photo of OVER FEN...where The Fen Tiger appeared to The Quarryman

 


We are happy to consider requests for playing at functions, charity events, history/heritage societies etc.
Please contact     john@hobsons-voice.co.uk     if you are an event organiser.

HOT NEWS******

"The Fields of Cambridgeshire" has been arranged for Brass Band and Solo Singer by OLIVER RUDLAND
(please see           www.oliverrudland.co.uk)
Oliver Rudland is an amazing, fresh, young composer and brilliant musician and all-round great personality.

The song itself tells of the heroism of the young PATHFINDER airmen who flew from Bourn Airfield on the fatefully fog-black night of 16th/17th December 1943. Oliver's arrangement begins and ends with the powerful drone of the Lancaster engines. 

Extraordinarily, Oliver Rudland was born on the night of 16th/17th December, albeit a few decades further on in Time.
Whatsmore, he lives barely a stones throw away from the very field where one of these aircraft came to its end.
The book,  "Fire by Night" by Jennie Gray (ask at any Cambridgeshire Library) tells the tale of her father's aircraft.
Add Oliver's arrangement  to the haunting, stirring tunes and words of "The Fields of Cambridgeshire" and you will experience something very deeply moving....all we want now is a band, or lots of bands, to play it!!! The right band is out there somewhere...as a piece for Remembrance Day, and/or 16th/17 Dec anniversary (2013 will be 70 years on), "The Fields of Cambridgeshire" gives due honour and memory..to help us not forget, to help persuade future generations to understand and relate to the courage and actions of all involved at that time in human history.

HOBSON'S VOICE  next plays at PYMOOR METHODIST CHAPEL, on 10th Sept 2011.
As we will have with us,[ after their fantastic triumph of a concert in Over Church the other week], Linda, Colin and Harriett Smith and Kate Woolf, plus Lucy Cook, Christian Jones, Simon Charlesworth and John Rees, we are going to have a go at some really cutting-edge new items...

SHIP OF THE FENS...the story of the storm which destroyed one of Ely Cathedral's  towers, and how it came to be re-built as the unique, octagonal 'lantern' we still see today 700 years later...it is also my unique take on the all-inspiring words in Genesis..."Let There Be Light!".....Oh, yes, we're going to have Colin on his trumpet...a trumpet...in FOLK music???

FLASH SWAN....as sung by a Fenland HERON!!!!   (Did you know that the Old English word for the Grey Heron is....well..it's something to do with the bird's habit of defecating in large quantity as it takes off into flight...so we also entitle this item  "The Song of Curmudgeon The Shitepoke.")

FOREST OF OAKS....a very poetic song....reflects on the Bog Oaks, those semi-fossilised, giant tree trunks now emerging from the shrinking peatlands. And on the memories of a long-serving, Fenland Churchwarden here in Over.

GREY FEATHER...also very poetic...massive in its simple story-telling...an Over dweller, as both man and boy, remembers how he and his brother played down the fenfields...there were German prisoners there at the end of the 2nd World War...the song reflects on the fact that there were other foreign prisoners from another,  long-past war who were brought here...

THE MOUNTAINS  OF ELY and SH! IT'S HIT THE FAN AGAIN...angry songs, like only Folk can do...about Economics, Power, Powerlessness...yes, these are about us and our real lives....

WHISTLE DOWN THE FEN....What is the one thing you must never, never do when you are down on the fen...especially if you are alone?  There are Spirits in The Fen, oh, yes,...and Will O The Wisp...beware!!!
 It promises to be a cracking concert.....

We might even have a go at the very, very, very new:
MUFFIN, CUPCAKE, FAIRYCAKE, BEEFCAKE...!!!!....we have been invaded by the Outsize American Muffin and CupCakes.....just like East Anglia was invaded before by the Outsize American G.I. BeefCake  (OVERPAID, OVER-SEXED AND OVER HERE!)  in the 1940's.... good-old British IS BEST....like the Fairy Cake!!!!

THANK YOU to STEPHEN ADES for playing another new piece, "FENLAND WINTER EVENING LAMENT" , as a Communion-time item in St.Mary's, Over during a evening communion service earlier this year.....Written as for three flutes/recorders/whistles/fiddles/pipes, Stephen made this simple air into the mood-setting piece it wants to be.