From The Uncertain Hour to Van Diemen's Land

Peter Wiegold's wonderful Club Inégales opens its Autumn season, The Uncertain Hour, on Thursday, 1 November 2018 when singer/actor Sarah Gabriel joins Peter Wiegold and Notes Inégales for a programme of Brecht and Weill. There will be some of their music theatre pieces as well as Peter Wiegold's settings of Brecht's poetry and political manifestos. And if you can't get along to the club, then there is their forthcoming disc with folk-singer Sam Lee to look forward to, Van Diemen's Land.

Further ahead, they join with the EFG London Jazz Festival for The Edge of the Abyss at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. Back at Club Inégales's home in Euston, the second collaboration with the jazz festival includes composer/saxophonist Helen Papaioannou, saxophonist James Mainwaring and bass Shri Sriram (a key member of Asian Underground scene with Badmarsh&Shri, who recently won a British Composer Award for “Just a Vibration”, a collaboration between Indian musicians and brass band!).

Peter Knight, director of the Australian Art Orchestra, is guest in December and Peter Knight will be adding his trumpet/electronics to the mix with Alice Zawadzki (violin, voice), and they will be performing The Plains, 'an extraordinary series of musical mirages that form on an endless sonic horizon reflecting and reimagining the wide-open spaces of the Australian landscape’.

Finally on 13 December 2018, folk-singer extraordinaire, Sam Lee joins Peter Wiegold and Notes Inégales for the launch of their album Van Diemen's Land. This disc is a wonderful re-imagining, taking Sam Lee's folk-inspired vocals into new lands and territories with some magical instrumental textures from Peter Wigold (director and keyboard), Fraser Fifield (pipes and saxophone), Max Baillie (violin), Joel Bell (guitar), Ben Markland (bass),Simon Limbrick (percussion), and Martin Butler (piano).

There are nine tracks on the disc and they arise out of live performances with Lee in 2014. Thanks to the varied experience of the members of the band, classical, jazz, folk, Scottish music and more, the results are intriguing and flexible. And on disc, Wiegold and his musicians have successfully re-captured the live, freely improvised feel which is Notes Inégales trade-mark.

If you think you know what folk music sounds like and don't like it, then think again. This really is a journey to the unknown, and wonderful it is too.

Full details of the latest season from the Club Inégales website.

Van Diemen's Land is released on 16 November 2018, available from Amazon.