Inner Vision Quintet X Rachel Gadsden - Liberty Festival Croydon 2023

Sunday 3rd September Fairfield Halls, 7/8pm (time tbc)

The Inner Vision Quintet is delighted to be performing at the Liberty Festival Croydon, London’s Borough of Culture for 2023. The performance will be a special collaboration with Rachel Gadsden, a celebrated visual and performance artist who will be painting to capture the music throughout the Inner Vision performance. Orchestra director Baluji Shrivastav OBE and Rachel Gadsden previously collaborated on the Roche Change Makers Campaign to shine a light on the challenges faced by people living with vision loss.

The Quintet is a selected group of artists from the Inner Vision Orchestra. The orchestra was founded in 2012 and is the world's only professional ensemble of blind and visually impaired musicians. They have been brought together from around the world by Indian multi instrumentalist and composer Baluji Shrivastav OBE.

The Inner Vision Orchestra delight audiences with their unique blend of joyful music from all over the world which moves between songs from Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, to soulful Gospel and Blues to sublime Indian Ragas and Western Classical compositions. They regularly  tour and perform in top venues around the UK and have released music with Arc/Naxos.

Rachel Gadsden is a multi award-winning Visual & Performance Artist working across the Mainstream and Diverse art sectors in UK and Internationally.

"joyously cross-cultural, stylistically boundless" BBC Radio 3 Music Matters

About

*The Inner Vision Orchestra was founded in 2012 and is the world's only professional ensemble of blind and visually impaired musicians. They have been brought together from around the world by Indian maestro Baluji Shrivastav OBE.

The orchestra regularly tours and perform in top venues around the UK and have released music with Arc/Naxos.

The Inner Vision Orchestra is one of the main projects of The Baluji Music Foundation, which  programmes and promotes blind and partially sighted musicians. It promotes equal working opportunities in music for blind and partially sighted people. The Baluji Music Foundation is celebrating its 15th Anniversary 2023 and is carrying out research in collaboration with the University of London Institute of Education into increasing employment opportunities for blind and partially sighted people in music.

Rachel Gadsden is an exciting and unique visual and performance artist with over 20 years experience of creating dynamic work as both solo artist, and collaborator as well as leading a range of national and international participative programmes. At the core of her practice are concerns as to how humankind comes to terms with mortality: by unearthing the unseen, making the invisible visible. Part of that process is about being open about impairment, and working to empower others to find a voice with which to challenge stigma.  Ultimately Gadsden’s work is underpinned by themes of fragility and resilience, a shared and positive sense of survival in the face of chronic health conditions, and the politics and mythologies surrounding disability.

Expressionistic in approach, Gadsden creates vibrant, energetic art through painting, performance, animation and film, always with the overriding objective of presenting a cross-cultural visual language and dialogue to consider the most profound notions of what it is to be human.

Gadsden is a multi-award winning visual and performance artist who has a BA and MA in Fine Art. Her artistic career began with the support of a Princes Youth Business Trust Award (1988). Gadsden was commended in the 2011 International Freedom to Create competition and Global Alchemy is now permanently exhibited in Mandela’s Walk to Freedom in Cape Town.

http://www.rachelgadsden.com/rg-home