The Golden Age of Song
Discovery Day
7 November 2023
L-R: Berlin, Kern and Porter
This Discovery Day pays tribute to the lives and work of three great songwriters who defined popular music during the first half of the last century and the unforgettable legacy they left behind for us all. It is lavishly accompanied with slides and videos of their lives and music, recorded performances by some of the greatest artists of all time and occasional live illustrations by Pip Burley on the piano.
Lecture 1: JEROME KERN – THE ‘DADDY’ OF THEM ALL
Lecture 2: IRVING BERLIN – THE CENTURIAN OF SONG
Lecture 3: COLE PORTER – THE ORIGINAL ‘SOPHISTICAT’
Pip Burley began his musical career playing Rock'n'Roll in the 60s and 70s as well as working with the big bands - including Sydney Lipton, Joe Loss and Ken Mackintosh. He went on to compose and record music for commercials, theatre, film and television and, in 1990, won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Theme music for The Darling Buds of May - a TV series he also produced (discovering Catherine Zeta-Jones in the process). Other television successes include the multi-award winning series A Touch of Frost, the most watched police series of all time, created for and starring David Jason. As a sideline he also managed to start and run an advertising agency!
Since then Pip has been lecturing widely about his career based on his book Briefest Encounters and, more recently, has devised a series of talks entitled 'The Golden Age of Song', featuring the lives and music of the great composers of popular song.
Pip Burley