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Neil Oram | |
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 London Fields, Hackney, October 2010 | |
| Born | Neil R. G. Oram January 2, 1938 |
Neil Oram (born 2 January 1938) is a British musician, poet, artist, and playwright. He is best known for his 10-play cycle, The Warp, directed by Ken Campbell.[ citation needed ]
While in Africa, Oram met musician Mike Gibbs, and played double bass in the Mike Gibbs Quintet with Gibbs playing piano, vibes and trombone.
A post-concert epiphany when a voice repeatedly told him, "Je suis un poète!" led Oram to take up writing. [1]
Oram returned to Britain in 1958 where he ran a jazz café called The House of Sam Widges on 8 D'Arblay Street in Soho, London. [2] The café was known for its jukebox that only had modern jazz records. It attracted many highly regarded musicians in London, such as Ronnie Scott, Tubby Hayes, Graham Bond, Dave Tomlin and Bobby Wellins, all of whom were frequent customers. The café also had a performance stage called "The Pad".
At that point, Oram was writing poetry, giving readings and painting large, abstract, jazz inspired paintings.
In 1960, he opened "The Mingus" art gallery in Marshall Street, Soho, where abstract paintings by O. G. Bradbury, George Popperwell, Jaime Manzano, Tony Shiels and William Morris, the American poet and action painter, were exhibited. Morris's jazz paintings were executed in The Pad to the vibrant sounds of the Graham Bond Quartet, then carried and hung up in The Mingus. [3]
Oram's poems and other writings can be found in underground magazines from the late 1950s onwards, like Night Scene published by Lee Harwood, and International Times (IT) [4] Oram also contributed to the Poetry Review , [5] edited by Eric Mottram, a mainstay of the modernist-inspired British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and 1970s.
Oram’s published poems were collected in ‘Children of Albion’ (Penguin 1968), ‘Words-re-arranged’ (Privately printed, 1970), ‘Past The Antique Pain’ (Zum Zum 1974), ‘Beauty’s Shit’ (Zum Zum 1976), ‘The Golden Forgotten’ (Great Works 1977), ‘Yes To The Fresh’ (Zum Zum 1995). A select collection of poems drawn from 56 years of poetry, The Rain Stands Tall, was published in 2015 by Barncott Press.
Oram has painted abstract pieces of art over a long period of time out of which mostly have not been shown in public. The paintings include a series of twenty geometric images, the Diamond Series, painted over two decades.
The Warp's hero is called Phil Masters, named after the blind poet Philip Bourke Marston, who lived from 1850 to 1887. The play traces the hero’s many previous lives over a period of thousands of years. The Warp appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest play ever performed. [6] [7] Lasting upwards of 22 hours when performed fully, the Phil Masters character is on stage for all but five minutes, making it one of the most demanding acting roles ever created.
The first performance of The Warp (Warp 1, The Storm's Howling through Tiflis) opened at London's ICA on 2 January 1979, the author's birthday. For the first two weeks the performances were of one play per night. Then, due to the popularity of the play, there were three full, non-stop, 'marathon' performances of all 10 plays, which were also filmed. Performers included Russell Denton (in the lead), Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Maria Moustaka, Stephen Lorne-Williams, Neil Cunningham, Richard Hope and Pat Donovan. In order for Denton to be sufficiently rested to do the marathons, where he would be on stage for 22 hours, Oram himself was called upon to step up and perform the lead in a number of the plays. The ICA performance was documented by the BBC in their Arena arts TV series. [8]
At the 1979 Edinburgh Festival, the abandoned Regent Cinema, on Abby Mount at the A1, was taken over by The Warp troupe who put on five 24-hour marathon performances or “cycles”. [9] This was followed with one performance at Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire.
Five further marathon performances followed at the Roundhouse in London in November 1979, also directed by Campbell.
In 1980 Oram was 'resident playwright' at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, where The Warp ran for ten weeks. While there, Oram wrote an 11th Warp play entitled Chameleon Blue. [10]
In 1980-82, The Warp was adapted by director Werner Nekes for a film called Uliisses, [11] shot in Germany with The Warp cast. It was screened at the 1982 London Film Festival. [12] In 1984, the film was awarded Best Film at the German Film Critics Association Awards. [13]
The Warp was subsequently turned into a three-volume novel by Oram, published by Sphere Books.
The Warp DVD, a video of the full 18-hour 1979 ICA production is available directly from Oram. [14]
In the 1990s, there were a number of productions of The Warp directed by Ken Campbell's daughter Daisy Eris Campbell.
In the late 1990s, the play was staged at "The Drome" nightclub under the arches of the London Bridge as part of a rave called The Warp Experience that ran for 9 events.
Obituaries on Ken Campbell in The Telegraph [15] and The Guardian [16] say that Ken "wrote" The Warp or "co-wrote" The Warp with Neil Oram. However, other reviews [17] and articles [18] and all known publicity material acknowledges Neil Oram as being the sole author. It seems clear that Ken Campbell directed, but never wrote a word of the Warp and there is no evidence that he ever claimed to have done so.
According to Oram, [19] the true story behind the writing of The Warp is as follows: Ken Campbell "inspired" him to write The Warp as a play after, at the ICA in 1978, Campbell heard Oram give a one-man performance of stories from his life. Campbell suggested dramatization and offered to direct the result. Commissioned by the ICA, and funded by the Arts Council, Oram began working. A brief attempt at collaboration, with Campbell typing up the script, proved impractical. Oram then wrote the entire ten play cycle, by hand, by himself, in Butleigh, Somerset.
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz upright bassist, composer, bandleader, pianist, and author. A major proponent of collective improvisation, he is considered one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history, with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Eric Dolphy. Mingus's work ranged from advanced bebop and avant-garde jazz with small and midsize ensembles to pioneering the post-bop style on seminal recordings like Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956) and Mingus Ah Um (1959) and progressive big band experiments such as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963).
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He also played with his daughter Maxine Roach, a Grammy nominated violist. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.
John Lenwood McLean was an American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and educator, and is one of the few musicians to be elected to the DownBeat Hall of Fame in the year of their death.
Ronald Shannon Jackson was an American jazz drummer from Fort Worth, Texas. A pioneer of avant-garde jazz, free funk, and jazz fusion, he appeared on over 50 albums as a bandleader, sideman, arranger, and producer. Jackson and bassist Sirone are the only musicians to have performed and recorded with the three prime shapers of free jazz: pianist Cecil Taylor, and saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler.
Christopher Logue, CBE was an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival, and a pacifist.
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA contains galleries, a theatre, two cinemas, a bookshop and a bar.
Kenneth Victor Campbell was an English actor, writer and director known for his work in experimental theatre. He has been called "a one-man dynamo of British theatre".
George Rufus Adams was an American jazz musician who played tenor saxophone, flute and bass clarinet. He is best known for his work with Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, Roy Haynes and in the quartet he co-led with pianist Don Pullen, featuring bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Dannie Richmond. He was also known for his idiosyncratic singing.
Lester Willis Young, nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist.
The Jazz Singer is a 1980 American musical drama film directed by Richard Fleischer and produced by Jerry Leider. The film stars Neil Diamond, Laurence Olivier and Lucie Arnaz, and tells the story of a young singer who is torn between tradition and pursuing his dreams as a pop singer. Based on the 1925 play of the same name by Samson Raphaelson, it is the fourth film adaptation, following the 1927 and the 1952 theatrical adaptions, and a 1959 television adaptation.
Mingus is the tenth studio album by Canadian musician Joni Mitchell. It was released on June 13, 1979, and was her last studio album for Asylum Records. The album is a collaboration between Mitchell and Charles Mingus. It was recorded in the months before and after Mingus' death in January 1979 and is wholly dedicated to him. The album is one of Mitchell's most experimental and jazz-centric works. Mingus originally wrote six compositions for Mitchell to write lyrics for; three of these were included on the album. Two other tracks written exclusively by Mitchell are included, alongside a new version of Mingus' standard "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", featuring lyrics written by Mitchell. In addition to these, five spoken word tracks are dispersed throughout the album.
All Night Long is a 1962 British neo noir drama film directed by Basil Dearden and starring Patrick McGoohan, Keith Michell, Betsy Blair, Paul Harris, Marti Stevens, and Richard Attenborough. The story by Nel King and Paul Jarrico is an updated version of William Shakespeare's Othello, set in the London jazz scene of the 1960s. The action takes place in a single evening, during an anniversary party. The black-and-white film features performances by several prominent British jazz musicians—among them John Dankworth and Tubby Hayes—as well as the Americans Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus, who were in the UK in 1961 when filming took place and were recruited to participate.
Mingus Ah Um is a studio album by American jazz musician Charles Mingus which was released in October 1959 by Columbia Records. It was his first album recorded for Columbia. The cover features a painting by S. Neil Fujita. The title is a corruption of an imaginary Latin declension. It is common for Latin students to memorize Latin adjectives by first saying the masculine nominative, then the feminine nominative, and finally the neuter nominative singular —implying a transformation of his name, Mingus, Minga, Mingum. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013.
Nina Margarita Conti is a British actress, comedian, and ventriloquist.
Anne Pigalle is a French singer and multimedia artist.
Edward Joseph Bertolatus, also known as Eddie Bert, was an American jazz trombonist.
Mingus at the Bohemia is a live album by the jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus. It was released in August 1956 through Mingus's own label Debut Records. It was recorded at Café Bohemia in New York City on December 23, 1955. Max Roach makes a guest appearance on one track. Other recordings from the same performance were released in 1964 under the title The Charles Mingus Quintet & Max Roach.
Jack Nimitz was an American jazz baritone saxophonist, nicknamed "The Admiral".
Red is a two-handed play by American writer John Logan about artist Mark Rothko. It was first produced by the Donmar Warehouse, London, on December 8, 2009, in a production directed by Michael Grandage. It then transferred to Broadway in March 2010 with the same two leads, Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne, where it won 6 Tony Awards.
Daisy Eris Campbell, is a British writer, actress and theatre director. Daughter of actor and director Ken Campbell and actress and therapist Prunella Gee. She staged The Warp, a revival of Neil Oram's 24-hour play at The Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. Campbell also adapted Robert Anton Wilson’s cult autobiographical book Cosmic Trigger for the stage. She played the role of her mother in the play. Cosmic Trigger is a kind of sequel to her father's adaptation of Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Allegedly, Daisy was conceived during the original production of Illuminatus! In part, the play of Cosmic Trigger deals with the production of Ken Campbell's adaptation of Illuminatus! in Liverpool in 1976.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)Neil Oram's website.
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