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THE PENTANGLE MAKES FIRST U. S. TOUR
Open at Fillmore East
THE PENTANGLE (Reprise).. .a uniquely versatile English classical/folk/jazz/blues group.. are making their first U. S. concert tour beginning February 7-8 at the Fillmore East. This tour coincides with the release of their second album, "Sweet Child", whose cover art was designed by Peter Blake, creator of the award-winning "Sgt. Pepper" album for the Beatles.
THE PENTANGLE'S together, versatile sound has made them tremendously popular in England during the past year. They played their first solo performance at Royal Festival Hall, London, to a sold-out audience of 4000. In a 14-city tour of England,
Scotland, and Ireland, THE PENTANGLE consistently played to capacity houses~..hitting Albert Hall, London; the Edinburgh Festival ; Liverpool; Glasgow January 29 THE PENTANGLE performed at Coventry Cathedral, to be taped for a BBC-TV special. John Peel, top English DJ, has hosted them frequently, as has BBC-TV and independent network shows.
Their U. S. concert tour arranged through manager Joe Lustig and CMA, takes them to the Fillmore East, February 7-8; The Unicorn, Boston, February 11-15; The Troubadour, Los Angeles, February 18-23; and the Fillmore West, San Francisco, February 27-March 2.
When they return to England, guitarist Jansch makes a speaking appearance at Cambridge to talk about his style.. March 6 they are invited to be the sole British representative at Holland's pop "Grande Gala du Disque", which will be broadcast over Eurovision to all of Western and Eastern Europe and Britain.
PENTANGLE'S two acoustical guitarists. Bert Jansch and John Renbourn are established names in the English folk world Jansch' guitar style is an acknowledged influence on Donovan. and both Jansch and Renbourn ("I started off trying to play like Big Bill Broonzy, and I'm still trying") frequently crop up on album credits Danny Thompson on double bass and Terry Cox on drums, also came to PENTANGLE with a strong studio and session reputation Jacqui McShee singing either solo or with Jansch or Renbourn.. has a clear strong voice that ranges from folk to blues.
Together, PENTANGLE makes music that's strange and wonderful. As John Peel says on the liner notes of their first album, "play this record to those you love."
THE TIMES - TUESDAY JANUARY 7 1969
Music from fiveangles
By Henry Raynor
The difference between The Pentangle and the other groups which compete for our attention, is that it refuses to fit into any of the recognized boxes. It is not a pop group, not a folk group and not a jazz group, but what it attempts is music which is a synthesis of all these and other styles as well as interesting experiments in each of them individually.
Its concert programmes - and its members are more interested in concert-giving than in any other musical activity - consist of music employing all its five members and of works employing only one, two or three of them. Jacqui McShee, the group's singer, tackles un-accompanied and accompanied folk songs, spirituals, blues and a variety of songs in other styles; her first interest was folk song. Danny Thompson, the bass player (who is also a cellist and was once an army-band trombonist), uses Charles Mingus's "Haitian Fight Song" as a theme for improvisations and variations of hair-raising difficulty, and takes a bow to play jazz.style chamber music with the other instrilmentalists, the guitarists Burt Jansch and John Renbourn and the drummer Terry Cox, an cx-chorister of Canterbury Catherdral and Westminster Ahbey.
Bert Jansch, who, like John Renbourn, is a gifted guitarist and not a mere strummer of chords, sings and plays in the blues stvle, out of which grew the songs by which he first became well-known, but he is growing increasingly interested in the folk music of Scotland, where he was born of Austrian and Scottish parents.
John Renbourn began with a rock group, developed into a good folk-music player and has hecome interested in medieval and sixteenth ceentury music; he talks enthusiastically of the "wild free songs " from the middle ages sung by organizations like Musica Reservata.
Thus a Pentangle programme includes folk songs often inventively accompanied (they bring out the originality of Terry Cox), modern songs of their own in a variety of styles, and instrumental pieces which are quite likely to include music by Byrd and Dowland played by John Renbourn with Terry Cox picking out the melody on the glockenspiel. They are unorthodox in other ways, too. They play, often, very gently; they dislike electric guitars though acoustic guitars are harder to play, and are interested in varieties of colour and texture. They dislike playing in clubs, where audiences are less than totally attentive; and they dislike the possibility of making records which can too easily include tricks which would be impossible in front of an audience.
They consciously work in, and wish to draw adherents to, British musical traditions; they do not play to promulgate their social creed, and they are refreshingly funny about themselves and the "pop" and "folk" worlds which impinge on their own lives. They are glad that their fans do not write for information about their habits or for locks of their hair but for information about the music they perform and the techniques they use. For the future, they plan to go on playing all the types of music they like to play while continuing to develop their own style.
This, in January, they will do in a variety of places including the Albert Hall and Coventry Cathedral. In February they will do it in the United States, where the success of their first L.P. record has amazed as well as pleased them.