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Published: 14 October 2010
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR

LATE works of the great painter JMW Turner will feature in a performance of Pictures from an Exhibition on Thursday by tenor sax player Tim Whitehead and his group at The Forge in Camden Town.

The performance involves sound images inspired by Turner’s “Colour Beginning” created by Whitehead after his appointment as artist in residence at Tate Britain last year.

“The ‘Colour Beginning’ work, sketch books and oils reveal Turner’s experiments in colour and form,” says Whitehead, a painter himself. “They’re often regarded as the first Impressionist paintings, depicting his responses to light, weather and the environment.

“I sought to explore these issues in music, visiting the exhibited works and researching the Tate’s archives, visit­ing the locations depicted by Turner and responding to them in improvised musical sketches. I impro­vised in front of the paint­ings, then transcribed the improvs and harmonised and arranged them for the quartet.”

Music played by White­­head and his quar­tet will be interspersed by projections of Turner paintings. He’s backed by some formid­able mus­icians. There’s Liam Noble, one of our most outstand­ing young pian­ists; celebrated musician Pat­rick Bettison on bass guitar; and Milo Fell, the brilliant drummer and percussion­ist,  brought up in Kentish Town and a noted alumni of Acland Burley School. 

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