08 April, 2020

Singing With Nightingales: Live at Home

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been working to reimagine our unique Singing With Nightingales series for these extraordinary times. After some serious technical exploration and re-devising, we are excited to be launching our ‘from the forest’ digital offering of Singing with Nightingales: Live at Home.

We’ve designed this offering to be as intimate an interaction as possible with these birds and nature during the national lockdown, and we hope you will enjoy this experience.

Please see details below for the range of broadcasts (“Nestflix”, as we’re referring to it) for both the general public and a special series for ticket holders and our generous donors.

Earth Day • Weds 22nd April • 10pm to 1am

For our first broadcast of the series we are very proud to present an evening with Sam Lee and some very special guests.

Hosted by Sam, this audio broadcast, live on Youtube, will take you on a journey into the woods of Sussex to hear the unforgettable song of the nightingale. We will then be linking up with special guest musicians in their own homes for real-time improvised duets and poetic offerings with the nightingales, bringing the magic of music and nature to you during these housebound times.

Special guests include:

Pet Shop Boys • Cosmo Sheldrake • Isobel Waller-Bridge • Bernard Butler • Seth Lakeman • Nick Mulvey • Julie Fowlis • Johnny Flynn • Jessie Buckley •  John Smith • Jocelyn Pook • Sara Nicolls 

With written and spoken contributions from:

Chris Packham • Robert MacFarlane • Jay Griffiths • Gavin Turk • Lily Cole • Simon McBurney • Matthew Bannister • Simon Armitage • Farhana Yarmin • Ed Gillespie

& more to be announced!

For donors & ticket holders

30th April, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, 9th May
8:30pm to 9:40pm

By way of a thank you to all original ticket holders, we will be running a series of seven video broadcasts hosted by Sam Lee. We are offering this series in the spirit of Beatrice Harrison’s pioneering 1924 BBC broadcasts of cello duets with the nightingale – the original inspiration for Singing with Nightingales. This will be a unique, sonically and visually rich nightly series, detailing the extraordinary world of the nightingale in greater detail than ever. Each of these chapters will bring you the audience as close to the nightingale and nature as is possible.

These video broadcasts will be available to Singing With Nightingales ticket holders, and to generous donors to the Nest Collective during this time.

Open to everyone

29th and 30th April; 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th May
10pm to midnight

For nine nights across the period 29th April to 9th May, after darkness falls and the night song begins, Sam Lee will be live streaming audio of the nightingale singing in their territory. To capture the full Singing With Nightingales experience, we will be linking up with a special guest musician each night playing from their own homes, for real-time improvised duets with the nightingales, to bring the magic of music and nature to you during these housebound times.

These audio broadcasts will be freely available to everyone, and we ask that those enjoying the broadcasts consider making a donation to support the Nest Collective and our artists involved with the project.

Additionally, On 29th April and 6th May, from 8.30pm to 9.40pm, we will be bringing the essence of the woodland events directly into the comfort of your home with two live video broadcasts presented by Sam Lee. These broadcasts will weave together an introduction to the music, natural history, story-telling and the songs of the nightingale, prior to the audio relay of the actual birds themselves.

Message of thanks from Sam Lee

I want to say an enormous thank you to everyone who is able to donate or support in their own way. The Nest Collective is a not-for-profit organisation which I founded over 15 years ago, and that today curates and presents an annual season of events around the UK which bring together music and nature in a very special and intimate way. The vast majority of our income is generated through ticket sales, and the loyalty of our audiences is what keeps this small yet prolific organisation thriving, year on year. The team and I have been working for many months to curate and produce the Singing with Nightingales series and the Covid 19 crisis means that we are now facing challenging times.

If you are in a financial position to do so, I would like to ask if you would consider making a donation to The Nest Collective to help ensure that we can run Singing with Nightingales and our much-loved annual season in future years, and offer support for our family of musicians and amazing team of artists and art makers who help to deliver these exceptional evenings. Everyone who donates will be invited to join our series of private Singing With Nightingales live broadcasts from 29th April to 9th May. We are hugely grateful for any donations made, large or small.

Donations can be made at the following link. Any contribution will help us to continue being resilient and creative during this crisis, and we would be so grateful for your support.

With enormous gratitude x Sam and the Nest Collective team

We hope you are keeping well, and we look forward to sharing some beautiful music with you online in the coming weeks.