Sam Lee Singing With Nightingales review - joyous interspecies collaboration

Norwich Arts CentreFolk singer Sam Lee was joined by human and avian collaborators for an evening of extraordinary music-making that also brought with it a sombre environmental messageIt takes a brave musician to play a gig with no guarantee that the lead vocalist will show up. But Sam Lee, the Mercury prize-nominated folk singer and song collector, reveals himself to be a master storyteller as we await his duet with a nocturnal wild bird.Lee tells of the first such human-nightingale duet, when, in 1924, cellist Beatrice Harrison persuaded the BBC to live broadcast the sound of her playing in her Surrey garden "duetting" with a nightingale. On the 90th anniversary of Harrison's collaboration, Lee began taking groups into the countryside to accompany the bird's nocturnal singing. This month, he's holding concerts at conventional venues, with nightingale song live-streamed from the rewilded farm of Knepp in West Sussex. Continue reading...