The legendary death-oompah group The Tiger Lillies returns to the Cēsis Concert Hall with an entirely new concert program dedicated to the strange, the macabre, and those whom society has cast aside. Armed with a new album that tells stories of people living on the fringes of society, they will also perform their most beloved songs.
The Tiger Lillies is a legendary British avant-garde music trio founded in 1989 by singer, songwriter, and accordionist Martyn Jacques. The group is known for its unique fusion of dark cabaret, punk, and opera elements, grimly macabre and melancholic themes, theatrical stage personas, and Jacques’ unmistakable falsetto. For more than thirty-five years, The Tiger Lillies have toured worldwide, becoming one of the most striking and unrestricted phenomena in contemporary performing arts.
Winners of the Olivier Award and nominees for a Grammy Award, the artists have released more than 40 albums, including numerous critically acclaimed works and interdisciplinary collaborations with theatre, film, and visual arts. The group gained international recognition with the stage production Shockheaded Peter, which became a sensation in the West End and won two Olivier Awards. In 2003, The Tiger Lillies were nominated for a Grammy Award for the album The Gorey End, created in collaboration with Kronos Quartet.
Over the years, the group has interpreted works such as The Little Matchgirl, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Hamlet, collaborated with the Norrlandsoperan Symphony Orchestra and photographer Nan Goldin, and composed music for film. Most recently, The Tiger Lillies created the soundtrack for the film Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness, directed by Johnny Depp, further cementing their place in the international art scene.
The band’s frontman and author Martyn Jacques says:
“Many hundreds of the songs I have written are about people living on the fringes of society. When I moved to Soho in the 1980s, I spent many hours simply looking out of my apartment window. I watched drug dealers, prostitutes, addicts, and gangsters. I learned what they did and why they did it. It wasn’t always as simple as it might seem. It was a time before the arrival of the yuppies. Serenade from the Sewer reflects some memories from that time. For me, it was a happy period. But for many of the people I knew and observed from my window, it was tragic.”
For more than 30 years, the British trio The Tiger Lillies have stood at the forefront of the stage avant-garde with their darkly grotesque, nihilistically sneering, and punk-inspired stage personas and witty songs. Their sources of inspiration are wide-ranging—from Kurt Weill and French chanson to the art of clowning and even a London prostitute named Lily, who wore animal-print outfits. It is the bubbling, Weimar-era Berlin of a hundred years ago, now resonating in English.
Leading global media have written about The Tiger Lillies: The Guardian calls them “a provocative mix of anarchic opera and gypsy street theatre,” The Independent praises them as “a brilliant marriage of music hall, punk, and Brechtian cabaret,” while The New York Times has described them as one of the most unique and subversive acts on today’s stage. Time Out concludes: “an extraordinary fusion of styles and sounds that creates a world both grotesque and beautiful.”
Preschool-age children will not be admitted to the concert.
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