La Banda Europa site specific work

Alongside concert performances, La Banda Europa also creates site specific events. Performance ideas are generated, based on research and interpretation of the cultural environment and site’s unique characteristics.

Fire procession in Falkirk

In collaboration with Lieux Public in Marseille, a full day performance was created around the theme of ‘Travel’. With musicians living as far apart as Sweden and Southern Spain, La Banda Europa is used to travelling in order to come together!

The band divided into duos and small groups to put on informal performances on trains en route to Marseille.
Arriving in the city, larger groups were formed according to region of origin, each putting on colourful performances in and around Gare St Charles, the central railway station.
A procession then formed, through the station and out into the heart of the city, where the full band staged an open air concert for an audience of 3,000 people.
Later, to round off the event, this audience was invited to join La Banda Europa at the rear of the station, for an informal night club style performance under the stars.

La Banda Europa performance in Marseille

'Moving beyond the folk traditions, Jim Sutherland emancipates his musical resources from the specific of time and place to embrace a musical heritage of European dimension. In an age when the quest for modernity can be identified with a form of servitude, drawing on resources from the past opens fresh perspectives.'

Mouvemont (French Art Magazine)

sandy smith on the mellophone

'The audience, bemused, entranced, astonished, parted to allow a procession of 20 side drummers and two horsemen to escort a locally recruited choir - all similarly uniformed, bewigged and each armed with a red umbrella - on to the stage, where they were flanked by two diminutive members of the Vienna Boys' Choir.
Imagine some eccentric Regency tableaux, with a distinct whiff of Alice in Wonderland and Sgt Pepper.'

Jim Gilchrist - The Scotsman

La banda Europa process through the streets of newcastle acompanied by a group of locally recruited snare drummers

La Banda Europa process through the streets of newcastle

Hurdy gurdies prepare for rain

Follow JimSutherland on Twitter

a fiennes.org site
designed by Josh King-Farlow

please contact us for more information.