Chopin in Majorca was recorded at The Velvet Tongue Studios in Johannesburg 1989. In those studios South African poet Sinclair Beiles is heard reading his one-man play, a poetic counterpart of George Sand’s ‘Un hiver à Majorque’, in which the author (whose real name was Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin) relates the disastrous winter that she and her lover Frédéric Chopin spent on the island in 1838-1839. In an effort to counterbalance George Sand’s self-centred account, Beiles’ tries to picture in his play what the winter on Majorca must have looked like from Chopin’s point of view. ‘Chopin in Majorca’ is one of Beiles’ beautiful and endearing failures. Don’t miss it. A carrot is as close as a rabbit gets to a diamond, as Captain Beefheart would say.
The Sloow Tapes cassette comes with reproductions of artwork by Sinclair Beiles and of photos by his friend Gerard Bellaart of Cold Turkey Press. The cassette was released in an edition of only 100 copies.