The Telegraph Hill Community Choir

The Telegraph Community Choir write:

We are a group of enthusiastic singers. We meet once a week on Tuesday evenings from 7.30 to 9pm at the Telegraph Pub on Dennett's Road.

We sing lots of rounds, and harmonies, on folk songs, sea shanties, pop, African and world folk, in fact, any songs with heart and soul. 

We are very mixed bunch, some of us have not sung since childhood, others are more seasoned singers. 

Our leader, Lizzie, has worked in music all her life, and sings professionally. She is also a music teacher, workshop leader, and songwriter. One of her songs was recently short listed in a big song competition in Scotland, and she has also composed for BBC TV. 

We are a fun, lively group, who welcome new people, we are expanding all the time. Please come along. Each session costs £6.

Click here for full details

The Crystal Palace Festival 2018, June 11-17

The Crystal Palace Festival returns in 2018 with headliners Stereo MCs and Polarbear.

One of the biggest free cultural events in south London, the arts and culture festival will take place across the Crystal Palace area from 11–17 June 2018 with the Crystal Palace park event taking place on 16 June 2018.

There were nearly 30,000 visitors to the 2017 event and organisers are expecting even bigger crowds on 16 June 2018 thanks to a line-up of music, spoken word, theatre, visual arts, family and community activities.

The week long festival includes mainly free events organised by local traders, pubs, community groups, schools and churches across 11–17 June 2018.

The festival’s outreach and participatory arts work has been made possible by funding from Arts Council England, Croydon Council and Bromley Council. Projects include an intergenerational dance piece that will culminate in a promenade performance in the park, and concerts by the London Mozart Players in local care homes, the park children’s farm and Crystal Palace railway station.

Full programme here.

Mothers

Mothers is a new album from 'in analysis', a music project created by Brockley songwriter David Schweitzer. He explains:

We create songs based on stories contributed anonymously by members of the public.

In February 2017, we invited people to write about their mothers via an anonymous form on their website. We received a number of interesting, frank and heartfelt stories.

Using these contributions as raw material, in analysis wrote the eleven songs on this record, which are performed by the band and a number of guest vocalists.

The fact that you have no idea who wrote the stories – and know nothing about their age, gender or background – means you really have to focus on the key emotional ideas they communicate.

While the words have nearly always been changed to create the lyrics for the songs, we’ve tried to make sure the songs stay true to those central ideas.

We think that this has resulted in is a warm, honest, emotional and sometimes humorous set of songs. And while many of the stories are quite specific, we hope that the songs will resonate with a wide range of listeners.

You can listen to the record on Spotify, but we’ve also released a limited edition yellow vinyl record edition with lyrics and also lovely illustrations by Mary Richards (another local resident). These are £12 from our website or can be bought from the Gently or Gently Elephant shops in Brockley. Any money from sales goes to Mind and the Samaritans.

Telegraph Hill Sings, March 17

Current Eternal: Why Seven?

Hilly Fields has inspired another musician. Nikky French writes:

I'm a Brockley resident and just released a single and the video is based entirely on the fallen tree remains in Hilly Fields.

Finite & Infinite Sound.Intuition

Take Courage Gallery, 388 New Cross Road
Monday 29th of January 2018, 7pm

Harpist +TATYANA+ brings her unique program to an acoustic setting at the Take Courage Gallery with a selection of original songs.

The evening will culminate with a Sound Bath which is a simultaneously inclusive, interactive, and subversive music-led meditation exploring the therapeutic vibrations of the harp, blurring the boundaries between pop, jazz, Celtic and folk traditions and combines this new style with warm, lush vocals and electronic drums.

soundcloud.com/tatyana

Future sound of Deptford

Deptford bar Buster Mantis has launched a new regular Wednesday night 'exploration of Afrofuturism in sound' called Steam Down. Check it out:

Star-Crossed Lovers, December 9th

Brockley the muse

In a new interview for Music OMH, Brockley-based journalist Michael Hubbard has pinned down musician Nick Nicely to ask him about the inspiration behind his song Hilly Fields. He reveals:

"I lived by Hilly Fields in Brockley. It looks out over both London and Kent. We were often up there in psychedelic reveries. It has a stone circle. Brockley has a perfect 19th Century atmosphere, a Conservation area filled with Victoriana in gardens and buildings. Very inspiring."

Switching media, resident Katy Cooper is half-way through her mission to take a picture of Brockley every day for 365 days. In a recent blog about the project, she explains:

"Six months ago today, I was reading on Next City’s website about Chuck Wolf’s book, ‘Seeing the Better City’, which exhorts us to use our cameras to keep an urban diary as a de facto planning tool – and I realised I don’t really know that much about my neighbourhood: Brockley, South-East London.

It's the punctuation that makes this building for me. (You've spotted the dog, right?) #Brockley365 pic.twitter.com/UqF38WLZZS

— Katy Cooper (@healthkaty) August 3, 2017

"Despite moving in 17 years ago (before the arrival of much-improved transport links and much-inflated house prices), I tend to rattle about in the same few streets, the same few cafés and the same park: I needed a reason to expand my horizons. So, I’m doing a photography* project, taking a photo a day from Brockley for a whole year and posting it on Twitter (@healthkaty) at #brockley365."

Saturday Night Jam, October 7th

Philippa writes:

I am hosting an open mic night and jam session as a charity fundraiser on 7th October at The Hill Station in Telegraph Hill.

I'm hoping to get together a diverse group of musicians from different genres, and of different ages, to play and socialise together, with all the money raised going to Child.org who work with kids in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda.

Tickets start at £10, depending on whether people want to play or just listen, and are being sold online here

Open Air Concert, July 6

Wight jazz at Brickfields

Brocktail bar Brickfields has got lovely new windows that open out on to Brockley Road, just in time for the summer. 

On Sunday nights, the breezy mood is matched by live jazz performances from 6-9.30pm. They've already staged two jazz nights and due to their popularity, plan more throughout the summer.

Longplayer Day, June 21

James Bulley from Goldsmiths writes:

I'm curating a 12 hour event (with Jem Finer and Helen Frosi) next Wednesday 21 June on Summer Solstice called Longplayer Day.

Events will stretch from the Great Hall at Goldsmiths, across New Cross, Deptford, Greenwich, underneath the river, and then along the shoreline of the North bank to Trinity Buoy Wharf.

This will be the inaugural Longplayer Day, and the programming of the event explores time, duration and environmental thinking. This first edition marks a celebration of a recent partnership between Jem Finer's Longplayer and Goldsmiths, University of London.

The whole day is free, and we​'d like to invite everyone in the locality to come along at any point they wish - we're linking together lots of art communities with this and its been a really wonderful process, bringing together people side by side for years that have never actually met!

For up to date listings, please see our website and Facebook page.

The Quaggy Community Choir

The Quaggy Community Choir meets at the new Parkside Centre

Priya and Jake write:

The Quaggy Community Choir is a new group based at the brand new Parkside SE10 Commity Centre, on the border between Greenwich and Lewisham.

We’ll be singing an eclectic mix of songs of different styles – to well known hits to some tunes which are a bit more unusual. Once we are more established, we look forward to inviting people’s song suggestions and will eventually head out into the community to do some shows.

The first session is free and no experience is necessary.

DAY: Every Tuesday evening
TIME:   7:00 – 8:30pm
PLACE: Parkside SE10 Community Centre 1 Copperwood Place SE10 8GF

Stephen Kovacevich at St Mary the Virgin in Ladywell

The acclaimed pianist will play at Ladywell's ancient church on May 19th

Ros writes:

I’m a member of Lewisham Park (Crescent) Residents’ Association and we are organising a charity concert in Lewisham in aid of St Mungo’s the homelessness charity, and also to fund improvements to the park. Proceeds will be spilt equally between these two.

Somewhat miraculously one of us has managed to get the world-renowned pianist Stephen Kovacevich to agree to play, and also local musicians and singers will be involved. The concert is at St. Mary’s church in Ladywell (just opposite the park) on May 19th.

You can buy tickets for £10 or even sponsor one of his keys to pay for the piano hire. Full details here. You get a free glass of wine with your admission ticket too.

Revolting Rhymes, April 29th

Printworks: All that's fit to print

Friend of BC, James, has been to The Printworks in Canada Water and after an all-day rave at our new resident 'culture destination', he is keen to tell you how impressed he was by the soundproofing. The party animal writes:

We descended on London’s newest, and perhaps only thing resembling a super club – the arts venue Printworks – on Saturday, for the second in their Spring series of day parties.

Formerly a printing facility for the London Evening Standard and Metro, located a short walk from Canada Water station, the 16 acre site has the capacity to host 5000 people, although for this particular sold-out party the attendance was a mere 2,500.

Big things had been written about Printworks in the lead-up to its opening in early February and it’s safe to say that all expectations were completely and utterly exceeded. A world-class DJ line up, on this occasion playing a mixture of house, disco and techno, a sound system that was loud and clear but didn’t leave your ears ringing afterwards and a truly spectacular light and laser show combined with slick and efficient organisation to produce the best clubbing experience my friends and I have experienced anywhere in the world – Berlin included.

The best part of all? In the smoking area outside you couldn’t hear a thing, so the neighbours hopefully won’t be bothered too much. Well done to LWE, the promotion company behind the event – it’s great to finally see a new London venue having a license approved, rather than revoked.

Printworks, Canada Water

The opening weekend

Printworks is a new 5,000-capacity music and arts venue on the site of the old Associated Newspaper printing presses in Canada Water. Following an opening party this month, its line-up in March includes events hosted by Melt Festival, Nina Kravitz and The Hydra.

Printworks has doubled as a Death Star and a zombie rat run in recent Secret Cinema productions and anyone who experienced it in either of those incarnations will attest to its versatility. It's a huge campus and a massive asset for South East London, which is not over-blessed with major venues.

Hit The Floor writes:

"The venue will undoubtedly put London nightlife firmly back on the worldwide map... Was this the best time to open such an establishment when the whole night-time community was being scrutinised and pulled apart? The answer is yes. Yes, this is a perfect time.

"The opening of Printworks has not only solidified the idea that not only is London club culture going anywhere, but we now finally have a venue to rival our European counterparts."

"Printworks comes to us from the team behind LWE, Junction 2 and the now infamous daytime raves at Tobacco Dock... LWE is currently unrivalled and are consistently raising the bar and expectations for what it means to host a successful rave."

For full details, click here.

Tabla & Toy Piano

Bowie Endswell

A few weeks ago, the Brockley twittersphere was abuzz about the Cronenberg / Gillian makeover of the Endwell Road laundrette, which was being used as a filming location. It turns out that it was for the best possible reason - David Bowie's new video, No Plan.

Thank you to Matt for the spot.