UK Musician Fyfe Dangerfield to Vietnam

Hanoi: Thu Tue 28 May 2013, 8 pm
Youth Theatre
–
HCMC: Sun 26 May 2013, 8 pm
HCMC Conservatory of Music

From British Council:

Guillemots frontman Fyfe Dangerfield joined by their percussionist Greig Stewart to play a stripped-down selection of his and the band’s songs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city. This is one important event included in our series of activities celebrating the 40th anniversary of Viet Nam and UK diplomatic relations and 20th anniversary of British Council presence in Vietnam.

The two concerts are also part of Europe Days 2013.

Fyfe Dangerfield is best known as the founding member and songwriter / frontman of Guillemots, a band with members from all over the globe who first came to attention back in 2005, with exuberant, colour-drenched singles such as “Made-up Lovesong#43” and “Trains to Brazil”. Their debut album “Through the Windowpane” followed in 2006, picking up a Mercury Music Prize nomination and vocal praise from many music luminaries including Sir Paul McCartney, and a Brit Nomination followed the next year for Best Live Act.

Since then, albums “Red” (2008), “Walk the River” (2011) and “Hello Land” (2012)  have continued to feed the group’s reputation for making gorgeously unpredictable, dreamlike music, with the latter album also marking the start of an exciting new phase for Guillemots – an ambitious project to release four albums loosely based around the seasons, recording in a Norwegian hideout with producer Jonas Raabe; the second, “summer” album is currently in production.

In 2010, Dangerfield released his own debut solo album, the gold-selling “Fly Yellow Moon”, which included a surprise Top 10 hit with one of its bonus tracks, a cover of Billy Joel’s “She’s Always A Woman”. He is also increasingly working as a composer and arranger; the CBSO premiered his debut orchestral piece, “In Wait”, in 2007, and he has written a number of pieces for both cellist Natalie Clein and the choir Ex Cathedra. 2011 saw his first soundtrack, too, for a theatre production of the fairytale “Howl’s Moving Castle”.

As an instrumentalist, Fyfe plays keyboards with tea-dance-gone-wrong free jazz improvisers Gannets, whose album “Transmissions of Not” – a recording of a BBC Radio 3 session – was released in 2012, and is a part-time guitarist for roll-n-roll tradesmen The Courtesy Group. He is also currently collating a series of random recordings with which to launch his own Pitch Squirrel record label.

Free tickets can be collected at the British Council HCMC at 25 Le Duan, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City from 9 am and British Council Hanoi at 20 Thuy Khue, Tay Ho, Hanoi from 10 am Thu 23 May 2013.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yATtdheYPzg[/youtube]