St George’s Church (located at 93 St George’s Road, Kemp Town, Brighton, BN2 1ED) has certainly been popping up frequently of late with the announcement of several varied concert performances being held within its historic and atmospheric interior.
This might well have something to do with the fact that it provides the perfect venue for events, with its great acoustics, facilities, simple but beautiful setting, and seating for up to 550 people. The Neoclassical style church first opened its doors on 1st January 1826, two days after it was consecrated by the Bishop of Chichester. The final cost of constructing it was £11,000, but nowadays buildings such as this have to diversify in order to keep going and to pay for their maintenance which is obviously far more than £11,000 per annum.
Step in artists including Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi who are more than willing to perform in such exquisite surroundings on Saturday 23rd November as part of their eight date tour of the country, and St George’s Church can continue serving the local community and even those further afield. It’s a win – win situation, especially as there is also a licensed bar available at the musical events.
Rhiannon Giddens is an American artist of folk and traditional music, played on fiddle and banjo; Francesco Turrisi is an Italian pianist and percussionist well versed in jazz, early music and Mediterranean music; at first blush, their worlds don’t overlap.
But at a chance musical meet-up in Ireland they found that her 19th century American minstrel banjo tunes and his traditional Sicilian Tamburello (tambourine) rhythms fit very naturally together. They soon discovered the reason for that – their respective roots coexisted in the past. Pictures of early minstrel bands all represent banjo and tambourine (called tambo) together, where in many cases the tambo is held in the same manner of Southern Italian tamburello traditions today.
Rhiannon and Francesco have recently released their new album, titled ‘There Is No Other’ and if you click on the link at the end of this sentence, you will be able to listen to it and buy it and watch various interesting videos – CLICK HERE.
You can purchase your tickets from SeeTickets for their Brighton concert on Saturday 23rd November at St George’s Church HERE.
Further information:
Rhiannon Giddens
Francesco Turrisi
St George’s Church
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