With the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival celebrating their silver anniversary this year (25 years), a wide and varied bill was arranged to mark the event. The highlight of the four-week festival for Roger Waters fans was his appearance in a rather unexpected event.

On August 10th, Stravinsky’s “The Soldier's Tale” was performed with a roster of artists that included Roger. In the piece, the second half of the concert, Roger took the narrator’s part as well as that of the Devil and the Soldier, and BD visitor Matt K was there to witness it (and met Roger, too)...

Marya Martin, the festival's founding artistic director, seemed delighted to secure Roger's services. “We put his name quietly in [the festival programme] but he is huge,” she said with a conspiratorial smile at the launch. Roger last took part in the Festival back on August 7th, 2004, performing some selections from Ca Ira. The venue for Roger's 2008 return was the same - Bridgehampton's Presbyterian Church - an interesting place as you can see from Matt's picture. Now, over to Matt K for his report:

The concert/play was great. It was really interesting seeing him out of his element (at least the one I know him in) and in such a small venue, about 360 seats.

The concert consisted of a 7 piece orchestra including an oboe, a bassoon, a trumpet, an trombone, a violin and viola, a cello (or bass - not sure which) and an assortment of percussion instruments including timpani. There were two performances before Roger's, which were very technical and well done. The last performance was Igor Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale" in which Roger Waters was the narrator and played the voices of the devil and soldier.

He did a great job adding a lot of "character" to the portrayals of the devil and soldier, and of course his voice lent very well to narrating the story.

Throughout the concert he seemed to be enjoying himself and was quite "into" the production, dancing around a little to the music.

After the concert he signed autographs for, and took pictures with, about 10-15 people - as you can see from the picture of myself and Roger.

Overall, my girlfriend and I had a great time seeing the concert and Roger doing something we wouldn't normally expect out of him, especially after having been to four of the Dark Side of the Moon concerts over the past year in Tampa, Chicago, Toronto last summer and in Dallas this spring.