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Sleeve Notes
Cambridge: old university city in eastern England
busker: itinerant musician or actor, especially one who plays music or entertains on the street
(Oxford Dictionary)
It wasn't long ago that Michael Copley and David ("Dag") Ingram met for the first time — at Cambridge University, where Michael was studying music and Dag French and Russian. Their initial musical collaboration came about unexpectedly. One day they found themselves in London without enough money for their fare home, and so it happened that the Cambridge Buskers made their inauspicious debut at the Blackfriars tube (subway) station. After they had gone through their entire repertoire ("Eine kleine Nachtmusik" and "The Entertainer") for three hours, a music-loving London Transport official asked them to move along. Encouraged by this success, they went to Paris expecting to find the streets paved with gold and generous Parisians. Instead they were arrested by a plainclothes-man in Montmartre. Next stop: Germany, where they had been advised that busking was far easier (and legal!). So it proved, and by mid-morning they had earned enough to buy a large breakfast.
Since then Michael and Dag have played in the Deutschland Hall (Berlin), the Sports Palace (Antwerp — 16,000 seats!), the Tonhalle (Zurich), the National Theatre (London), the Button Club (Miami), as well as at the Paris Opera (a metro station). They have toured most of the countries of Europe, Japan (where their records have reached No. 1 on the classical charts), Thailand and Canada, and have been heard on practically every radio and TV station (and in most of the train stations) in Germany, Britain, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. They have also been invited to play at many of the major European festivals, including Edinburgh, Chichester, York, Hamburg, Rotterdam and the Festival of Flanders, and have even found time to do the score of a movie ("Sweet William").
What is the secret of the Cambridge Buskers' appeal? It isn't only the unusual and beguiling sound of Michael's bottomless mixed-bag assortment of 33 flutes, piccolos, recorders, ocarinas and tonettes blending so perfectly with Dag's $10 accordion. It's also the music they play — their own original, lighthearted arrangements of works ranging from Praetorius and Bach to Boccherini, Rossini, Mozart, Brahms, Chopin and Scott Joplin (as well as some traditional and folk numbers), delightfully adapted to the sound and scale of their various instruments (some of which the composers of these works certainly never had in mind). Before the Cambridge Buskers appeared on the street scene, al fresco audiences mostly got a diet of popular songs which musicians thought the coin-tossing public would want (and pay) to hear. Yet it is really just as appropriate to be able to hear the music of Mozart, for example, played in the streets. Many composers actually wrote some of their best music for performance outdoors (often in the form of serenades and divertimentos), and many of the tunes from their operas and symphonies found their way back to the corners and cafes of Europe as the "hits" of their day.
Thus the Cambridge Buskers are actually continuing a long tradition, as they perform their unique mixture of classical and folk music to large audiences of all ages in the streets and squares (and auditoriums) of towns and cities around the world. Now that international success seems to have been tossed into their busking cap, they play more often in broadcasting than railway stations, and are more used to television specials, capacity audiences, recordings and radio interviews than police stations. And their press clippings are now culled from the entertainment pages rather than court reports.
But their favorite "concert-hall" continues to be the sidewalk itself. And if, after listening to this album, you wish you could hear the Cambridge Buskers live, take heart: there is always the possibility that they may be playing soon on your very corner. When you think about it, it really is nice to know that they've made the streets safe for good music again.
Steven Paul/Alex Armitage