Holmfirth and Nottingham shows were fab.Thanks to everyone who came and made it all possible. Ian and Luke also had a performance of a new commission "Sweet Holmfirth Air" for the last day of The Holmfirth Festival on Sunday. Several hundred people came to hear, sing and play brass in an outdoor performance of it. The sun shone, voices were fiery and the brass was golden. A lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Homing Review in SONGLINES World Music Magazine. 

http://www.songlines.co.uk/

The Ian McMillan Orchestra

Homing In

Taith RecordsTRCD00012

60 mins

****

Homing In is the second album by the poet Ian McMillan and his Orchestra, five musicians led by accordion player Luke Carver Goss, who composes most of the music. But this is not the simple recitation of verse to music. Not at all. McMillan’s words and his delivery of them make him an instrument as much as Clare Salaman’s nyckelharpa or Nathan Riki Thomson’s double bass, which evocatively accompanies ‘First Gig’. In this memoir McMillan’s first band entertains a jumble sale until the rector draws the curtain on their performance, and his career as a drummer. He now plays percussion on the language, using all its resources of meaning, melody and rhythm.

The Orchestra is homing in, but ranging widely on the flight. ‘Ten Forgotten Moments of History’ is a chronicle of events that didn’t happen, perhaps should have, or that we just didn’t notice, such as “The moment just before Neil Armstrong stepped/Onto the Moon”. In ‘Song of Stanage Edge’, an elegy for his father, McMillan is softly stroking the drum-skin of language with a brush. But ‘And the Word Was Music’ is a joyous series of linguistic cymbal crashes. There is great wit, too, ‘iPod’ recreates vocally the torturing “chikka chikka ka chikka” leaking from the iPod a few seats away, in a rap that somehow celebrates what it attacks. 

A range of instruments - fiddles, guitars, a hurdy-gurdy - and spoken and sung vocals all combine to create something that isn’t simply music, nor poetry, but a realisation of the potential of both, freed from the straitening conventions of their usual forms and our expectations.

Julian May

Review of Homing In from Delyth Jenkins in Welsh Folk Mag TAPLAS.

http://www.taplas.co.uk/

"A familiar voice to listeners of Radios 3 and 4, Ian Mcmillan is the champion of accessible performance-led poetry. Sometimes it is full of pathos and often bursting with humour. With his orchestra including musicians such as Luke Carver Goss, who also writes most of the music, violinist Oliver Wilson-Dickson and Dylan Fowler, you know you're in for a treat.
For humour listen to iPod and First Gig and Worst Gig. On a more serious note, Curtain Down reflects on the effect of cuts. Other songs are obviously of personal significance, with one about missing his father and another about receiving news of his mother's death. Impressive production numbers are And the Word Was Music and the title track.
This album is a brilliant coming together of words and music."

TIMO summer tour starts 23rd June at Tewkesbury Roses Theatre. We then whizz up to Ribchester near Preston on the 24th, then across to the Holmfirth Festival on the 25th. We finish at the Nottingham Theatre Royal on the 26th. Hope you can join us at one of these!