John Tams - Collector and Stage Actor

Collector and Stage Actor

In 1974, Tams and Neil Wayne went to County Clare to make field recordings of highly-regarded traditional players of the concertina. The recordings were issued on the "Free Reed" label in the '70s. These recordings then became very scarce until 2007 when all the tracks were issued as a 6-CD set called The Clare Set.

Tams was a musical director and actor at the National Theatre from 1976 to 1985 and then again from 1999 to 2001, working on such shows as The Mysteries, Lark Rise to Candleford, Glengarry Glenross, The Crucible, Golden Boy, The Good Hope and The Mysteries Revival in 1999. He was a member of the creative team headed by Bill Bryden.

He also worked as a music consultant at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on Holding Fire (opened July 2007), and on War Horse (opened October 2007) at the National Theatre. War Horse has been described as the most successful show ever staged by the National and has resulted in several awards. It received six nominations for the Olivier Awards, including one for the Best Sound, for Tams and fellow team members Chris Shutt and Adrian Sutton.

Read more about this topic:  John Tams

Famous quotes containing the words collector, stage and/or actor:

    Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism—victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    The Indians feel that each stage is crucial and that the child should be allowed to dwell in each for the appropriate period of time so that every aspect of his being can evolve, just as a plant evolves in the proper time and sequence of the seasons. Otherwise, the child never has a chance to master himself in any one phase of his life.
    Alan Quetone (20th century)

    The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.
    Alla Nazimova (1879–1945)