CHAT takes Biggles to Beijing

It’s amazing who you meet at parties, and what may happen after you’ve met. Especially if you’re a natural networker. So put two natural networkers together – one from CHAT, for example, and one from the Chaoyang Street Carnival Committee in Beijing – and a potential project will invariably raise its head.

It was the British Council who (unknowingly) brought the two natural networkers together, at a party in Beijing two years ago. And the potential project which raised its head was for CHAT to supply an act for the Carnival, and for the Committee to stump up the money.

In the weeks following the party in Beijing, word reached us that although the Committee were “really really" interested in two of the acts proposed (one Irish, one jug-band cabaret) there was actually no money left in their coffers.

So it didn’t happen, two years ago.

But this time around, last December a call came through from Chinese Vera (also known affectionately by some Mancunians as Vera Crispy Duckworth), the Vera who was sitting opposite CHAT for a good hour at the Beijing party, asking now if our Manchester jug-band (the Biggles Wartime Band) were available to play in Beijing in 2010.

They were available, and willing, and very able. They selected a repertoire to appeal to a majority Chinese audience of 70,000 or so, in the Beijing Chaoyang Park, from Feb 14th to 21st, as part of the Chinese New Year festivities, for the coming Year of the Tiger. To us at CHAT, it sounds more like the Year of the Monkey.

Steve Landin, the Biggles fiddler, has played at Glastonbury for 10 years now, so was not fazed by the scale of the gig. What we are sure of, here at CHAT, is that the Beijing audience will never have seen anything like Biggles before. For a preview of what was in store for the Beijingers, have a look and a listen, at the Biggles Wartime Band website, and contact us to let us know how you think they’ll be received.