To coincide with the beginning of the summer-long celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Festival of Britain, the upturned purple cow has returned to the Southbank with the 2011 Udderbelly Festival. You’ll find the cow just west of the Royal Festival Hall, next to the ‘Magner’s Pasture’, which contains various bars and food stands run by ‘The Laughing Stock’.
We were here tonight for a short early evening entertainment by Shlomo on day three of the Festival, which runs right through until 17 July. Shlomo is a well-known British ‘beat-boxer’, or vocal percussionist who, amongst his other accolades, performed with Bjork on the joint piece ‘Oceania’ which opened the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. For this series of performances Shlomo has used his early life experiences to illustrate his various beat-boxing techniques (which cover the whole range from jazz to techno via dubstep) with tales about his upbringing in Buckinghamshire in a rather unusual family of Jewish-Iraqi descent. We got one particularly intricate Arab-inspired piece that was built on a story about his experience of belly-dancing as a three-year-old at a particularly lively family celebration!
As part of a larger tour, Shlomo has been inviting local talent along to perform alongside him, and tonight gave an opportunity to Heidi Vogel, who accompanied the beat-boxing with some impressive sweeping vocals. There’ll be one more opportunity to catch Shlomo at his performance tomorrow night (Monday 2 May), and you can pick up tickets online here, or over at the box office which sits in front of the big purple cow on the Southbank. You’ll also have an exclusive opportunity to pick up his latest album, ‘Mouthtronica‘, which is only available at the festival, and you can also see other examples of his work on his Youtube channel here. If you miss tomorrow’s happening, he returns to the Festival later in the summer with his ‘Vocal Orchestra‘.
There’s a lot to see over the course of the festival, which includes theatrical performances, comedy, music and more. Particular highlights include Rory Bremner, Scott Capurro, Paul Daniels, ‘The Amateur Transplants’ and much more besides. You’ll find the whole calendar online here.
About Pete Stean
