When: 27th October, Doors 8pm, Sets at 9:15 and 10:30
Where: –
Tickets: –
Please note this is a private event and not open to the general public. The orchestra is available for private events, please get in touch if you’re interested 🙂
To mark the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, we premiered a new set of arrangements of tunes from ’67, including music by the Velvet Underground, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors and The Association.
With the help of several friends from our Paris chapter, we took over Kings Weston House on 17 June for our big summer event, featuring oil projectors, floral outfits and several different mini-ensembles.
Besides our main outdoor set, there were plenty of mellow happenings within. It all came to a storming climax around midnight from prog rock maestros Asteroid Deluxe.
Fantasy Orchestra leader and guiding light, Jesse D Vernon, writes:
As committed-for-life fans of Ursula Le Guin, my wife Kate and I decided to start running appreciation days when we discovered some amazing music, composed by Todd Barton, to accompany one of her books, Always Coming Home. Published in 1985, about a cultural group of humans—the Kesh—who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California.” (p. i) Part novel, part textbook, part anthropologist’s record, Always Coming Home describes the life and culture of the Kesh people.
Todd Barton wrote a selection of folk songs and music which the Kesh might have been going to sing and they make wonderful listening and a great subject for a singing workshop and performance.
5pm we watched the film “The Lathe Of Heaven” followed by a discussion lead by Sheryl Robinson and the Bristol Utopian Book Collective.
7pm We were treated to a talk by Helena Hoyle-King about maps featured in the novels of Ursula Le Guin. This was followed by a map making workshop lead by . Helena.
Here are some of the maps made:
8pm “Mothers Of The Terrible Glow” performed some of their sci-fi inspired instrumentals with excellent introductions, explanations and insights from Daniel Potter.
What: We’re busking by the Aladdin Sane Wallace on the 24th August!
When: Friday 24th August , 6pm
Where: Wapping Wharf, Bristol
Tickets: Free!
The Wapping Wharf area forms part of the Gromit Unleashed 2 trail , which consists of dozens of sculptures from Aardman’s famous Wallace and Gromit series dotted around the city in aid of the Grand Appeal.
Artist Carys Ink’s Bowie-themed Space Oddi-tea Wallace sculpture is located at Wapping Wharf until September 2 and is the inspiration behind both of the Bowie music fundraiser.
Bristol’s very own Fantasy Orchestra will be performing a selection of Bowie’s early songs on August 24, in keeping with the Wallace sculpture’s Aladdin Sane lightning bolt.
Here is a taste of what to expect – the orchestra’s rendition of Life on Mars from our recent Valley Fest appearance:
The performance will take place at 6pm on August 24 next to the sculpture, in front of Portside Gallery and Brothers We Stand.
What a lovely way to spread a bit of Christmas joy!! The Fantasy Orchestra – Bristol performed this brilliant flashmob of this top David Bowie track! Well done The Bristol Music Show for organising!
Kent was our oyster in late August 2016, as we bicycled merrily from Graveney to Deal, with stops (and gigs) in Canterbury, Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs.
We rendezvoused with the Orchestra’s newly hatched Kent chapter…
and pedalled on to the Smugglers Festival in Little Mongeham near Deal. If we get a good pic of the show, we’ll chuck it here!
We celebrated the World’s Most Famous Unknown People at the Cube on 2 April, with a set including music by Connie Converse, Judee Sill and – in person – Andy Skellam and (below) Rita Lynch:
we popped along the M4 for a set at the Ivy House in Nunhead on 23 April;
we donned appropriate cossies for an Apes Alliance benefit at the University of Bristol on 28 April;
and we played two sets at the Big Love Festival in Hay-on-Wye on 30 April/1 May.
We then split ourselves in two on the weekend of 7 May: while most of our number played at the Park Row Sustrans Festival in Bristol, several of us hopped on Eurostar to join our friends in the Paris Fantasy Orchestra’s for their Bowie Party.
