2025 Double Brass – Summer Solstice Celebrations
21 June 2025
11:30am start
Over a decade since its debut in 2014, Abigail Reynolds’ work Double Brass, performed by the award winning St Keverne Band will return to Kestle Barton to celebrate the summer solstice in the wild flower meadow at noon.
Two brass bands will march in such a way that the music being played will appear to separate, becoming dissonant, and come together to harmonise, over time. Audience and band members will be listening across the landscape with a heightened awareness of locality and terrain. Double Brass extends themes of Reynolds’ collage work, focusing on shapes drawn on the land by social forms, formal doubling, echoing, weaving.
The composer and Cornish bard Gareth Churcher wrote ‘Troheaul’ specifically for St Keverne band to perform in Double Brass at Kestle Barton. ‘Troheaul’ marks the summer solstice. It translates from the Cornish as ‘sunturn: such as the druids made and the inhabitants of the western isles still make’ (Borlase 1769).
St Keverne Band are based only three miles from the gallery. They comprise three bands of different ages, with a total membership of over sixty.
This project is part funded by Cornwall Community Foundation through The Goonhilly Wind Farm Community Fund.
Cornwall Community Foundation helps people across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly by awarding small grants to grassroots organisations who are working to overcome the challenges of disadvantage, exclusion and poverty in their communities. Find out more at www.cornwallcommunityfoundation.com
This event will be followed later in the afternoon by the public opening of the second exhibition of our season, Alice Fox: Flaxen (21 June – 31 August 2025). Join us for a day of Summer Solstice celebrations. No need to book but please arrive early for a noon performance.
