co-founded with Peter Hammill the influential underground band 'Van
der Graaf Generator', has created a movie for your ears – a new
concept CD titled 'Orfeas'; a retelling of the ancient myth of
Orpheus, the magical musican who travels to the Land of the Dead in
search of the lost Eurydice. Since his Van der Graaf Generator days,
Judge Smith has been responsible for a wide variety of music projects,
including four stage-musicals (with productions at the Edinburgh
Traverse, Sheffield Crucible and the Lyric, Hammersmith), opera and
cantata libretti, songs for the '70s TV show 'Not The Nine O'clock
News', and songs recorded by Peter Hammill and Lene Lovich. His film
'The Brass Band' has won several international awards. Judge Smith's
music is complex in structure and often fragmented, but is always
tuneful and strangely memorable, with humor never far from the
surface. In the course of a twenty-year independent solo career, he
has released ten CDs and DVDs.
"My principal interest is in telling stories with words and music,"
explains Judge. "Some of my CDs are collections of songs, the usual
format for an album, although people say that my songs are unusual and
idiosyncratic. However, three of my projects are in a different
category. Over many years, I have developed a new way of making
extended musical narratives that I call 'Songstories', which are more
complex than song-cycles or 'rock operas'. They are not 'musicals'
either, since they are pretty well un-stageable, and are each intended
to be being complete as an 'audio experience'. The three Songstories
are all very different. The first, 'Curly's Airships', a double CD
with a running time of two hours and twenty minutes, was completed in
2000 after six years full-time work, and tells the story of the 1930
R-101 Airship disaster. It is probably one the largest and most
ambitious pieces of rock music ever recorded. The second, 'The
Climber', released in 2009, in complete contrast, is performed by me
with an unaccompanied Norwegian male voice choir, and a double bass.
The third Songstory is 'Orfeas', my own interpretation of the
Classical myth."
This Songstory uses wildly contrasting styles of music to tell its
story, including instrumental Rock, Mediterranean guitar music, modern
classical string sextet music, classical Trance dance music and Death
Metal. 'Orfeas' also features a radical, and little-known, technique
for transforming recorded speech into melody. "As far as I am aware, I
am the only person making work like this, and I think it would be
probably fair to say that no one else does what I do," says Judge.
"Best known for his role in the formation of Van de Graaf Generator,
Judge Smith is clearly not an artist with much interest in toeing the
line. 'Orfeas', a three-act 'songstory' in which Smith and a host of
guest performers re-imagine the titular Greek legend as he headlines
at Wembley Arena, is effectively an exercise in schizophrenic musical
theatre, replete with rambling soliloquies and plot-revealing dialogue
set to avant-garde chamber music, that takes in everything from Jaunty
rock radio-jingles and ethereal pop." Dom Lawson – Classic Rock
Presents Prog
In recent news, on November 6, 2011 a performance of Judge Smith's
'The House That Cried' was held in Como, Italy. The show also took
place on November 20, 2011 in Chiasso, Switzerland.
For more information visit
http://www.Judge-Smith.com
--
Progressive Rock & Progressive Metal - E-Zine
http://www.progressiverockbr.com
http://progrockmetal.blogspot.com/
