There’s a touch of guitar amp distortion on the cello there…

Well, I LOVE silent film, not the mawkish sentimental stuff (no names mentioned) but the slapstick, zero CGI, sharp as a nail comic timing of geniuses like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

I also love playing & writing soundtracks with my friends… but not the arduous process of rehearsing. Our lovely band provides a live soundtrack to these incredible films… but there’s a tiny catch;

• There are no rehearsals.
• There’s no sheet music.
• None of the musicians will have watched the films in advance.
• Improvisation before a live audience will begin as the film rolls…

What self-respecting musician would want to put themselves through it?
Well, I’m very happy to say that the band lineup for June 29th is as follows;

• Tim Minchin – guest pianist
• Elspeth Hanson – violin & electric violin
• Julia Thornton – harp
• Pip Eastop, Horn, trumpets & Phatterboy
• Geoff Dugmore – drums, teaspoons & llama toenails
• Mark Neary  – Pedal Steel guitar
• Pete Furniss – clarinet, bass clarinet, sax & recorders
• Guy Pratt – Bass
• Philip Sheppard (me) – cello & electric cello

If you’d like to know more.. watch this clip of one of our earlier gigs:
Tickets & further info from here…
Let us know if you’re planning to come!
best
Philip Sheppard x

Here’s a short film featuring the lovely London Philharmonic Orchestra, my long suffering engineer Jake Jackson and Abbey Road Studios. We did some anthems together. A lot of anthems for the 2012 Olympics…

Here’s the trailer for the 2012 Bafta Awards. I composed the music for it.

In recent months, the name of UK composer and cellist, Philip Sheppard, has been very much in the media: a result of him having being commissioned to arrange and orchestrate all the national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics. He’s now recorded them all (205 in total!) with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. However, Sheppard has also found time to complete a 30-minute commissioned dance score for Barcelona-based choreographer, Thomas Noone.

It’s premiered in Mulhouse by Le Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin on 22 January 2012, later transferring to Colmar and Strasbourg (9 performances in total). Sheppard has an impressive track record in writing for dance and theatre, having worked with Akram Khan, Sylvie Guillem and Juliette Binoche in recent years. In January 2012 he joins Khan and Guillem for performances of his 2006 score to ‘Sacred Monsters’, in the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris.

Image by Angus Clyne

Here’s another track from The new album I wrote with Evelyn Glennie – it’s called ice drive and features some insanely good toy piano playing!!

Tonight sees the premiere on More 4 of David Sington’s excellent documentary about the credit crisis in the US called ‘The Flaw’. This is the trailer. I was commissioned to write a cartoon-like score for the film – quite a different mode from my normal style of music…

I’ve just found something on youtube that I’ve been searching for for years – literally…

I’ve been so lucky to have been able to play the cello with some of the most amazing musicians, but by far the greatest was Jeff Buckley. Of course he’s shot up the charts recently through his beautiful cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – surely the antithesis of X-Factor..?

This is Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament from Dido and Æneas. But listen to this – Just. listen. to. it…

I mean, no-one can sing like that. No-one should be physically able to sing like that.

Jeff Buckley singing, withpianist Catherine Edwards, violinist Ian Belton and me on cello, in Elvis Costello’s Meltdown Festival, July 1st 1995.

I remember, this singer arrived really late, just before the show, dishevelled, all cheekbones, cool hair, black jeans and the biggest boots you’ve ever seen supporting a rake thin body.

He apologised – got out his music – a kid’s exercise book with the lyrics of the songs written out in a crazy biro scrawl. – If a word was written high up the page, well then it meant it was a high note.

At one point he asked me what country he was in… he was confused between Germany and the UK that day as I think he’d flown in with little sleep.

And then he sang.

As Elvis Costello remembers;

When he started singing Dido’s Lament at the rehearsal, there were all these classical musicians who could not believe it. Here’s a guy shuffling up on-stage and singing a piece of music normally thought to be the property of certain types of specifically developed voice, and he’s just singing, not doing it like a party piece, but doing something with it.

That’s an understatement… I remember the lights being pretty bright and the silhouette of his frame as he bent almost double to wrench every ounce of meaning from a song written 300 hundred years ago. Better than any classical musician I’ve ever heard.

As he was singing, a photographer shuffled along past the feet of the audience in the front row at the Queen Elizabeth Hall to get a shot, unaware that they were for that second the most hated person in London, and got a good clout round the head for their troubles from someone who should remain nameless.

I can’t remember anything straight after that, but Elvis Costello wrote in Mojo:

My last memory of him was at the little party in the green room afterwards. There were all these people sitting round Jeff who’d never met before – Fretwork, the viol group, a classical pianist and some jazz player – all talking and laughing about music. He’d charmed everybody. I’d much rather remember that than anything.

I just wish i could find a photo…

More where this came from here…

free tracks here

My new albums are here

Evelyn Glennie (Photo by Julian Macedo @PowderPhotography)

Winter Wonderland is a new album I’ve recorded with my friend the brilliant percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.

It’s released today on iTunes and it’s rather Christmassy…! Here’s a track called Dalbergia…This one features an amazing Halo DrumHere’s just one more for now called Frost Flowers…

Hope you like the tracks. They’re all on iTunes here.

By the way, the photo above was taken at the weekend when we performed together at my Not So Silent Movies… series at Kings Place.