There are three new Youtube videos that aren’t performances but may be of interest.  On the Confluence Concerts channel there’s the John Beckwith Songbook Lecture.  I was expecting the usual sort of pre-show thing ahead of this weekend’s concert but it wasn’t that at all.  What we get is Bradley Christensen explaining his doctoral thesis research on developing an interpretive and pedagogical guide to Beckwith’s songs.  One might expect this to be rather dry and in a way it is but dry like a certain kind of British (or I guess Kiwi) humour.  It’s a sort of “Note the sheep do not so much fly as plummet” performance.  No sheep though.  One would have thought a Kiwi could have fixed that.  I shouldn’t joke really.  It’s a perfectly serious and valuable project but the deadpan delivery is curiously compelling.

Over at Against the Grain there’s a choice of Joel Ivany interviewing Gerry Finley, which is definitely woirth a look, and a short video about a new song cycle project.  It’s called Identity and it will explore how we define and come to terms with our own identity; especially for people of mixed race or heritage.  The initiator is baritone Elliott Madore who is collaborating with composer Dinuk Wijeratne and poet Shauntay Grant.  AtG’s goal is to produce this as a film in 2022 with the possibility of live performance to follow.  It’s an interesting video and I look forward to seeing/hearing the result.