Oz & Armonico Drink to Music - A Second Sip

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Thu 11 Jul 2024

The nation's favourite wine expert Oz Clarke will be joining some of his musical friends as he visits Staffordshire as part of the annual Lichfield Festival . Oz, who has been a familiar face on TV since the 1980s through the BBC’s Food and Drink programme, will be entertaining people on 11 July at The Hub at St Mary’s in Lichfield city centre. He will be combining his loves of wine and music by joining the acclaimed Armonico Consort for an entertaining evening of music, wine and anecdotes in Oz and Armonico Drink to Music - A Second Sip.

Oz, who also featured on the award-winning TV series Oz and James Drink to Britain with Top Gear co-presenter James May, was actually a full-time actor and singer before wine took over his life in 1984. He was a choirboy at Canterbury, then sang with the Schola Cantorum (Oxford University’s premier chamber choir), and with the renowned Monteverdi Choir. As a professional actor, he appeared on the West End stage as Sweeney Todd and General Peron in Evita. He was also one of the first criminals to be apprehended by Superman in the 1978 film, and he toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company.



Bringing his loves together, he creates a winning formula by re-joining Armonico Consort and returning for a third time to perform at Lichfield Festival. Oz regales the audience with tall tales of musical and alcohol-fuelled exploits by some of our best-known classical composers. They are interspersed with musical illustrations, performed by singers Eloise Irving and William Towers and the critically acclaimed instrumentalists of Armonico Consort, directed from the piano by Artistic Director Christopher Monks.

There’s also a chance to sample some wine, specially selected and introduced by Oz to accompany the evening’s storytelling. Oz’s TV break came when a wine expert dropped out of the new BBC Food and Drink show in 1984. Producer Peter Bazalgette apparently shouted, “Get me the actor who knows about wine”. It was the start of a long association with the show, which continued until 2002.



It will come as no surprise to learn that ‘Drink to Music’, like so many of Armonico Consort’s ideas, was dreamed up in the pub. Christopher Monks said: “This time, you’ll discover the Brits’ role in the invention of champagne, and we’ll unearth some stories about Beethoven that will make you see the master in a way you’ve never seen him before. As well as that, there’ll be wine-related musical contributions from Vivaldi, Purcell and Thomas Arne and from 12th century nun, composer, philosopher and medicinalist, Hildegard von Bingen. And, of course, there’ll be some wine to sample too.”

With the emphasis on entertainment, there’s plenty of fun and banter: “we get belly laughs out of Baroque music,” says Oz. Who’d have thought?



Oz & Armonico Drink to Music – A Second Sip is at The Hub at St Mary’s as part of Lichfield Festival on 11 July. See [LINK www.lichfieldfestival.orgwww.lichfieldfestival.org] for details and tickets or phone 01543 306271 (call-back service).

#music
#food and drink
#concerts
#festival
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