FESTIVAL AND INDIVIDUAL WORKSHOPS The Bookshop Band are Beth Porter & Ben Please who offer a truly unique song writing workshop which can be adapted to many settings from bookshops (obviously), to vocational musician sessions, festival workshop series and many more. Using a chosen book as the inspiration to find a palette of words and emotions in response to reflect from one art form to another. A maximum group of 20 is advised, and all ages and skills level are welcome.
The Bookshop Band formed in September 2010, releasing their first album in December that year. They have since released 13 albums each exploring a different theme in their responses to over 100 author’s books. They have toured extensively around the UK and abroad, from bookshops to festival main-stages, and have been commissioned by BBC Radio 3, The V&A Museum, The National Portrait Gallery and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, most recently writing two songs for the launch of Philip Pullman’s The Book Of Dust. They are currently working with The V&A Museum on a musical series of banned books.
Between them Beth and Ben bring the books to the stage along with a multitude of instruments, including cello, harmonium, glockenspiel, guitars and ukuleles which, along with their distinct voices, create a cinematic sound that draws the audience right in to a highly intimate performance, at once touching and mesmerizing, heart wrenching and funny.
Beth is also part for the Spell Songs Collective, working on the superb poems of Robert MacFarlane's The Lost Words, illustrated by Jackie Morris, which is on its second concert hall tour.