leafcutter John’s electronics, and we created some incredible music!

Check out the MP3 of the first piece we did. I’ve called it ‘Stephats’.

Then as the finale both bands came back onstage for a massive jam! Too awesome for words. The Guardian gave us a 4-star review.

This was the third concert in the series and by now the momentum of the idea has really picked up some pace. Tickets for the show sold out almost straight after the concert with Martha and Teddy before we had really done any promotion, which is awesome as it means that people heard about it through word-of-mouth and buzz!

This was another show put together against the clock - I only first met with DJ Yoda to chat through ideas about 2 weeks beforehand, and tickets were already sold out. Yoda was a bit worried at first because he was then away on tour until a few days before the concert, but after a bit of jamming we were coming up with shedloads of ideas.

The concept of DJ Yoda’s performance is all about scratching video using special DVD turntables. It’s amazing to watch and the extra visual element to scratching really adds to the experience and the understanding of how skilled a scratch DJ really is.

It also meant that we had to do some fairly meticulous preparation as everything has to be burned on to custom DVDs beforehand. We spent a day shooting some clips around the Southbank, and then spent 3 days locked in the lab polishing up the show.

We came up with a technique which means we can do a ‘live remix’ of almost any tune. Yoda has a hundreds of acappella versions of well known tunes… once he had synched that up with the original video (courtesy of YouTube!) he could then scratch up the original vocals over my remix beatbox version.

Hence the ‘collaboration’ with Michael Jackson, aged 7, on a crazy live remix version of ‘Want You Back’, featuring myself looping up the instrument tracks, singing the backing vocals, and all five of the Jacksons dancing on a giant screen behind me!

At this point the already wild Friday night crowd at the QEH nearly lost control! They were all up off their seats, dancing in the aisles and down at the front! The party continued with Yoda and friends DJing out in the Foyer until the early hours, and I was chuffed to meet a some audience members who had travelled all the way from places like Newcastle, Nottingham and Bristol to see the show, several who had been at all three of the concerts so far, and loads who already had tickets for all the upcoming ones.

In the second of the MTUM concerts I invited Martha Wainwright and Teddy Thompson to collaborate with me. I first met Teddy a couple of years ago when we were on Jools Holland’s show together, and we’d talked about getting something together ever since. I met Martha backstage at Glastonbury and we got on really well, so I thought it would be amazing to mix their delicate, singer-songwriter folksy guitar music with my beatboxing.

The first half was a real treat… Teddy went on first to a packed QEH crowd, they seemed to be a mixed bunch, kind of spread out between the three artists. I was amazed by Teddy’s country style singing… he sounded the real deal! I went on after him and was so concious about the massive change in volume so I started off by going easy on the crowd, with some quiet kicks and snares, before dropping in some looping. Martha was on next and her solo slot was spine-tingling.

For the second half we started with a series of duos. First of all me and Teddy did a rendition of one of Teddy’s tracks, followed by our interpretation of ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’. Here’s an MP3 of the first track: cantsingstraight.mp3.

Then Martha joined Teddy to sing a duet of an Everly brothers song, followed by another duet from myself and Martha.

The finale of the show was when all three of us performed together, and Martha made me do something I have never done before - playing guitar and singing a folk song! We sang Bob Dylan’s ‘Dont think twice, it’s alright’. I was so nervous to sing but the whole crowd were so supportive and I enjoyed it so much, I’m planning to bring more singing / guitar into my shows.

Here’s the MP3 of us singing together: martha-teddy-shlomo.mp3.

The show got a great response, including a 4-star review in The Independent, describing it as “A performance of jaw dropping artistry…the experimentation is playful, the message is simple: in the music playground, carefree creativity beats crass commercialism hands down.”

Top right is the short film that Sarah from SeaBuzzard prepared, it was screened at the beginning of the show. If you want to see the full performance, you’ll have to wait for the MTUM Box Set DVD release!!!

Taken from AFTM Press release:

We are pleased to announce that Shlomo, the acclaimed British beatboxer, has been appointed as Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre, Europe’s largest arts complex.

By the age of 23, Shlomo has already done much to change perceptions of the art of beatboxing - expanding the possibilities of the vocal discipline that grew out of the hip-hop scene. As well as recording music with Bjork for the Athens Olympics, and creating the UK’s first human beatbox choir, he curated the International Human Beatbox Convention, part of Southbank Centre’s annual Ether festival, in April 2007.

Shlomo was invited to become an Artist in Residence by Jude Kelly, Artistic Director at Southbank Centre, after she saw his live solo show which includes beatboxing through a loop sampler as well as beatboxing and drumming at the same time.

“I’m excited and honoured to be here” says Shlomo, “I see this Residency as an opportunity to challenge preconceptions of beatboxing, and boost its profile as a genuinely creative art-form.”

Shlomo’s residency at Southbank Centre is set to include a range of educational events, as well as a series of concerts entitled ‘Music Through Unconventional Means’. At each concert a different guest artist collaborates with Shlomo to create new and unusual ways of performing live. December 2nd sees Shlomo collaborating with folk stars Martha Wainwright and Teddy Thompson at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (see details below).

The nature of these collaborative concerts creates a unique atmosphere, as artists are forced to engage, improvise and perform away from their usual comfort zones. This creates a performance like no other - a special opportunity to see a side to artists that will not be seen anywhere else.

The series sees Shlomo set to collaborate with artists across the musical spectrum, many of whom you may not expect to see on stage with a human beatboxer. Other artists lined up for 2008 include Mercury-nominated drummer Seb Rochford, a special AV show with DJ Yoda, the return of Shlomo’s beatboxing choir The Vocal Orchestra featuring the Swingle Singers, and a whole host of world, jazz and folk music stars.

There are also plans to create the World’s Largest Beatboxing Choir for Southbank Centre’s Choral Festival in May, plus the return of the International Beatbox Convention as part of the Ether Festival in April 2008.