Glasgow Humane Society Trumpet Performance

I’m just back from watch­ing a strange and lovely per­for­mance piece from the sus­pen­sion foot­bridge over the River Clyde, con­sist­ing of a lone trum­peter in formal dress play­ing a lament from the Glas­gow Humane Soci­ety rescue rowing boat, in the rain, need­less to say.

The Glas­gow Humane Soci­ety is a won­der­ful insti­tu­tion, founded in 1790 as a lifeboat ser­vice to rescue folk drown­ing in the Clyde, and recover the bodies of those drowned. Orig­i­nally based in a house at the edge of Glas­gow Green, nick­named ‘The Dead Hoose’ (pho­to­graph, illus­tra­tion) which was demol­ished in the late ’30s, the Soci­ety has been a family busi­ness of sorts, with George Geddes (car­toon por­trait) man­ning the boat between 1859 and 1899, when his son, another George, took over until his death during a rescue attempt in 1931 (or, pos­si­bly, 1929, I’m not sure). The younger George Geddes was then replaced by Ben Par­son­age, who served until his death in 1979, suc­ceeded by his son George Par­son­age MBE, who I assume is the man you can just make out in the pho­tographs above and below, shel­ter­ing from the rain under his jacket. He’s saved over a thou­sand lives on the Clyde. More infor­ma­tion here, here and here too.

Unfor­tu­nately, I’m guilty of post­ing in haste, as I can’t for the life of me remem­ber the artist(s) behind today’s action, but will update the above as soon as I get hold of one of the post­cards sent out to pub­li­cise the event, which takes place daily at noon for a little while longer, I think. If you can’t make it, more images are available.

Posted at 2pm on 07/04/05 by Jack Mottram to the art and culture category.
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Tags: art, glasgow, music, performance