GLORY be, under Step 3 of the recovery roadmap, 150 people will be able to attend tomorrow’s (25/5/2021) livestream concert by The Howl & The Hum at York Minster.
The ground-breaking York band will perform with a nine-piece choir and four-piece string section in the Covid-secure cathedral setting.
Joe Coates, of concert co-promoters Please Please You, says: “We’re being meticulous in our planning and are delighted we can accommodate a small, socially distanced live audience.
“The band are really pulling out all the stops with the choir and the string section, with all the Covid-testing that goes with that.”
The Howl & The Hum will be joined at the 8pm to 9.30pm concert by Gina Walters and Lucy Revis, from the Sheffield bands Before Breakfast and Neighbourhood Voices.
The last time frontman Sam Griffiths graced a York stage with The Howl & The Hum, he was wearing angel wings with a nod to Christmas and Nativity plays at The Crescent in December 2019.
Might we see those wings again in the Nave of northern Europe’s largest medieval Gothic cathedral? “I feel like that’s been done,” says Sam, whose show announcement in March promised “a unique set to compliment the unique venue”.
“We’re thinking about a different way to approach it because it’s probably the most important gig we’ve done. Definitely no animal sacrifices and no indoor fireworks! But we do have a lot of exciting plans, though some of them I can’t tell you!”
York’s long-standing independent promoters Please Please You, independent York grassroots venue The Crescent and legendary Leeds venue and promoters The Brudenell [Social Club] are teaming up with the Chapter of York to present this one-off live performance by the York alternative rock outfit.
Confirmed at the fourth attempt of settling on a date, the show will be livestreamed at 20:15 (GMT) via ticket.co. For tickets, go to: ticketco.events/uk/en/m.
Tomorrow’s setlist will be built around The Howl & The Hum’s 2020 debut album Human Contact, whose prescient title chimed with pandemic times when such contact became more restricted, even barred, through the alienating cycle of lockdowns.
New material may well feature too. “I reckon it will,” promised Sam in March.
