Songlines Encounters Festival 2020 – Introduced by Simon Broughton
Feature
Songlines Editor-in-Chief Simon Broughton introduces the special 10th anniversary edition of Songlines Encounters Festival. The first wave of events is now on sale.
This is the tenth anniversary of Songlines Encounters, the festival that has brought rising stars, premiere performances and exciting new collaborations from around the world to play in the superb acoustics of Kings Place. As it’s a big celebration, we’ve got an extensive line-up planned for 2020 with artists from Africa, America, Asia, the Middle East, various corners of Europe and the UK. There will be films, discussions and workshops too.
We’re announcing just three of the shows ahead of the official festival launch in January:
For the first time in the UK, the inspirational duo of Kayhan Kalhor & Kiya Tabassian. Kayhan Kalhor had a sell-out concert at Encounters 2014 (with Ali Bahrami Fard) and we’re delighted to welcome him back in a stunning star duo.
The Wolf of Baghdad is a stimulating and moving “memoir of a lost homeland” by animator and musician Carol Isaacs. It’s a recollection of the lost world of the Iraqi Jews in Baghdad – a community that is now found in Israel, the UK and beyond. This extraordinary animation with live music is a superb evocation of a lost world.
From Kentucky in the US, Joan Shelley is a singer-songwriter drawing inspiration from many traditional sources. On her latest album she sings of “flora and fauna, of seasons changing and years departing and the ineluctable attempt of humans to make some small sense of it.“ It ties in of course with Kings Place’s Nature Unwrapped season.
‘The kind of encounter that brings its audience to a standing ovation’