Reviving Robin

It a year since Iron Awe assembled a choir in the Station Hotel Boosbeck, and sang songs from Sir Michael Tippetts first opera Robin Hood. We are still trying to get funding to complete the project.  BBC Radio 3 are repeating Reviving Robin on Saturday, October 30th at 12.15pm

This photograph was taken at Boosbeck in the1920s, it is said to be of a soup kitchen?
The photograph was kindly contributed by Margaret O'Shea. Her grandmother Sarah Robinson (nee Armstrong) is third from the left in the front row in the dark dress with the white collar. Margaret thinks her Grandfather George Robinson, who was a mines deputy, could be also in the photo but unfortunately she doesn't know which one he is - can anyone help?



Heartbreak Hill

Tippett's Robin Hood is just one part of the Heartbreak Hill story, a fantastic story that deserves more recognition. Iron Awe will involve about 200 local people in the Heartbreak Hill/Robin Hood projects, many of these will be young people who will be trained in film making, scriptwriting, acting and music, for that we will need funding. The Iron Awe team are confident that the film Heartbreak Hill will be made, and a new version of Tippett's opera Robin Hood will be performed. Photographs from some of Iron Awe's projects in 2003.

I can only find one small piece of music from Iron Awes projects with children in 2003, the main music is played by university students who worked with us in 2003 on the award winning film The Accident.
(See Post "The Accident")

A snippet of Tippett 2

Last night the Iron Awe team, together with people from Boosbeck and East Cleveland, spent a second evening in The Station Hotel, again singing songs from Michael Tippett's first opera Robin Hood, this time the event was recorded by BBC Radio 3*

We hope this will attract the support and funding necessary to make a new version of the Robin Hood opera, and make a film of the Heartbreak Hill story. *BBC Radio 3, 12-15pm Saturday November 28th, Reviving Robin

A snippet of Tippett 1

The Iron Awe team have started telling the story of Heartbreak Hill. Part of the story involves Sir Michael Tippett's first opera Robin Hood, with music that has not been heard for over seventy years.
God bless our valiant Robin Hood
And may he never swing,
Who fights the battles for the poor;
The outlaw shall be King.
Last night I sat in the Station Hotel Boosbeck with some of the Iron Awe team and local people, we were singing songs written in 1934 for the out of work ironstone miners of Boosbeck and their families, with the keyboard player reading music in Tippetts own hand, and playing it for the first time in seventy-five years.