To publicise an upcoming performance featuring the work of David Jones, write to us at: webmaster.djs@gmail.com
Past
'The Great and Wide Sea' (Opus Anglicanum - An English Music) 8 October, 2016, Mercer's Hall, London (reserve by 2 October, see details below) www.opus-a.co.uk
Film Night: David Jones (1895-1974), Painter, Printmaker and Poet, Slaughterhaus Print Studio, Vincent’s Yard, 119 - 123 Hackford Road, London SW9 0QT Thursday, 28 July, 2016, 7:00 pm for 7:15 start. Admission £10, pay via Paypal (see website below) or email: info@slaughterhaus.net to book.
David Jones’s work was in the tradition of William Blake. He is a visionary artist of fragile watercolours and oils, a maker of copper engravings, drypoints and highly personal inscriptions. He was a scholar and lover of the ancient history of Wales. As a young man his nerves were shattered in the trenches of France in the Great War. He was a pupil of Eric Gill so the sacred and the craft of making are central to his work. Paul Hills, Emeritus Professor of Art at the Courtauld, curated the recent groundbreaking exhibition of Jones’s work at Pallant House, Chichester. He has studied David Jones for many years and will introduce his work. Tristram Powell will show his film-interview with David Jones made in 1965, a few years before he died. It’s a moving testament from an artist who struggled to combine the spiritual and the modern in his work. This will be a unique evening, a chance to discover or rediscover an unfairly neglected painter and printmaker of genius.
'DAVID JONES: July 1916, The Battle of Mametz Wood from In Parenthesis (Opus Anglicanum - An English Music) 22nd July, 2016, St. Wilfrid's Church, York. www.davidjonesdialogues.com/events.html
David Jones, Vexilla Regis (1947), Kettle's Yard Museum, Cambridge.
In Parenthesis, (Welsh National Opera) 13 May - 1 July, 2016. Cardiff, Birmingham, London.
Music: Iain Bell Libretto: David Antrobus and Emma Jenkins Art Direction: David Poutney
As we mark 70 years of WNO it is a time to look forward. What better way to do this than with a world première of a major new opera? In Parenthesis is young British composer Iain Bell’s adaptation of the epic poem by Welsh poet, writer and artist David Jones. In Parenthesis is commissioned by the Nicholas John Trust with 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the First World War Centenary. Private John Ball and his comrades in the Royal Welch Fusiliers are posted to the Somme. In Mametz Wood they enter a strange realm – outside of time, dream-like but deadly. Rather than simply reporting the horrors of the Somme, In Parenthesis dares to offer hope. Even here amongst the destruction, a fragile flowering of regeneration and re-birth can be found. Bell’s beautiful score combines traditional Welsh song with moments of other-worldliness, terror, humour and transcendence. David Pountney’s period production is both an evocation and a commemoration of the events of the Somme. Opera is a living, breathing art form. But for it to keep on growing and evolving, we need you to join us for what we believe is an important major new work. To find out more about In Parenthesis and the original epic poem on which it is based, please visit our dedicated website inparenthesis.org.uk In Parenthesis will be streamed on The Opera Platform at 7pm 1 July, and then available to view online for free for six months. To find out more, please click here. www.wno.org.uk/event/parenthesis