HAIL BRIGHT CECILIA! Live in St. Mary-the-Less, Durham, Friday 22nd November 1974

by Hermione Harvestman

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1.	Hail Bright Cecilia! 52:30	info	buy track
2.	Dreaming on the Dunholme 08:27	info	buy track
3.	Soundcheck #2 : Raga for Saint Cecilia 16:41	info	buy track
4.	Hail Bright Cecilia! Album Edit - Side One 26:15	info	buy track
5.	Hail Bright Cecilia! Album Edit - Side Two 26:14	info	buy track
6.	Soundcheck #1 : Veris Dulcis in Tempore 17:14	info	buy track

about

This was one of the very few occasions when I played live in a performance of music-for-musics-sake, albeit in the name of St. Cecilia herself. It came about when I was asked by a member of our church if I could provide some music for a late night service at her daughter's chapel in Durham - St. Mary-the-Less in Durham, the chapel of St. John's college where Melissa was a student. Naturally I agreed, but to my horror, upon arrival, found that what they actually wanted amounted to a performance.

'But I don't give concerts!' I protested.
'Well, there'll be a lot of disappointed electronic music fans if you don't.' replied Melissa, indicating the posters which she assured me had been spread throughout the university and beyond.

And so the die was cast, so to speak. I did not have the heart to let them down, and considered it a jolly enough caper to boot.

I don't remember so many electronic music fans in attendance as such - just a handful of earnest (and hairy) young men, one or two of whom brought along their pretty young girlfriends to be ceremonially bored to tears. The students who organised this duplicitous event - Melissa, her boyfriend Steve and several other supposed fans of my work - were both delighted and delightful, and I thank them for their cunning, interest and enthusiasm, and for the opportunity in playing my music in such an historic location without worrying to much over how I came to be there at so ungodly an hour on St. Cecilia's Day back in 1974 when even as a youthful 44 I was beginning to feel my age in the City of Eternal & Most Vibrant Youth.

The performance was recorded (however so imperfectly) DI, rather than ambiently, so you don't get the introductions or the applause thus saving my blushes and concentrating on the music instead. This was, as usual, was entirely improvised, albeit in response to the generally appreciative audience, save for those few young girlfriends over whose pretty heads my efforts went flying even as their hairy young men sat in studied and solemn concentration.

Hail Bright Cecilia! May the deities approve!

Hermione Harvestman, Durham, 2010

PS - As the concert was Free I naturally expect any available form this recording takes should be Free too.

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released August 16, 2013

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Hermione Harvestman UK

'I feel like Wainwright - we are both hermetic ramblers. He made his books for when he was no longer capable of rambling his beloved fells, and I made my music for when I'm no longer able to ramble the by-ways of Albion - but only to listen, and think "Was that really me? That solitary figure who stood in a landscape dreaming of ages past in dread fear of the future."

Hermione Harvestman ... more

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