More than 100 international and local Liverpool artists are gathering in Liverpool for Sgt Pepper at 50, 16 days of performances, installations, spectacular outdoor shows, music, theatre and dance presented by Culture Liverpool, opening today Thursday 1 June 2017, the exact day 50 years ago when the epoch defining album was released by The Beatles to the world.
The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967 edition) Vinyl album inset
With 13 original commissions inspired by each of the 13 legendary tracks on the album, the programme features:
Jeremy Deller with Metal: With a Little Help from my Friends
Track title: With a Little Help from my Friends
City-wide
With a Little Help from my Friends is a song about friendship, loneliness and love. By 1967 The Beatles were the most famous people in the world, a no doubt totally alienating experience considering their youth, and naturally they depended greatly on each other and on a few trusted friends for support. The relationship between the individual and society is a powerful theme in the work of Jeremy Deller and in his response to this song he has made two public art commissions that examine the nature of friendship and self-sacrifice, not just with those we know but also between strangers.
Christophe Berthonneau (Groupe F) + Scott Gibbons: Suspended Time
Track title: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Camp Hill: Thursday 1 June 8 pm to c.11 pm
The official opening spectacle at Camp Hill, marking the exact day that the album was released in 1967, will be created by the world-famous French fireworks artist Christophe Berthonneau & Groupe F, with American sound artist Scott Gibbons. From the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 to the French Millennium Celebrations at the Eiffel Tower in 2000 to the Rio Olympics in 2016, his work is celebrated globally. Talking about this new commission, Christophe Berthonneau says: “These shining threads, traced in the sky, animate our fragile hopes, a time of rapture, suspended time, a time of much needed recreation.”
Judy Chicago: Four Lads from Liverpool 2017
Track title: Fixing a Hole
The Grain Silo, Great Howard Street, Opens: Thursday 1 June
The internationally acclaimed American artist Judy Chicago, one of the pioneers of feminist art in the 1970s, is commissioned to create a giant mural, the largest she has ever undertaken, on the exterior wall of the derelict Grain Silo in Liverpool Docks – her response to the track, Fixing a Hole. Studio Tate will invite the public to draw their responses on the gallery walls. Presented in partnership with Tate Liverpool. Curator: Kasia Redzisz, Senior Curator, Tate Liverpool. Supported by King Construction, Titanic Hotel, Harcourt Developments Ltd, Luziah Hennessy.
20 Stories High: She’s Leaving Home…
Track title: She’s Leaving Home
Private homes in Toxteth: Thursday 1June – Wednesday 14 June
One of the UK’s leading theatre companies making work with and for young people based in Liverpool, 20 Stories High, will present a new play, She’s Leaving Home… Researched and developed by Keith Saha, Julia Samuels, and Phelim McDermott of Improbable, with young adults in Liverpool, the play will explore themes around housing, what home means. With live music and puppetry, She’s Leaving Home… will be presented as an intimate work in private houses in Toxteth.
John Cage: Mr Kite’s MUSICIRCUS!
Track title: Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!
Aintree Racecourse: Sunday 4 June 2 pm – 5.50 pm
Mr Kite’s MUSICIRCUS! will take over Aintree Racecourse on Sunday 4 June, drawing on all Beatles music and featuring hundreds of Liverpool musicians, poets, dancers, circus artists, and spectators and even a horse or two, to take part in a giant free musical event, free to everyone to join in. As John Cage said: “My impression is that The Beatles’ place is not so much in the world of serious music as it is in the world as revolution. I think serious musicians would do well to follow their example in this respect.”
DJ Spooky: Getting Better?
Track title: Getting Better
Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room: Monday 5 June performance
FACT: Sunday 4 June – Friday 16 June installation on display
American composer, DJ and writer Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky takes a step back and questions whether the world is ‘Getting Better’ through a mixture of performance and an audio-visual installation. Working in collaboration with multimedia artists, The Holladay Brothers, and guest artists, Miller will infuse technology to create a dynamic response to the question.
BBC Radio Merseyside and 13 Poets: When I’m Sixty-Four: A Poem to the Future
Track title: When I’m Sixty-Four
City-wide: From Thursday 8 June
Paul McCartney began writing the music for the song when he was fifteen and added the lyrics in his mid-twenties on the occasion of his father’s sixty-fourth birthday. This special project explores the ideas of age and inter-generationalism in a number of ways, from BBC Radio Merseyside bringing together 64 choirs of all ages from the across the city perform the track, to 13 international poets (across a broad age-range but all under the age of 64) writing a poem in which they consider how they might see themselves and/or the world when they reach the age of sixty-four. At a time of international uncertainty – a Trump Presidency, Brexit, the refugee crisis, climate change – what might the future hold individually and collectively?
The poems will be printed as a pamphlet insert to an LP shaped sleeve, by way of acknowledging that Sgt Pepper was the first pop/rock album to print the songs’ lyrics.
Early Birds: Good Morning Good Morning
Track title: Good Morning Good Morning
City-wide: Friday 9 June from 7 am
The song was inspired by an advertisement for cornflakes that John Lennon found irritating, symbolising the mundaneness and repetition of those days. This interpretation of Good Morning Good Morning will be a whole series of breakfast time entertainments, drama, song, comedy jazz, pop, world music, talks, taking place in venues including Bluecoat Arts Centre, St George’s Hall, Lime Street Station and beyond, as far as Crosby Beach, from 7 am, energising the city and sending them uplifted to work school and play.
Meow Meow and her Sleepless Beauties: Rita Riot/Rita Requiem
Track title: Lovely Rita
Metropolitan Cathedral, Anglican Cathedral, The Oratory, St James Burial Ground, Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 June
Lovely Rita, allegedly based on Paul McCartney’s friendly encounter with a traffic warden, Meta Davis, a playful and flirtatious song, is chosen by cabaret sensation Meow Meow as the inspiration for an extraordinary multi-media performance and an installation created from interviews with Liverpool City Council traffic wardens. An outlandish procession devised with The Kazimier and led by Meow Meow and her Sleepless Beauties will take place along Hope Street, one of the most iconic streets in the city visiting both cathedrals and followed by a 300-strong brass band, leading to a candle lit vigil and performance outside The Oratory in the grounds of the Anglican Cathedral.
Milapfest: The Beatles Ragafest and festival village
Track title: Within You Without You
St George’s Hall: Sunday 11 June
The Beatles Ragafest will be a day-long festival hosted by Milapfest, the UK’s leading Indian Arts Development Trust based in Liverpool. The Ragafest will feature some of the world’s top Indian artists, including Grammy Award-winner Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. They will participate in four specially curated concerts to match the changing moods of the day at St George’s Hall, from 8 am to 11 pm at night, along with events all day in a specially created Festival Village with Indian food, arts and crafts.
Let’s Not Be Ourselves (Reprise)
Track title: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
Venue to be announced: Friday 9 June
The Beatles reinvented themselves at Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to throw off the shackles of expectation they felt at being the biggest band in the world. They decided to ‘not be themselves’.
To celebrate both this extraordinary album and the work which has been produced over the previous fortnight, BBC Radio 6 Music will be coming live from the city on BBC Music Day, with a range of special guests and inspiring music, which celebrates both the album and the music scene in Liverpool ever since.
Frank Cottrell Boyce and Hurricane Films: A Day in the life – Twenty Four Zero Hours
Track title: A Day in the Life
Filming: Over 24 hours Thursday 1 June
Woolton Picture House: Premiere screening Friday 16 June
Writer Frank Cottrell Boyce and film director Carl Hunter of Liverpool based Hurricane Films, will attempt to express the essence of Liverpool in a new short film, featuring comedian Tom O’Connor. In the days following the premiere, the film will be screened in cinemas and venues across the city.
As the Overture to the programme, the renowned Mark Morris Dance Group presented the world premiere of Pepperland at Liverpool’s Royal Court for four performances, a new dance work which features an original score by composer Ethan Iverson inspired by the songs Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, With a Little Help From My Friends, A Day in the Life, When I’m Sixty-Four, Within You Without You, and Penny Lane, and performed live by the MMDG Music Ensemble, in an unprecedented sextet of voice, theremin, soprano sax, trombone, and two keyboards.
For all the up to date details of the programme, how to get involved and ticket information, please visit www.sgtpepperat50.com
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Sgt Pepper at 50: Heading for Home forms part of the city’s 50 Summers of Love programme which consists of more than 60 events which celebrate the landmark period that was the Summer of 1967. Liverpool played a central role in the outpouring of creativity in 1967, in the year saw not only the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but also the publication of one of the world’s most popular poetry anthologies The Mersey Sound and the opening of the Metropolitan Cathedral – all of which will form part of some of the activities taking place.
