Words and Music Festival comes to The Sage

May 10 2010 by Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

FROM waxing lyrical about rap to finding poetry in pigeons, a new festival celebrates the happy marriage of words and music. BARBARA HODGSON speaks to its well-versed curator, and Bard of Barnsley, Ian McMillan

WHEN I call Ian McMillan I interrupt him in the middle of a poem. Or rescue him, as he puts it, as he’s having difficulty finding a rhyme for a political verse he’s writing for Radio 4’s World Tonight programme.

This one’s about Gordon Brown, but he’s set himself a difficult structure and “I’m kicking myself”.

The Yorkshire poet, comedian and broadcaster – who hosts weekly Radio 3 cabaret show The Verb – is always in demand for his hilarious take on pretty much everything from, most recently, volcanic ash to the party leaders in the run-up to the General Election.

He is an ideas man after all. That’s what brings the 54-year-old to The Sage Gateshead this week as curator of the first Words & Music Festival which, over a long weekend from Friday to Monday, melds the two art forms in a showcase of new work and collaborations between writers and musicians – including folk favourite Kathryn Tickell – and winds up with concerts by the legendary Randy Newman and Don McLean.

It turns out that the festival was another of his ideas – at least in part, together with The Sage’s performance programme director Ros Rigby and Claire Malcolm of New Writing North. In the hands of lovers of both words and music, the idea snowballed.

He knows the region well too, having worked here years ago as deputy editor to Peter Mortimer on his arts magazine Iron, and he’s brought his Ian McMillan Orchestra several times to The Sage.

They’re back to kick-start the festival on Friday with their special brand of poems, comedy, music and improvisation.

Ian has also worked with orchestra member and composer Luke Carver Goss to produce a multi-media piece called Homing In which will premiere in the concourse of the music centre on Sunday.