A CUMBRIAN cellist and poet is set to undertake a 2000-mile bicycle pilgrimage that will take him to all 42 English cathedrals in the space of seven weeks.
Kenneth Wilson, who is 66, will be undertaking “Pilgrim Cello”, and, in 40 of the cathedrals, he will perform a specially written “Seven Last Words Meditation”, which interleaves poetry of the Seven Last Words with the Sarabandes from Bach’s six cello suites. This is not his first gruelling ride — in 2022 he cycled from Hadrian’s Wall to Rome, during which he performed on the highest paved road over the Alps.
‘He’s transported by bike and by music’
In addition to his cello, Mr Wilson will be carrying seven abstract paintings by Gillian Lever, which will travel in a gilded box intended to look like a medieval reliquary. “The idea is that, symbolically, it’s like a medieval pilgrim taking holy things around the holy places,” he said on Tuesday.
“These paintings, which are abstract paintings of the Seven Last Words, will be displayed as I’m performing. They’re beautiful, beautiful paintings. People will be invited to come up and make a response either to the music or to the poems, in whatever way they would like.”
The music, the words, and the paintings may have a different resonance in the different buildings: something already proven in five cathedrals he has already visited, owing to venues’ schedules. “I’ve always been conscious of the holiness of place,” he said. “The holy place is very important and you don’t know what’s going to happen to you when you’re standing there.
“In Liverpool Cathedral, for instance, which I confess I have never been to before, I found myself in this amazing, enormous, and beautiful 20th-century space, and suddenly I was overwhelmed and completely taken over by the music that I was offering to that place.
“It was a very extraordinary experience for me. So I’m feeling that this is my offering to the holy places, and what happens to me and to the performance is a kind of function of the place as much as anything that I’m bringing to it.”
Of the power of the words and music in each place to each audience, he says: “The framework structure is the same, and the notes are more or less the same but somehow, the whole functions as one whole thing which is unique to that moment.”
There was something unique about going into a cathedral, he said. “A cathedral seems to have the greatest discontinuity between outside and inside of any place you can imagine.
“You go through the door and immediately you’re in a completely different place and space and feeling from when you were outside. So that puts me in the frame of mind to do the performance. I’m planning and hoping that, for most places, I would get to the cathedral about a couple of hours beforehand so that I would have time to do some proper pilgrim observances in the space myself — you know, walk quietly around and absorb and settle myself in the space before I have to give a performance that will properly belong to that space.”
“Pilgrim Cello” will start in Newcastle on 19 May and end in Carlisle on 4 July. “I’m really excited,” Mr Wilson said. I’m also terrified.
“I’m nearly ready, though my cycling muscles aren’t as prepared as they should be. I just have not had time to get on the bike nearly enough because of all the other preparations — but yes, I’m very excited.”
The itinerary can be found at kennethwilson.com/pilgrim-cello