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The City Wakes is produced by Escape Artists, a registered charity that supports recovery and social inclusion within the mental health care sector. Any purchases that you make from The City Wakes website help to fund our work.
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The People Paintings
The UFO, supporters of The Other Room, hosted a special "People Painting" during The City Wakes: a blank canvas available for visitors to "offer their love and creativity to Mr. Barrett". Everyone had the opportunity to express themselves.
The Result: Group creations that nobody could predict. Participation was essential. Just like a happening which includes the audience, the People Paintings are a pleasant artifact left by the people who were there, part of a fantastic evening. In Roger Keith 'Syd' Barrett’s spirit, seven paintings were produced, each one an artistic thumb print impression of each of The City Wakes events. Each painting is totally original and includes a certificate of authenticity, along with the signatures of each of the artists who participated in their creation.
Paintings are best viewed while listening to Syd Barrett's "Chapter 24"
Stage 1 - The Roots of Cambridge Rock
Not a City Wakes centered event, but a private gathering organized by Warren Dosanjh, for all of the rock and roll musicians in the Cambridge area especially those known throughout the 1960s and 70s. Cambridge was known as a place that was fertile with student groups rocking their way through grammar school and college, or just working lads letting off steam and livening-up things in the city and in the towns and villages around the region of the old county of Cambridgeshire. This event included many of the old crew that were around then, and also many of the ex band mates of the Pink Floyd band, organized and named by Roger Keith ‘Syd’ Barrett after two obscure bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
Stage 2 - The Happening
All at Once: the Happening
Talking of happenings, this classic, 60s-style Happening was staged on October 28th. Some friends of Syd were the organizers and instigators of the All at Once Happening at the Centre at St Paul's. In their preview of the event, they said: "Our digipoems, mangled music & old wave films will remix prolix newkicks. Our simultaneity, multineity & spontaneity will loop back to yesterday, improvise today but furrow tomorrow. We insist you keep your mobile phones on, your children badly behaved and your antennae tuned to the chance of beauty. It's FREE to get in... Like life.
Stage 2 - The Happening - The Other Side
As the Centre at St Paul's website attests, the Happening was quite something. "Performers included William Pryor, Andrew Rawlinson, Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon and Lucy Raverat. Peter Wynne Wilson's light show was spectacular bathing and swathing the building and the performers in a succession of kaleidoscopic kolours spontaneously reflecting the experimental nature of the performance".
Stage 3 - The Madcap & Anthony Stern
Malcolm Boyle’s original live art theatre show The Madcap is a multi-media journey into the psychedelic 60s underground as seen through the distorted mental lens of Syd Barrett - the legendary genius behind Pink Floyd. In this critically-acclaimed solo show, award-winning performer and musician Malcolm Boyle combines tragicomic performance, hallucinatory original film and archive slide projections with his own 21st Century interpretations of Barrett’s songs.
The Madcap plays out the story of Syd’s sudden rise from bohemian alternative London to the heights of pop stardom, and his eventual flight from public life against a backdrop of political rebellion, hallucinogenic drugs and psychedelic music.
Also Anthony Stern opened the act with an excellent rare version of Interstellar Overdrive played along to rare footage of Syd Barrett and San Francisco in the 1960s. Anthony Stern used extensive sound and picture archives of rediscovered and unseen material from the 60’s including concert footage of Blind faith, Pink Floyd etc are currently being prepared for a fictional documentary on the 60’s.
Stage 4 - The Musical Production
The City Wakes Musical Production presents fresh interpretations of Syd’s most famous songs. Supported by cutting-edge video art from award-wining choreographer Darren Johnston, stunning psychedelic lighting from Pink Floyd’s original designer, and a guest appearance by The Grasshopper’s Green Herbarian Band, The City Wakes opens the door into Syd’s world.
Stage 5 - Gala Night - The Other Room
Gala Performance - Trinity College Chapel
Completed in 1567, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Trinity College Chapel is a magnificent space that plays host to rich and diverse architectural features. Original Tudor woodwork, Victorian coloured glass windows, and one of only two modern organs by Metzler found in Britain, are all presided over by an imposing painting by early 19th century American artist Benjamin West.
Stage 6 - Gala Night - The Other Room
The spectacular finale to The City Wakes was a gala performance of The City Wakes concert in the beautiful setting of Trinity College Chapel in Cambridge. On the final night of The City Wakes, the statues of Isaac Newton and Lord Tennyson had the good fortune of sharing their illustrious home with psychedelic light effects and the inimitable sounds of Syd Barrett. The gala performance was a weirdly apt fusion of the divergent faces of Cambridge life.
The 7th - Gala Night - The Other Room
Syd Barrett "Chapter 24" Lyrics
All movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset.
The time is with the month of winter solstice
When the change is due to come.
Thunder in the other course of heaven.
Things cannot be destroyed once and for all.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset, sunrise.
A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset, sunrise.
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