Palmstar Poppy

Source: The List (Issue 589)
Date: 1 November 2007
Written by: Sandra Marron

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Composer, pianist and vocalist David Paul Jones returns to his roots as a solo artist with his new piece for piano and voice, Palmstar Poppy as part of Glasgay! The title of the piece is inspired by a fleet of Norwegian oil tankers individually named after flowers that are present in the seas all over the world. The show itself is a collection of nine songs dealing with a sailor’s lover who is supposedly lost at sea.

Jones elaborates on the sailor’s mission: ‘He has to go and look for him or her – actually it’s a him but you would have to listen very carefully to see if you can get the Brokeback Mountain of it all.’

As a self-confessed ‘die-hard romantic’ Jones also celebrates friendship and broken hearts in this work. ‘It’s an enquiry into love and loss and the words themselves are very enigmatic, which is typical of my vocal work.’ He has collaborated with the Cocteau Twins in the past, and, like Liz Fraser, many of Jones’ vocal parts take on the hauntingly beautiful cadences of sound poetry. Yet, his fondness for playing with these sounds is not as obvious in this piece as in previous works. ‘These songs are probably the most direct, the most clearly in English that I have done, but they do drift off into another world and then come back again.’

More: David Paul Jones, Previews (Music), LGBT