Alan Barnes’ “Copperfield” – A Dickensian Jazz Suite | Buy Tickets
Friday 16 December 2022 | Progress Theatre, Reading | 7: 30pm | £18.00 (£16.00 concessions, £9 under 16) plus maximum 5% booking fee.
Alan Barnes and Dave Newton plus six more top UK musicians
Alan Barnes sax, clarinets
Bruce Adams trumpet
Mark Nightingale trombone
Robert Fowler sax, clarinet
Karen Sharp sax, clarinet
David Newton piano
Simon Thorpe bass
Clark Tracey drums
“Copperfield” – a new jazz suite from Alan Barnes, touring for the first time this year, takes the audience through the characters and scenes of ‘David Copperfield’. Readings from the original Dickens tell the story, and after each scene eight virtuoso musicians bring the characters and scenes to life, switching audiences from hilarity to pathos with a skill that would have done credit to Dickens himself!
Like the Dickens classic itself, Alan Barnes’s “Copperfield” has something for everyone. A great night out that is also a treat for the jazz connoisseur; it will delight anyone who loves music or literature – or just being entertained!
A cheery clarinet plays Copperfield, the lost orphan Little Em’ly is a lyrical tenor, Mr Dick flies his kite in the personage of a soaring flugelhorn and trombone, Mr Micawber expresses “Something will turn up!” on the piano and Uriah Heep writhes around on the bass clarinet.
Just as we see David progress through the trials of his life, so the movements of this suite seem to develop along with him. The music and readings inspire the full range of Dickens’s imagination and emotion: from loneliness and remorse through to love and then irresistible joy.
“Barnes is a true Dickensian. He is a serious reader of the novels. It is a clear blunder of providence that he was born too late to appear in their pages!” Hot News
If you need a reminder of the David Copperfield story and of the characters in the novel, Alan Barnes website has a brilliant summary of both here
