Lucie’s Lounge review

Lucie’s Lounge is an artistic event that happens once a month at The Bloomsbury Tavern in London. Different artists and musicians meet at this warm and intimate place, showing their art to a friendly and delighted audience. Lucia Vazquez interviews some of the artists who took part in the most recent show.

The person who brings all these amazingly talented people together is Lucinda Sieger. Lucinda is a professional musician herself and she loves having a place where artists can meet other artists. She came up with the idea of “having a monthly meeting with friends in a relaxed environment.”

At first only a few of her friends attended, but people became more and more interested in taking part in this event and now Lucie’s Lounge has just held its 10th meeting.

Lucinda was the hostess of the event and she delighted us with some of her songs – which she made us take part in through tunes and rhythms – introduced all the artists and interacted with the audience.

Karin Fransson was one of the musicians who played at the venue. Her beautiful voice and calm lyrics introduced us into a quiet and peaceful atmosphere.
She played songs from her album “Private Behaviour” as well as a song composed just two days before the event.

Another musician who played at the venue was Peter Kennedy who played the accordion. Kennedy is also a writer and he has a compilation of stories entitled “Fishermen’s tales”. Some of them were real, others came from his creative imagination, but all of them had in common the intensity of the story. He read one of these tales aloud and everyone listened in silence to this story full with drama and passion.

The last musician who played at the venue was Darren Filkins who played blues and his voice and lyrics reminded me of a young Bob Dylan – with notes of melancholy in it – talking about life and universal problems we can all relate to – money, love, broken hearts. Filkins is also a photographer and you can see his artwork on his website.

The event featured also the work of other three artists: Alba Ceide, Kent Baker and Emma Marshall.

Alba Ceide explained the different styles and techniques she uses on her artistic work and she talked about the current project she’s working on, “Reverse Portraits”. Alba talked about her project “Valkiria”, a story that takes place after a hypothetical World War III and where women are in control of everything. She hopes to finish it in a near future but for this she needs to find “the right way to express it, mixing images and text in the right way”.

Kent Baker is a writer who read aloud some stories from his book “The Secret War ‘Dairies’ of Joey Muldoon”. These are a compilation of stories he wrote when he was a kid and was struggling with many difficulties: war, poverty, sickness. The tales are told through the innocent eyes of a child, but with the wit and humor of an adult.

He has a second volume of stories called “Two rings around the Moon” and some of the characters are the same as in his first book.

Emma Marshall is a London based photographer who showed us some of her pictures. She is currently working on a personal project in which she takes a portrait a day. She shared with us the stories behind these pictures and we left the venue with the feeling of having met these people through her pictures.

Marshall’s pictures reflect a reality we are living nowadays: a world full with strangers we daily meet on our way to work – or back home – but who we refuse to meet for many reasons and we are missing many of these stories because of that.

Lucie’s Lounge is a monthly artistic event at The Bloomsbury Tavern. Don’t miss the chance to attend the next one and meet more talented people like those who attended this one.

The Bloomsbury Tavern
Upstairs Lounge
236 Shaftsbury Avenue
London WC2H 8EG