The following is an excerpt from the The Times article on the Barbacian's performance of Hal Wilner's Rouge's Gallery.

These songs, says Hal Willner, have been called 'the original punk music' - spirited, rough-hewn and from the heart. They chronicle every facet of the sailors' life - work songs, laments, songs for relaxing, and, of course, for getting blind drunk to. They celebrate lives that involved a daily battle of wits against the dark, unforgiving ocean. But sea songs, a louche cousin of the folk music of terra firma, have often been overlooked by musicologists.

Rogue's Gallery was the idea of Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski, director of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Although sailors' songs did not feature on screen, the pair felt that re-inventing these tunes with current artists would be an interesting sideproject.

Willner, veteran of albums dedicated to figures as disparate as Harold Arlen, Charles Mingus and Leonard Cohen, was called in to captain the ship. First he had to find his repertoire. 'I looked at sheet music in stores, searched the internet, and listened to the field recordings of song collectors like Paul Clayton and Alan Lomax. On these you can hear the old sailors - the real old Popeyes - recorded outdoors.'

'I made various compilations to play to various artists and they said, 'Why don't you just release this?'

There is rarely a definitive version of a sailor song. 'On a tune like the Good Ship Venus you can hear people on deck making new versions right there.' Many long existed in a different form to what we know now. Lines were chanted, with one man calling out words and the others calling out the chorus in rhythm to their work (hence 'chantey').

But it is often possible to pinpoint a song's place of origin - be it Cape Cod, Australia or Liverpool - and Willner believes they have more influence on popular culture than we know. ‘Sean Lennon told me about how his dad [John] loved these things. You listen to some of the Beatles songs and you can hear the influence - and not just the obvious ones - like Yellow Submarine.'

The result was the Rogue's Gallery album of 2006 in which artists as diverse as Sting, Bryan Ferry and Bill Frisell discovered their inner Jack Tar. Like other Willner projects - his Kurt Weill tribute and his Disney album Stay Awake - a live show seemed an obvious next step.

The line-up of singers at the Barbican evening, which follows shows in Dublin and Newcastle, was firmed up only recently. That, though, is typical of a Willner 'cast of thousands' production. 'We don't necessarily plan things. We plant a few seeds and we see what happens when we get near.' For such an event the repertoire must have priority. 'We make the set list before the artists are picked. We try to imagine who would sound good on a certain song.' Willner has learnt from experience that 'the concept has to be the star ... if it's about the star, then it's weird and the audience will feel it.' It helps that the songs are ‘earthy' folk melodies. 'It is a little easier to teach than,
say Thelonious Monk. Anyone can hear a song and an hour later they can do it.'

One of the earliest to commit to the project was Pete Doherty. The former Libertine and tabloid favourite had sung in Willner's Disney show, Forest of No Return, at the Meltdown Festival in London last summer. Willner picked him after hearing the first Babyshambles album. 'He was spectacular on Chim Chim Cher-ee. He is one of those guys who is a natural music person ... he is a real artist - not just a person who sings.'

By now, of course, Willner has a fat contacts book. The New York-based producer is credited with inventing the modern tribute album in the 1980s. His first, Amarcord Nino Rota, dedicated to the Fellini collaborator Nino Rota, featured the then little known Wynton Marsalis and Bill Frisell as well as Debbie Harry. By Stay Awake, his 1988 Disney album, he could entice a Beatle, Ringo Starr, to sing When You Wish Upon a Star, and in 1992 two Rolling Stones - Keith Richards and Charlie Watts - for his Charles Mingus record, Weird Nightmare. But Willner insists that lesser known,more leftfield artists can often be the surprise hits. 'I don't like safe music,' he says.

It isn't quite the career Willner had planned. He got his first job in the record industry working as an assistant to the producer Joel Dorn, a regular at his father's deli. But he says the post of staff producer, as in the great days of Motown and Atlantic, was dying out. Instead he has made his career out of surprising collisions and collaborations, always committed to 'allowing the art to happen'.

He doesn't own a platinum record but is happy at how life has panned out. 'I haven't had a straight job since 1979, when I was driving a cab and trying tomake records at night,' he says with a smile. 'I'm very fortunate to have done what I've done and still be doing it.'

John Bungey, The Times.