upfront
Cowbridge Music Festival
Having been obliged to skip its 10th birthday bash last year, the Cowbridge Music Festival returns for 2021 with nine concerts across four venues in the well-heeled Vale Of Glamorgan town. Cowbridge is fairly short on live music of any description for most of the year, which makes the efforts of the team behind this festival all the more worthwhile since its debut in 2010.
Cady Coleman
Cady Coleman, who boarded the International Space Station in 1995 on her first of several extraterrestrial flights, is a standout figure in new documentary film The Wonderful: Stories From The Space Station.
I like how the film portrays the Space Station and all its marvels, but also each astronaut’s personal stories, including your own family story.
The setup very much acknowledges that this is still a ‘pandemic era’ – which, without getting into the whys and wherefores, not everyone is doing – so performers will play their set twice per evening, at 5pm and 7.30pm, to socially distanced audiences in reduced capacity rooms. (The one exception to this is Sat 16 Oct’s Family Concert, at 11am in the theatre of Cowbridge Comprehensive School; tickets are £10, or free for kids and students.) The number of tickets available is lower overall, so the Festival are keen that you book in advance.
As a mom, I can only see it through my own eyes. But I think every mother and – I believe – every father is always worrying: did I do enough? Was it okay? So having part of the film tell the story through my husband’s and my son’s eyes made such a difference for me. I read our son stories from the Space Station. Every time I speak in public, I say something about family – because I think it’s important for people to realise that our families are parts of our lives, especially women, and that you can do the thing you feel like you’re meant to do.
How, then, did you deal with that stigma – preconceived ideas that a woman is going to be the mother of a child, and must always be there? People often ask the women, “don’t you mind leaving your family back on Earth?” Of course I do. Going off to training, I would bravely say goodbye at the kerb – it doesn’t help if you’re all weepy when you say goodbye – then cry when I got to the airport. It’s really hard, but an injustice not to ask the guys the same question. All of us mind! That sharing of family is actually the secret glue, I think, that glues us together up in space.
What do you miss the most about your time away from Earth?
Just plain old living there. Knowing that I lived there, I would wake up every morning and think, “I’m still here” – which you would know immediately when you woke up, because you’d be floating around. Maybe I slept curled up in a ball and would be bouncing around my little cabin. I love that vantage point of looking back at the Earth and out at the stars.
The Wonderful: Stories From The Space Station is out now on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats. Info:
thewonderfulfilm.com
CARL MARSH Cowbridge Music Festival – Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita 30
The Cowbridge Music Festival programme has traditionally favoured classical performances with some jazz and folk here and there, and this holds in 2021. London quintet Hot Club Of Jupiter, regular visitors to these parts over the years, will get the Duke Of Wellington pub jumping (actual jumping likely forbidden) with their Django Reinhardt-style uptempo gypsy jazz on Sat 2 Oct. Closing the festival in Cowbridge School on Sat 16, meanwhile, is widely liked jazz vocalist Clare Teal, doing ‘songbook’ standards with a piano/bass/drums trio. Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita, whose fusion of Welsh harp and Senegalese kora is as familiar a presence in Wales as a wet weekend, light up the Holy Cross Church on Sun 3, although it’s already sold out.
That leaves us to flag up an opening concert on Fri 1 Oct by the Feinstein Ensemble, a London period nonet tackling Bach and Vivaldi this evening; readings of Dvorák and Mendelssohn string pieces by fellow Londoners the Piatti Quartet on Fri 8; north Wales pianist Luke Jones occupying the Young Artist’s Recital slot on Sun 10; and cello/piano duo Camille Thomas & Julien Brocal on Fri 15.
Various venues, Cowbridge, Fri 1-Sat 16 Oct. Tickets (per concert): £15/£1 children and students. Info: 01446 773824 /
cowbridgemusicfestival.co.uk NOEL GARDNER
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