
It's
all in
The Mind Shop
The Mind Shop melds
sung poetry with instrumental improvisation in a unique lyrical style.
The group formed in 2001 to play at the Burns Night celebration at the
Poetry Café, the headquarters of the Poetry Society in London.
Armorel Weston sang her own setting of a Burns poem, Bonie Bell,
while David Miller and John Gibbens made a range of music-type sounds
on their respective instruments. Since then this simple but effective
method has been applied to an expanding repertoire that includes lyrics
by Yeats and Mary Coleridge and Bob Dylan, traditional spirituals, and
poems by the two poets in the group. Subsequent concerts included Jazz
Vespers at the Lutheran church of St Anne & St Agnes in the City of London;
Honey & Locusts, a season of events celebrating poetry, music
and spirituality at the church of St Edmund King & Martyr (a stones
throw from the Bank of England); and an appearance as part of the 2001
Southwark Festival at Southwark Playhouse.
The
Mind Shop are:
John Gibbens on electric
guitar (find out more about him here),
Armorel Weston singing (find out more about her here)
and David Miller on clarinet. David Miller is a London-based poet, prose
writer and musician, whose books include The Waters of Marah: Selected
Prose 19731995 (Singing Horse Press, Philadelphia, 2003) and
Collected Poems (University of Salzburg Press, 1997). He is a founding
editor of Kater Murr's Press (http://home.freeuk.com/katermurr/)
and one of the organisers of Crossing the Line, a monthly series of poetry
readings at the Poetry Café.

Now The Mind Shop
have released their debut CD, a 5-track EP recorded in the Wren church
of St Anne & St Agnes in the City of London in December 2002. The
five tracks are:
1. Bonie Bell
(words by Robert Burns) [MP3]
2. What Waits For
Me (words by Mary Coleridge) [MP3]
3. Dreaming Hill
(words by John Gibbens & Armorel Weston)
4. Slides (words
by David Miller)
5. To Live So Long
(words by John Gibbens & Armorel Weston)
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