Chamber Music | Album Launch at St Mary’s Bridport |
2025

About

May 31st 2025 saw Chasing Cow host the launch of local poet-singer Aidan Simpson’s new album Chamber Music with an evening of music and projections at St Mary’s Church, Bridport.

The evening began with support acts from folk musicians Son of Richard and Bryony Moores O’Sullivan, before Aidan and bandmates took to the stage to play through the album they had recorded in Bothenhampton Church earlier in the year.

With Lucy Roberts on fiddle, Sammy Hurden on harmonium, and singing from Yada Cashmore and Grace Bellorini, the band took the audience through the shifting moods of the album from the plaintive yearning of ‘All the World is Sinking’, to the tempestuous ‘Into a Cloud’, before finishing with the darkly hypnotising ‘Crow Call’.

As they played, the evening light and stained glass gave way to an illuminated rope screen behind the musicians on which were projected filmed shots of the local landscape.

The accompanying visuals were filmed by Fred Warren and the screen was made by Jack Cardno from local social making practice, Common Practice.

Talking about the album, Aidan said, “The songs were written over a period of seven or eight years. I write a lot but very automatically, and sometimes it can take years for me to understand something that I’ve written.” “The [song] ‘Vanity Of Circles’ was written after I read Ecclesiastes for the first time, and when I wrote ‘Into A Cloud’ I was reading a lot of translations of the medieval Taliesin poems. No song is ever about one thing, but things often serve as catalysts for a song.”

We’d like to thank everyone who came along and the team at St Mary’s Church for helping to make the event possible.

Event photos by Jon Pritchard