A Light Entertainment by Simon Corder
with original music by Will Todd

Cascade was an artist commission for an after dinner entertainment. It took place at The Alnwick Garden over three nights. The premiere was for the World Summit on Arts and Culture, 16th June 2006.

The premise of Cascade was that a local Jazz duo had been booked to play a set following dinner. This unassuming pair regularly play small gigs around the North East in hotels and bars. In an inversion of the famous Stonehenge incident in the 1984 movie cult classic Spinal Tap, the pair found themselves playing in the midst of the spectacular Alnwick Garden Cascade in Northumberland.

The audience was invited to walk around the installation and through the hornbeam pergolas, as a finale Will Todd performed a new twelve minute piece of music. There was an element of performance art as a waiter clambered through the cascade to deliver the musicians a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale while his umbrella bearers made an elegant progress balancing on the walls alongside him. – Simon Corder, June 2006