Brighouse rap artist puts
and someone who is carrying a grievance and by the end he’s more open and manages to reconnect with people.”
In little over a month Testament not only wrote and composed the music, he also penned the script, which he performs himself.
“The show went out on a Friday and the last piece of music was composed on the Wednesday and the orchestra had only played it twice, but they’re such great musicians and we managed to pull it off.”
He has worked with Leeds Playhouse and Opera North before, but says he was humbled to be approached to work with them on a project like this. “These are two huge and really important cultural organisations and to have their backing was incredible.”
Orpheus in the Record Shop premiered to a socially-distanced audience at the Playhouse last October and was an important moment in the initial remobilisation of live theatre for audiences. On the back of this it was filmed for the BBC’s Lights Up, a season of plays for TV and radio produced in partnership with theatres across the UK, and was screened by BBC 4 last month.
James Brining, Leeds Playhouse’s artistic director who co-directed the filmed version, is full of praise for Testament. “The man has got nerves of steel, as well as being multitalented. I don’t think anyone else could have achieved what he did.”
Testament is certainly a mercurial talent who straddles multiple art forms. He teaches beatboxing and rap and at the same time is a writer and theatre maker. His childhood was an itinerant one but he found an anchor in music. “I’ve been beatboxing since I was 11 and rapping since I was 14,” he says.
He now lives in Brighouse and first moved to Yorkshire in the 90s when he came here to study. He has since worked with a diverse range of artists, including Corinne Bailey Rae and Ray Parker Jnr, and has been a member of Shlomo’s acclaimed beatbox choir.
His involvement with the latter led him to combining music and theatre.
In 2014 he presented a oneman show featuring responses to William Blake poems in the form of rap and hip hop.