Hot on the heels of the announcement of the New Brass Festival for Wales, Burry Port Band has announced its own arts project entitled, ‘The Red Lady of Paviland’.

Skeleton

The project is based on the story of the 26,000-year-old ochre-stained skeleton, discovered in a cave on the Gower Peninsula in the mid 1800’s.

The Red Lady of Paviland will feature the current Welsh League Champions alongside Welsh tenor Robyn Lyn, Royal Harpist Claire Jones, mixed choir Cor Seingar, and a massed children's chorus drawn from across the West Wales area.

Innovative

Speaking to 4BR, Burry Port’s MD Craig Roberts was enthusiastic about the project: "The Red Lady is an innovative presentation of brass music, very much along the lines of other arts projects I’ve undertaken in the past, though this event will be something of a first for West Wales."

Everyone’s really looking forward to the performance, and particularly the new cantata, which should be a quite remarkable and welcome addition to the brass band repertoire in WalesBurry Port Band

Welsh basis

He added: "The programme of music for the project is of a wholly Welsh basis, and will include performances of Gareth Glyn’s ‘Dolbadarn’ and Edward Gregson’s ‘An Age of Kings’, though the central feature of the evening will be the premiere performance of ‘Y Dyn Unig’ (The Lonely Man), a new cantata commissioned for the project from Welsh composer Andrew Powell, with libretto by Welsh poet Menna Elfyn."

Exciting

Burry Port, Band Chairman Marc Scaife added: "It’s exciting for the band to be working on the Red Lady project, particularly alongside artists of the calibre of Andrew, Menna, Robyn and Claire."

He added: "Everyone’s really looking forward to the performance, and particularly the new cantata, which should be a quite remarkable and welcome addition to the brass band repertoire in Wales."

The performance is set to take place on Thursday April 1 at the Lyric Theatre, Carmarthen.