Tyneside artists
and jazz enthusiasts Keith Armstrong and Peter Dixon have created a display of
colour paintings, images and poems celebrating the greats of the jazz world
from Lous Armstrong to George Melly, Billie Holiday to Charles Mingus and many
more. The exhibition can be viewed at JG Windows in Newcastle's Central
Arcade in the Printed Music Department on second floor of the store for
the immediate future. A live jazz and poetry event is being planned at Windows
to launch the display - look out for details of this later.
Contact - Keith Armstrong tel 0191
2529531 or Rupert Bradbury (JG Windows) tel 0191 2321356 for further
information.
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he has
worked as a community worker, poet, librarian and publisher, Doctor Keith
Armstrong now resides in Whitley Bay. He is coordinator of the Northern Voices
Community Projects creative writing and community publishing enterprise.
He was awarded a doctorate in 2007 for his
work on Newcastle writer Jack Common at the University of Durham where he
received a BA Honours Degree in Sociology in 1995 and Masters Degree in 1998
for his studies on culture in the North East of England.
His poetry has been extensively published in
magazines such as New Statesman and Poetry Review as well as in the collections
Splinters (2011) and The Month of the Asparagus (2011) and broadcast on radio
& TV.
He has performed his poetry throughout Britain
and abroad.
In his youth, he travelled to Paris and he has
been making international cultural pilgrimages ever since.
Peter Dixon
North Shields based artist, photographer and
graphic designer Peter Dixon began his working life as a designer at the
Shields Gazette, later becoming Senior Visualiser at the North East Co-op. He
has worked in several advertising agencies and runs his own design company.
In 2012 he had a major exhibition of paintings
and photographs, entitled The River and the Slake, displayed at Bede’s World,
Jarrow.
He has produced and co-written many
publications and exhibitions for Northern Voices Community Projects.
Something sad about clowns;
something thin between laughter and tears.
Pity the dignity, the love and the hate,
the twitching wire between body and soul
and you on that stage,
drunk on rum and borrowed blues again;
unique in the balance you keep to yourself -
never quite losing it,
never quite making it;
bawling out between Magritte and Morton,
playing the droopy-drawered clown
with yourself,
you do the Melly Belly,
the Ovaltine,
big brash belly laugh blues.
Keith Armstrong
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