Singing Biochemist takes to the stage in Selsey

The event celebrates the 40th anniversary of the long-term collaboration between accomplished musician Peter Shade and the song-writing ‘Singing Biochemist’ Professor Harold Baum.

A cast of Selsey-area singing talent, accompanied by a small jazz band, will tour through a “witty repertoire that includes comic ditties and sing-along anthems, from the melancholy to the inspirational.” Titles include Freedom!, Ophelia’s Love Song, Alone Inside My Head, This Lovely Earth and Oxidative Phosphorylation. The show was last performed to local acclaim in 2012 and is being performed now to celebrate the long careers of Peter and Harold, now both in their 90s. Preparing for it has given them a new lease of life, says s how spokeswoman Glenda Baum, Harold’s wife.

"The unlikely collaboration of Harold, a professor of biochemistry, and Peter, a nationally renowned jazz keyboardist and arranger, began with two albums, Biorhythms I and II. Whereas Harold’s first book The Biochemist’s Songbook set university-level biochemistry to traditional folk songs, Biorhythms covered GCSE (then O-level) biology to original popular music, sung by four teenagers The Metabolites who sang live on Saturday Superstore. Harold and Peter had so much fun that Peter began setting Harold’s lyrics to music yielding a broad repertoire of songs on diverse themes. It is these grown-up songs that make up the bulk of this programme. It will be a lively and entertaining evening,”

Selsey Music Group presents The Shade & Baum Cabaret Club on Saturday, December 2 at 7.30pm at Selsey Town Hall.

“My husband decided at the age of 92 to have singing lessons. His singing teacher kept giving him songs to sing which he could not read as he is severely sight-impaired. Then one day, in frustration, he handed her This Lovely Earth, one of the many lyrics which his colleague, Peter Shade set to music in 1987 for the European Year of the Environment. The singing tutor loved it and remarked that Mendelsohn had discovered Bach 200 years after his death and here in Selsey we have this amazing undiscovered song-writing duo! It is 40 years since Peter and Harold first collaborated. Peter moved to Selsey about five years ago having been introduced to the town when together we put on the first Shade & Baum Cabaret Club in the Town Hall which was very well received!

“Peter is a brilliant jazz keyboard player, music arranger and composer who had a recording studio in which 40 years ago he made the soundtrack of Harold’s first educational songbook The Biochemists Songbook. It went global. Harold then had requests for a sound track from places like Japan saying the Lincolnshire Poacher was not well known in Nagoya. Peter asked Harold if he had written any more lyrics and the result is almost one hundred very varied songs and the two Metabolic Melodies books with cassettes. The Biochemists Songbook is still in print.”

​