Adam Fairhall's 'the Imaginary Delta' with Jackie Kay at Manchester Jazz Festival at RNCM, Concert Hall

About

The Imaginary Delta – originally commissioned from Adam by mjf in 2011 – is a riotous re-imagining of early jazz forms via a mixture of old and new idioms, acoustic instruments (including the diddley bow, an archaic blues instrument) and new technologies. Samples from vintage recordings are used to invoke the past in a soundworld that is playful, haunting and often downright unruly. They include those of Bessie Smith, who also provides the inspiration for Jackie Kay’s work of the same name, in which the author boards a Pullman with the great blues singer to journey across Tennessee. Poignant, bittersweet, and funny, these poems meet at the crossroads where the blues and poetry collide.