Harvey Stevens’s Jamie New, front left, with his fellow Year 11 pupils at Mayfield School in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
EVERYBODY’S talking about the new Jamie New in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie in York.
From July 22 to 26, GCSE schoolboy Harvey Stevens will play the title role in York company Pick Me Up Theatre’s production of Tom MacRae and Dan Gillespie Sells’s award-winning musical at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York.
This joyous underdog story was last staged in York in its Teenage Version by York Stage in June 2023. “I was too young for that, which I was really gutted about,” says Harvey, 15, from Acomb.
He has loved the story of Jamie New ever since his first experience of the film. “My mum hadn’t heard of it, so she was mortified, not knowing what she’d taken me to, but I loved it!” he says.
“I’ve seen every tour, every cast, since then. My favourite Jamie was Layton Williams, who I went to see at Leeds Grand [Theatre], though I take a bit from every Jamie to be honest, like the riffs in their singing…”
“…But you have your own style, in your singing and in your dancing,” says Gemma McDonald, the Rowntree Players pantomime favourite, who will be playing Jamie’s world-weary, self-sacrificial, ever supportive mum, Margaret.
Harvey Stevens’s Jamie New with the high heels that will transform him from 6ft to 6ft 6ins in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Picture: Colin Wallwork
Premiered at the Sheffield Crucible Theatre in 2017, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is the unapologetic story of the boy who sometimes wants to be a girl, wear a dress to the school prom and be a drag queen. Jamie New, from a Sheffield council estate, but feeling out of place, is so restless at sweet 16 to be “something and someone fabulous”, standing out from the crowd of Year 11 pupils of Mayfield School.
You sense that Harvey has that drive too. He took his first dance steps at the age of three at the Yorkshire Rose Academy of Dance in York. “I then started studying ballet at Let’s Dance, picked up jazz, tap and contemporary there in Year 4, and then I went to Northern Ballet in Leeds for three years,” he says.
From there, he moved on to Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham, boarding there as he studied musical theatre, jazz and ballet dancing in Year 7 and 8, adding dancing in heels to his repertoire at SK Dance Fusion in York.
That will come in handy in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. “I’ll be 6ft 6 with my heels on as I’m 6ft,” says Harvey. “I’ll be looking over everyone on stage!
“I first wore heels on stage at the Move It dance convention in London in 2022.” As with all his dance moves, he took it in his stride. “For this role I’ve taken everything I’ve learnt from ballet and contemporary [dance], all the core techniques, taking the styles and joining them together.”
To be playing Jamie is “like a dream come true as it’s my first main role,” says Harvey. “I’ve always said I wanted to play him, and here I am. It’s such a good character to play and story to tell and I feel I can really relate to that age, and what he’s going through.”
“Playing Jamie is like a dream come true as it’s my first main role,” says Harvey Stevens. Picture: Jo Hird
Gemma, a former teacher, whose 15-year-old son, Ethan, is in the cast too, says: “There’s all those similarities, all those experiences, of what boys face. When I saw that Robert [director Robert Readman] was doing this show, I was thinking, I’m of an age where I can play this character, the mother, who’s got true Yorkshire grit to her.
“I love her songs, If I Met Myself Again and He’s My Boy, and all the words in those songs resonate with me. With having my son there as well, I know how he feels, having just done his Proms.
“I love how Margaret is so supportive of Jamie and never wants him to feel any of that negativity that he experiences from his dad. What she does is everything you would want to her to do as a mum in that situation.
“Any mum in the audience will sit there thinking, ‘I hope that’s how I am with my child’, even though Jamie’s mum does question it, worrying if he will be bullied.”
Jamie, like Billy Liar’s Billy Fisher and Kes’s Billy Casper, is a young Yorkshire dreamer, one who must overcome prejudice, beat the bullies and “step out of the darkness into the spotlight”. Harvey has experienced bullying. “It can be anything, online bullying, but I don’t care what they say online. That just gets a block from me,” he says.
From September, Harvey will study musical theatre at SLP College in Garforth, his next step after taking GCSEs in Maths, English, Art, History and Salon (hair-styling). First, however, everybody will be talking about his Jamie from July 22.
Pick Me Up Theatre in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Joseph Rowntree Theatre York, July 22 to 26, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Fretwork: Marking 400th anniversary of Orlando Gibbons’s death
THIS year’s festival raced off the starting line in top gear with the six viols of Fretwork and mezzo soprano Helen Charlston. They focused entirely on the secular music of Orlando Gibbons, the 400th anniversary of whose untimely death at the age of 41 is being commemorated this year.
Gibbons is much better known these days for his sacred music, which is very much part of the backbone of cathedral repertory. His secular output is largely based on vocal techniques. The truth of this was underlined here by a single voice and viols doing duty for five unaccompanied voices in his madrigals – in accordance with the composer’s assertion on his title page in 1612, “apt for viols and voyces”.
Helen Charlston’s mezzo is so firmly centred that she is able to extend its resonance smoothly to either end of her range; there are no gear-changes. Furthermore, her diction is excellent. On this occasion, for my money, she was standing slightly behind the ‘sweet spot’ for voices in this arena and thus the consort was too far back as well. But the audience would not have guessed this from their close co-operation.
Melancholy was the dominant theme in much of the poetry set, no more so than in Sir Walter Raleigh’s What Is Our Life? Charlston spelt out the emotional force here, as in the lament by an anonymous writer Ne’er Let The Sunne, where lower viols provided eloquently darker colour. The counterpoint in each of these songs was sumptuous and all the clearer for its presentation in this rarer format.
Helen Charlston: “Mezzo so firmly centred that she is able to extend its resonance smoothly to either end of her range”. Picture: Julien Gazeau
Early music is making a point of getting living composers involved these days, with Nico Muhly filling the bill at this festival. His setting of words from Psalm 39, sandwiching the autopsy report of Orlando Gibbons, is more satisfying than that may sound. He describes it as a “ritualised memory piece” about Gibbons, writing it for five viols and four male voices.
The version here, however, was an authorised arrangement by Fretwork’s own Richard Boothby for mezzo soprano solo along with the viols. This makes sense not only as being more easy to perform, but also because Muhly’s setting owes a good deal to Gibbons’s own verse anthem to the same psalm, Behold, Thou Hast Made My Days As It Were A Span Long. Several later composers used the words “Lord, let me know mine end”, also from Psalm 39.
At its centre, we learn of Gibbons’s convulsions, where the viols are hesitant, fragmented and stuttering. But its climax lay at “Hear my prayer, O Lord”, with the voice pleading repeatedly against sparse accompaniment.
Earlier we had heard the top three viols alone, and then all five punctuating the voice, often quite rhythmically. Muhly uses ornamentation, rather than out-and-out counterpoint to highlight the text, and eventually repeats the opening words in his postlude. While its aura is more Jacobean than modern, it is still a touching evocation of a great talent.
The most fulfilling of the purely viol pieces in the programme was Go From My Window, a set of variations that pits the two bass viols virtually in competition with one another. Equally exciting was the vivid Pavan and galliard in six parts, while two of Gibbons’s three five-part In Nomines underlined the fertility of his imagination. Fretwork is a tautly interlinked ensemble that breathes as one – exactly what this repertory demands.
Pablo Zapico: “Showed how Spain and Italy first took the guitar seriously”
Pablo Zapico, National Centre for Early Music, St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, York, July 5
THERE are times, usually when listening to early music, when you have the feeling of drinking at the very fountainhead of a musical type. One such rarity came with the appearance of Pablo Zapico and his Baroque guitar.
He showed us how Spain and Italy first took the guitar seriously, with a sweeping survey of 17th century composers, notably Gaspar Sanz and Santiago de Murcia in Spain and Francesco Corbetta leading the Italian pack.
The origins of the guitar lie in the vihuela de mano, a waisted, plucked-string instrument, known in Italy as the viola de mano. Both were tuned exactly like a lute. Their heyday was the 16th century, but by the start of the 17th they had been superseded by the five-course Spanish guitar on display here, with a simplified form of notation.
The most remarkable feature of its predominant style was the strumming effect used alongside pure melody. In the hands of an expert like Zapico this can sound like two instruments being played at once, whereas he can switch between the two in the flash of an eye.
In five whimsical Preludios we sampled the improvisational possibilities with this instrument, often quite chromatic and all the time infused with headstrong Mediterranean temperament. In similar style, we had a volatile Jacaras by Sanz with high and low contrasts that sounded as if right out of the flamenco tradition.
In La Jotta, by de Murcia, based on a Baroque dance, there was a dominant tune heavily syncopated. The best was kept till last. In Sanz’s Canarios, based on a style originating in the Canaries, there were cross-rhythms galore, delivered with extreme rapidity. It was utterly breathtaking.
Zapico is a master of his craft.
The Tallis Scholars: “Intimacy that larger groups struggle to emulate”
The Tallis Scholars, York Minster, July 5
WITH Spanish music assuming some importance at this year’s festival, it was appropriate that Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars began and ended their Glorious Creatures event with Sebastián de Vivanco, who was an almost exact contemporary of Victoria and was born, like him, in Avila.
In between, they focused on Renaissance music about the beauties of nature, with a couple of sidetracks into the newer world of Nico Muhly.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this ensemble is its small size, here a mere ten voices. This enables an intimacy that larger groups struggle to emulate. It also puts a premium on the contribution of individual singers, especially the four sopranos, who are double the number of each of the lower parts.
Before the interval, the soprano contribution was typically clean but also a touch too heavy for an ideal blend. After the interval, however, there was a change and the top line became more relaxed and less anxious.
Vivanco’s setting of Sicut Lilium (‘Like the Lily’) from the Song of Songs was positively luscious, bordering on the erotic, whereas in Palestrina’s version of the same text, written a generation earlier and given here by an octet, textures were sparer and more delicately fragrant. Both were marvels of their kind.
At the centre of the programme was Lassus’s Missa Vinum Bonum, preceded by its eponymous motet, which leans so heavily on the fruit of the vine that it dabbles with giddiness (no fault of the choir).
The text quickly falls back on the wedding at Cana, where Christ changed water into wine, as justification for a good drink or two.
The mass itself makes copious use of the motet’s music, so it too is infused with jolliness. Ofcourse Lassus quickly inserts a penitent ‘Christe’ into the Kyrie – at least it was here – but there was plenty of syncopation in the Gloria, deftly handled, and after a vivid Resurrection the Credo accelerated dizzily towards its Amen.
Some of that spirit percolated into a crazy Hosanna In Excelsis. Naturally there was a modicum of remorse in the Agnus Dei, but it was about as terse as could be imagined. The liturgy has rarely been so earthy.
On either side of Lassus we had music of Muhly. There was something appropriate about his Marrow (2017), which sets the first eight verses of Psalm 63. Preceding the “marrow and fatness” we had “in a barren and dry land where no water is”, evocative of the present drought. Sure enough, Muhly conjures a heat-haze here.
His A Glorious Creature (2023) similarly sets musings on the sun by Thomas Traherne. Using all ten voices individually, Muhly makes expansive use of ‘the sun’, reflecting its extent and influence.
Thinning down its centre for grains of dust and sand, he then broadens out with Traherne’s linking of the sun with the soul. Here the choir revelled in the immense impact of the text, melding superbly.
Later we enjoyed settings of Descendi In Hortum Meum (I Went Down Into My Garden) by De Rore, Dunstable and Palestrina. The earliest, and the most telling here, was the Dunstable, which with the solo voices of alto Caroline Trevor and the tenors Steven Harrold and Tom Castle was an oasis of tender intimacy.
There remained a magnificent Magnificat Octavi Toni by Vivanco, made all the more spiritual by its plainsong interjections. But Spanish vitalidad kept bursting through. We were brought back down to our knees by the encore, Purcell’s incomparable Hear My Prayer.
Reviews by Martin Dreyer
York Early Music Festival continues until July 11. For full details and tickets, go to: ncem.co.uk.
Reviews by Martin Dreyer
York Early Music Festival continues until July 11. For full details and tickets, go to: ncem.co.uk.
A montage of Black Treacle Theatre cast members in Laura Wade’s The Watsons at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
TWO productions of The Watsons, Laura Wade’s take on unfinished Jane Austen business, are opening on the same night in York and Helmsley tonight.
Jim Paterson directs Black Treacle Theatre’s production at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre; Pauline Noakes is at the helm for 1812 Theatre Company at Helmsley Arts Centre.
What happens when the writer loses the plot? Find out as Emma Watson, 19 and new in town in the elegant world of early 19th-century England, is cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home, from where she must navigate society, marriage prospects and her future.
Emma and her sisters must marry, fast, but there is one hitch (not of the marital kind). Jane Austen did not finish this story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now? Enter Laura Wade, who takes the incomplete novel to fashion a sparklingly witty play that looks under Austen’s bonnet to ask: what can characters do when their author abandons them?
As a recognisably Austen tale begins to unfold, something unexpected happens. Bridgerton meets Austentatious, Regency flair meets modern twists, and the plot goes ever more off-piste.
Florence Poskitt’s Margaret Watson, left, Jennifer Jones’s Elizabeth Watson and Livy Potter’s Emma Watson in the poster for York company Black Treacle Theatre’s The Watsons
Playful, clever, and full of surprises, The Watsons starts as a period drama and transforms into a bold reimagining that spins Regency charm into a dazzling modern theatrical experience, exploring storytelling, free will and who gets to write our endings.
Penned by Posh and Home I’m Darling writer Wade, the play was first produced at Chichester Festival Theatre. Now Black Treacle Theatre takes up the challenge, collaborating with the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in a fundraising production for the JoRo.
Director Jim Paterson says: “The Watsons is simply brilliant. My mind was fizzing from the moment I first read this funny, smart and dynamic play that offers us so much scope for creativity in staging it.
“Laura Wade is one of our best playwrights, and her adaptation of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel both fulfils and plays with expectations of what ‘a Jane Austen story’ is, and what she means to us all. With the brilliant cast and creative team bringing this to life, I can’t wait for us to share this with an audience this summer – and celebrate Jane’s 250th birthday.”
Appearing in Paterson’s cast will be: Livy Potter as Emma Watson; Jennifer Jones, Elizabeth Watson; Florence Poskitt, Margaret Watson; Matt Pattison, Robert Watson; Abi Baxter, Mrs Robert; Maggie Smales, Nanny; Victoria Delaney, Lady Osbourne; Cameron O’Byrne, Lord Osbourne; Effie Warboys, Miss Osbourne; Nick Patrick Jones, Tom Musgrave; Andy Roberts, Mr Howard; Sally Mitcham, Mrs Edwards; Paul Miles, Captain Bertie, and Sanna Jeppsson, Laura.
Jeanette Hambidge’s Nanny, left, Becca Magson’s Emma Watson, Vicki Mason’s Margaret Watson, Linda Tester’s Servant and Oliver Clive’s Lord Osborne in 1812 Theatre Company’s The Watsons
MEANWHILE, how is the 1812 Theatre Company promoting the same play? Here’s how: “The Watsons are coming! Who, you may ask? The Watsons are a family created by Jane Austen in a story she never finished, possibly due to grief over the death of her beloved father.
“Whatever the reason, we have been unable to follow their unfolding lives, although several characters and their concerns bear close similarity to popular Austen figures, until now.
“Step forward Laura Wade, a playwright whose works have graced the stages of the National Theatre and the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough with the West End hit Home I’m Darling.
“Wade has taken the story of The Watsons, their affairs, values and outlooks, and continued their lives in an altogether unexpected and intriguing way. Gradually we come to realise that despite the outward differences of clothes and habits of the early 19th century, their interests are not too dissimilar to our own. Though perhaps ours are becoming stranger!
Vicki Mason’s Margaret Watson, left, and Jeanette Hambidge’s Nanny in 1812 Theatre Company’s The Watsons
“The result is a play inspired by Jane Austen’s work, in this, the 250th anniversary of her birth. Presented by the 1812 Theatre Company at Helmsley Arts Centre, giving Austen fans a chance to relish a new work and others to observe that her people are not just Georgian dresses and uniforms but have personalities, feelings and problems. The play wears its comedy lightly and is a lively piece, authentically using dance music that Jane herself copied out!”
Pauline Noakes’s cast comprises: Becca Magson as Emma Watson; Julia Bullock, Elizabeth Watson; Vicki Mason, Margaret Watson; Richard Noakes, Uncle Robert Watson, ; Julie Wilson, Aunt Robert Watson; Barry Whitaker, Mr Watson; Jeanette Hambidge, Nanny; Beaj Johnson, Tom Musgrave; Oliver Clive, Lord Osborne; Sue Smith, Lady Osborne; Rosie Hayman, Miss Osborne; Mike Martin, Mr Howard; Robert Perry, Charles Howard; Linda Tester, Servant; Heather Linley, Servant, and Graham Smith, Dancing Master.
The Watsons, Black Treacle Theatre, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, July 9 to 12, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee; 1812 Theatre Company, Helmsley Arts Centre, July 9 to 12, 7.30pm. Box office: York, 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk; Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
Christopher Glynn: Directing the 2025 Ryedale Festival, opening on Friday
RYEDALE Festival heads July’s summer delights, taking in the shipping forecast too, in Charles Hutchinson’s leisure list.
Festival of the week; Ryedale Festival 2025, July 11 to 27
ARTISTIC director Christopher Glynn presents a multitude of festival delights, led off by this year’s artists in residence, saxophonist Jess Gillam, soprano Claire Booth and viola player Timothy Ridout, joined by Quatuor Mosaiques, VOCES8 and composer Eric Whitacre.
The festival also welcomes pianists Sir Stephen Hough and Dame Imogen Cooper and organist Thomas Trotter; Arcangelo in Selby; York countertenor Iestyn Davies; the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s festival debut; a revival of long-neglected Tippett works and a new Arthur Bliss orchestration.
Jazz, folk and literature weave into the programme too: reeds player Pete Long and vocalist Sara Oschlag salute Duke Ellington; Barnsley’s Kate Rusby showcases her new album, When They All Looked Up, and Dame Harriet Walter channels Jane Austen’s wit in Pride And Prejudice. Full details and tickets at: ryedalefestival.com. Box office: 01751 475777.
The ELO Experience, led by Andy Louis, at the Grand Opera House, York, tonight
Tribute gig of the week: The ELO Experience, Grand Opera House, York, tonight, 7.30pm
THE ELO Experience have been bringing the music of Jeff Lynne and The Electric Orchestra to the stage since forming in Hull in 2006, performing 10538 Overture, Evil Woman, Living Thing, The Diary Of Horace Wimp, Don’t Bring Me Down, All Over The World, Mr Blue Sky et al.
Andy Louis fronts this tribute to a songbook spanning more than 45 years, taking in such albums as A New World Record, Discovery and Out Of The Blue and 2016’s Alone In The Universe. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
Coastal gigs of the week: TK Maxx presents Scarborough Open Air Theatre, Blossoms, tomorrow; Rag’n’Bone Man, Friday, and McFly, Saturday. Gates open at 6pm
CHART-TOPPING Stockport indie group Blossoms make their Scarborough OAT debut tomorrow, supported by Inhaler and Leeds band Apollo Junction, promoting their August 22 new album What In The World.
Rag’N’Bone Man, alias blues, soul and hip-hop singer Rory Graham, cherry-picks from his albums Human, Life By Misadventure and What Do You Believe In? on Friday, with support from Elles Bailey and Kerr Mercer. McFly’s Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter and Harry Judd head to the Yorkshire coast on Saturday when Twin Atlantic and Devon complete the bill. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
Vicki Mason’s Margaret Watson, Beaj Johnson’s Tom Musgrave and Becca Magson’s Emma Watson in 1812 Theatre Company’s production of The Watsons
Play of the week times two: The Watsons, 1812 Theatre Company, Helmsley Arts Centre, today to Saturday, 7.30pm; The Watsons, Black Treacle Theatre, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, today to Saturday, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee
TWO productions of Laura Wade’s The Watsons open on the same night in Helmsley and York. What happens when the writer loses the plot? Emma Watson is 19 and new in town. She has been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast.
One problem: Jane Austen did not finish this story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now? Step forward Wade, who looks under Austen’s bonnet to ask: what can characters do when their author abandons them? Bridgerton meets Austentatious, Regency flair meets modern twists, as Pauline Noakes directs in Helmsley; Jim Paterson directs in York. Box office: Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk; York, 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Second Summer Of Love: Emmy Happisburgh’s coming-of-age and midlife- recovery tale at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York
One for the ravers: Contentment Productions in Second Summer Of Love, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
ORIGINAL raver Louise wonders how she went from Ecstasy-taking idealist to respectable, disillusioned, suburban Surrey mum. Triggered by her daughter’s anti-drugs homework and at peak mid-life crisis, Louise flashes back to the week’s emotional happenings and the early Nineties’ rave scene.
Writer-performer Emmy Happisburgh’s play addresses the universal themes of coming of age and fulfilling potential while offering a new perspective for conversations on recreational drug use, recovery from addiction and embracing mid-life. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
An old story told in a new way: Russell Lucas’s Titanic tale of Edward Dorking in Third Class at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: Steve Ullathorne
Titanic struggle of the week: Russell Lucas in Third Class at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 12, 3pm
EDWARD Dorking was openly gay. On Wednesday, April 10 1912, he set sail for New York on a ticket bought for him by his mother in the hope his American family could put him “right”.
Writer-performer Russell Lucas’s Third Class charts Dorking’s journey from boarding the Titanic to swimming for 30 minutes towards an already full collapsible lifeboat, and how, on arrival in New York, he toured the vaudeville circuit as an angry campaigner against the injustices of the shipping disaster. Using music, movement, projection and text, Lucas gives a “thrilling new perspective on what feels a familiar tale”, topped off with a Q&A. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Charlie Connelly: Rain later, talk now, as he celebrates the quirks and joys of the shipping forecast at the Milton Rooms, Malton
From Viking to South East Iceland:Charlie Connelly’s Attention All Shipping, Milton Rooms, Malton, July 16, 7.30pm
AS the shipping forecast embarks on its second century, author and broadcaster Charlie Connelly celebrates what he regards as the greatest invention of the modern age. How did a weather forecast for ships capture the hearts of a nation, from salty old sea dog to insomniac landlubber? How is it possible for “rain later” to be “good”? And where on earth is North Utsire?
Delving into the history of the forecast and the extraordinary people who made it, Connelly explains what those curious phrases really mean, assesses its cultural impact and shares rip-roaring adventures from his own extraordinary journey through the 31 sea areas. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.
Drummer Tom Townend: Bandleader for Tommy T’s Blue Note Dance Party at Pocklington Arts Centre
Jazz At PAC Presents: Tommy T’s Blue Note Dance Party, Pocklington Arts Centre, July 17, 8pm
HERE come the hippest tunes in a night of Blue Note Records’ coolest cuts: all killer, no filler, with grooves from Horace Silver, Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey and more, brought to Pocklington by bandleader Tom Townsend, drums, Paul Baxter, double bass, Andrzej Baranek, piano, Tom Sharpe, trumpet, and Kyran Matthews, saxophone. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk
Laura García Alfaya , Consul General in Manchester, left; José María Robles Fraga, Minister-Counsellor for Cultural and Scientific Affairs, Embassy of Spain in London; Dr Delma Tomlin, director York Early Music Festival; Eva Ortega Paíno, Ministerio de Ciencia innovacíon y unversidades; baroque guitarist Pablo Zapico and Pedro Jesus Eusebio Cuesta, director of Instituto Cervantes Manchester and Leedsat the National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, on July 4
YORK Early Music Festival 2025 has welcomed dignitaries and delegates from Spain with a celebration of Spanish music and culture.
On July 4, more than 70 representatives from the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK headed to the festival’s administrative base, the National Centre for Early Music (NCEM), for a concert presented by the acclaimed Spanish guitarist Pablo Zapico.
In attendance were the Spanish dignitaries Jose Maria Robles Fraga, Minister-Counsellor for Cultural and Scientific Affairs at the Embassy of Spain in London; Laura Garcia Alfaya, Consul General of Spain in Manchester; Pedro Jesus Eusebio Cuesta, director of Instituto Cervantes Manchester & Leeds, and Eva Ortega Paíno, General Secretary for Research at the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities in Spain.
Earlier this year, the NCEM and the Instituto Cervantes signed an agreement marking their ongoing commitment to the promotion of Hispanic culture in the UK and to continue their successful relationship.
Highlights of the summer festival included the 18-strong Spanish vocal/instrumental ensemble Cantoria at St Lawrence Church on July 8, supported by the Embassy of Spain in London and Acción Cultural Española.
This sold-out concert, directed by Jorge Losana under the title of A La Fiesta!, was recorded for broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and will be shared on the Early Music Show on Sunday, July 20.
Spanish delegates and family with festival director Delma Tomlin, front left, and Spanish guitarist Pablo Zapico at the National Centre for Early Music, York
FLAUTI Felici, a regular ensemble at the Dementia Friendly Tea Concerts in York, returns to St Chad’s Church, Campleshon Road, on July 17 at 2.30pm.
“This well-known York flute group gave us a wonderful recital last time and they will be bringing another interesting selection of music, so there will be something for everyone,” says co-organiser Alison Gammon.
“Please encourage your friends to come too, and as usual, there will be about 45 minutes of music, followed by tea, coffee and homemade cakes in the church hall.”
As well as a small church car park, on-street parking is available along Campleshon Road, but it can be busy, so do allow plenty of time.
“If you are more mobile, it would really help if you could park on the street to allow for disabled parking in the car park. There is wheelchair access via the church hall,” says Alison.
“The event is a relaxed concert, and ideal for people who may not feel comfortable at a formal classical concert, so we do not mind if the audience wants to talk or move about!
“Seating is unreserved and there is no charge although donations are welcome. We give a donation to the church to cover heating and the rest goes to Alzheimer’s charities.”
In the tea concert diary for later this year are: August 14, Tina Sanderson and friends (string ensemble); September 18, Robert Gammon, piano; October 16, Giocoso Wind Ensemble; November 20, Billy Marshall, French horn, and Robert Gammon, piano, and December 11, Ripon Resound Choir.
MEANWHILE Bronte House is to hold a series of Welcome To The Bronte Club events, A Brew With Bronte at Middlethorpe Hall, Bishopthorpe Road, York, on July 10, August 7 and September 4 from 2pm to 4pm.
Take the opportunity to unwind in beautiful surroundings; explore the National Trust property’s gardens; chat with the gardening team as well as friends old and new; meet Bronte, the friendly in-house therapy dog, and enjoy a relaxing afternoon of tea, scones, cake and conversation.
Using the motto of “where passion and compassion meet relationship-based care”, the Bronte Club runs a social programme designed to support the wellbeing of older people, those living with dementia, care partners, family and friends.
The events are welcoming, inclusive and relaxed and the programme is open to both those supported by the club and to the wider community. For more details, visit brontehousegroup.co.uk.
To attend A Brew With Bronte, donate what you feel. A suggested minimum donation of £8 per person is advised, with all profits going to a charitable cause. Spaces are limited; booking is required on 01904 236 838 or via email to community@brontehousegroup.co.uk.
Richard Hawley: Wearing red at Live At York Museum Gardens to honour the Liverpool footballer Diogo Jota, who died in a car crash on July 3. Picture: Andy Hughes
FUTURESOUND Group could not have put together a better show for Live At York Museum Gardens 2.0 than Richard Hawley with strings attached and more besides.
Not one, not two, but three support acts after the addition of droll Scottish singer and songwriter Hamish Hawk, who was billed for a 5.40pm start but made his entry at evening news time, Bowie- dapper in dark jacket and cream trousers.
Keep your eye on Hawk, a frontman as natural as Jarvis Cocker, as witty and observant as The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon in his lyrics, with a line in gay love declarations rather more overt than in the days of Gershwin’s The Man I Love.
Hamish Hawk opening Saturday’s line-up at Live At York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion 1973 has probably the best opening couplet to a song ever penned: “To write a cathedral, I’ll need a ballpoint pen/It’ll sound like ‘Common People’, written by Christopher Wren”. Yes, he’s that good, and there were plenty more where that came from in a 25-minute set, over all too soon.
B C Camplight – B C stands for Brian Christinzio – is a favourite of The Crescent, York, who took to the outdoors as a man on a mission. Living in Manchester now but still very much a son of New Jersey, he has followed up 2023’s relationship break-up record, The Last Rotation On Earth, with A Sober Conversation, “doing well”, he says, since its June 27 release.
A big jack-in-a-box behind – and often not behind – his piano, B C was bursting with vigour and vitality, putting it all in the open after confronting childhood trauma and being clean from drugs for two years. His songs were candidly tragic-comic, liberating too, his arrangements unpredictable and thrilling, not averse to kicking up a storm but, equally, as adroit as Squeeze or Teenage Fanclub at gorgeous melody.
B C Camplight: Arms outstretched at the piano at Live At York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
From the red rose of Manchester to the white of Yorkshire, or Leeds more precisely, in the Mercury Prize-winning form of English Teacher. What’s this for a choice of walk-on music? The volume suddenly sounded louder – as if we were at the Cardiff Principality Stadium – for a blast of Supersonic to tease an entry of the magnitude of the omnipresent Gallaghers’ revived love-in.
If that took chutzpah, so did starting with their best-known number, the one that Lily Fontaine ends with “I am The World’s Biggest Paving Slab/And the world’s smallest celebrity”: a typical Leeds shrug of a sentiment, in keeping with bands from The Wedding Present to Yard Act.
The world’s smallest celebrity? It will not stay that way for Fontaine and her rising, rousing band whose backdrop stated “This Could Be English Teacher” in another splash of Leeds humour in a nod to their debut album title, This Could Be Texas.
This could be the future: Lily Fontaine of English Teacher, the Mercury Prize-winning Leeds band making waves at York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
Schooled at the Leeds Conservatoire, they are musically skilled, able to swap between instruments, like the drummer switching to piano, or Fontaine from guitar to keys, but there is nothing arid or academic about their compositions.
Fontaine’s lyrics fizz with attitude and cultural smarts, the songs jab and jab, then deliver the knock-out punch, and now ‘Paving Slab’ has a rival with the unveiling of Toothpick, a sugar rush of a new song that will surely stick around.
Richard Hawley would play for 90 minutes, whereas Elbow performed for two hours on Thursday, but if that was the price of cramming in four acts, rather than three on the opening night, so be it. What Hawley delivered in his more concentrated, sublime set surpassed the lulls in Elbow’s graceful ebb and flow.
One of Richard Hawley’s myriad guitars in close-up at York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
Better still, unlike Elbow, Hawley used projections. Sometimes showing him close up in his humorously abrasive yet also heartfelt conversation between songs. Sometimes showing his band members and the aforementioned string quartet. Other times complementing songs with nostalgic, black-and-white photographs of Sheffield, its streets, buildings, shops, city lights, even his parents by the sea, along with footage of musicians of the past. Later, those projections would spark into life as images of fire and flashing, speeding lights.
This concert was the first of a series to mark the 20th anniversary of Coles Corner, or to cash on it as he joked. His fourth and arguably still his supreme solo album has had its double CD re-issue put back a month to August 1, but on Saturday night we could revel on those songs of romance, longing, water, lost loves and decaying decades once more, with its echoes of the past running deeper than a South Yorkshire spin on Roy Orbison.
The string quartet augmenting Coles Corner with Richard Hawley at York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
Ever the dandy at 58, Hawley was dressed in red; so too fellow guitarists Shez Sheridan and Bryan Day. He had not suddenly started supporting Sheffield United, explained the Sheffield Wednesday fan, but this was his tribute to Liverpool footballer Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva, football united in grief.
If those Made-in-Sheffield songs, played in album order, were not already tugging at the heart strings, that moment of collective commemoration could not have been more fittingly conducted. From title track opener, through Just Like The Rain and Darlin’ Wait For Me, to the epic The Ocean, song surpassed song.
Richard Hawley working his guitar magic at York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
He dedicated Born Under A Bad Sign to his father, with whom he had first played at The Leadmill at 16, and onwards he crooned and we swooned: I Sleep Alone, Tonight, and Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Face?, learnt from his mother and played solo as a goodnight lullaby.
It was already ten o’clock, and so Richard had to cram in as many Hawley highlights as he could by the 10.30pm curfew. Moonlight greeted She Brings The Sunlight, and we danced giddily to Prism In Jeans and felt the heart pound to Open Up Your Doors before Heart Of Oak made a mighty finale. Hawley at his best, Futuresound’s excellent gig management at its best too.
Red light bathing Richard Hawley and his band in the finale to his Live At York Museum Gardens concert. Picture: Celestine Dubruel
Richard Hawley’s set list at Live At York Museum Gardens
1. Coles Corner; 2. Just Like The Rain; 3. Hotel Room; 4. Darlin’ Wait For Me; 5. The Ocean; 6. Born Under A Bad Sign; 7. I Sleep Alone; 8. Tonight; 9. (Wading Through) The Waters Of My Time; 10. Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Face?; 11. Last Orders; 12. She Brings The Sunlight; 13. Galley Girl; 14. Prism In Jeans; 15. Open Up Your Door; 16. Alone; 17. Heart Of Oak.
Precision in jeans: A close-up of Richard Hawley’s choice of stitching at York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
Nile Rodgers: Stirring everybody and every body to dance at York Museum Gardens . Picture: Paul Rhodes, reporting from ‘the photographers’ pit ‘
WHAT an amazing display of musical power to send Friday night to the stars.
Kicking things off at 6 o’clock as the crowd filled, Durand Bernarr really sold his performance. Even if his nu-soul material sounded similar, this expressive, energetic singer was eminently watchable. His concern for our wellbeing also fitted well into this warm-hearted event.
Durand Bernarr: “Really sold his performance”. Picture: Paul Rhodes
The second support act, Jalen Ngondo was perhaps the individual stand-out of the evening. This willowy soul singer from Maryland, now based in Liverpool, was amazing. His voice and music recalled the best of the great Sixties and Seventies’ soul artists.
Curtis Mayfield was the closest comparison (during his time with the Impressions) while the groove and songs drew on the spirit of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (his voice somehow a sweet blend of the two).
We are one big soul family: Friday’s audience enjoying good times at Nile Rodgers & Chic’s Live At York Museum Gardens party. Picture: Paul Rhodes
The crowd loved him – and as he played his heart out at the piano on The Look Of Love, with the trees swaying in full sail off to the side, it was a breathtaking moment.
Nile Rodgers is a superstar, no question. Since the 1970s, he has ridden wave after wave as a performer and producer, and his imprint is all over many of the biggest hits of the past 40 years.
Jalen Ngonda: “Recalled the best of the great Sixties and Seventies’ soul artists”
Luckily he shows no sign of slowing down at 72. Fresh from their well received – and it turned out similar – Glastonbury set, the nine-piece band were all superb musicians playing for the greater good.
The two lead singers were eye catching and glamourous, clearly enjoying themselves enormously. Audrey Martells handled the lead vocals for Diana Ross’s I’m Coming Out and Upside Down and Kimberly Davis shone on Sister Sledge’s He’s The Greatest Dancer and We Are Family.
Nile Rodgers: “Distinctive guitar playing sat at the centre of the sound”
Rodgers’ distinctive guitar playing sat at the centre of the sound. From the selection of CHIC songs, he found his signature style early on. We were taken on a tour that included Madonna, Duran Duran, Daft Punk’s Get Lucky and David Bowie’s commercial peak, Let’s Dance.
Now bedded into York’s social calendar, there was a lovely atmosphere to this Live At York Museum Gardens event all evening. The rain held off and as the sun went down behind St Mary’s Abbey over a sea of arms waving for yet another smash hit from the Rodgers songbook, everybody did dance.
Audrey Martells: Handled the lead vocals for Diana Ross’s I’m Coming Out and Upside Down on Friday night. Picture: Paul Rhodes
It wasn’t perfect. A little less bragging from Rodgers, a little more full songs, and the energy of the set tailed off somewhat in the last third, not regaining the earlier peaks. Even so, this was a wonderful, full evening’s entertainment.
Review by Paul Rhodes
Oh, what a wow: Nile Rodgers and CHIC cutting a rug at Live At York Museum Gardens. Picture: Paul Rhodes
Richard Hawley: Revisiting Coles Corner with strings attached at Live At York Museum Gardens today. Picture: Dean Chalkley
WHAT happens when York Museum Gardens turns into Coles Corner and the same play opens in two places at once? Find out in Charles Hutchinson’s leisure list.
Open-air concert of the week: Futuresound Group presents Live At York Museum Gardens, Richard Hawley, today; gates open at 5pm
SHEFFIELD guitarist, songwriter and crooner Richard Hawley revisits his 1995 album Coles Corner with a string section on its 20th anniversary this evening, complemented by Hawley highlights from his 2001 to 2024 albums (9pm to 10.30pm).
He will be preceded by Mercury Prize-winning Leeds band English Teacher (7.45pm to 8.30pm); Manchester-based American songwriter BC Camplight, introducing his new album, A Sober Conversation (6.30pm to 7.15pm), and Scottish musician Hamish Hawk, whose latest album, A Firmer Hand, emerged last August (5.40pm to 6.10pm). Box office: seetickets.com.
The Tallis Scholars: Performing Glorious Creatures, directed by Peter Philips, at York Minster at 7.30pm tonight at York Early Music Festival. Picture: Hugo Glendinning
Festival of the week: York Early Music Festival, Heaven & Hell, until July 11
EIGHT days of classical music are under way featuring international artists such as The Sixteen, The Tallis Scholars, Academy of Ancient Music, Helen Charlston & Toby Carr and the York debut of Le Consort, performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons “but not quite as you know it” on Sunday.
Directed by Delma Tomlin, the festival weaves together three main strands: the 400th anniversary of Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons, the Baroque music of Vivaldi and Bach and reflections on Man’s fall from grace, from Heaven to Hell. Full programme and tickets at ncem.co.uk/whats-on/yemf/. Box office: 01904 658338.
Bridget Christie: Late replacement for Maisie Adam at Futuresound Group’s inaugural York Comedy Festival. Picture: Natasha Pszenicki
Comedy event of the week: Futuresound Group presents Live At York Museum Gardens, York Comedy Festival, Sunday, 2.30pm to 7.30pm
HARROGATE comedian Maisie Adam will not be playing the inaugural York Comedy Festival this weekend after all. The reason: “Unforeseen circumstances”. Into her slot steps trailblazing Bridget Christie, Gloucester-born subversive stand-up, Taskmaster participant and writer and star of Channel 4 comedy-drama The Change.
The Sunday fun-day bill will be topped by Dara Ó Briain and Katherine Ryan. Angelos Epithemiou, Joel Dommett, Vittorio Angelone, Clinton Baptiste and Scott Bennett perform too, hosted by “the fabulous” Stephen Bailey. Tickets update: last few still available at york-comedy-festival.com.
Justin Panks: Headlining Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse
The other comedy bill in York this weekend: Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club presents Justin, Panks, Tony Vino, Liam Bolton and MC Damion Larkin, The Basement, City Screen, York, tonight, 8pm
COMEDIAN and podcaster Justin Panks tops tonight’s Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club with his skewed observational eye and ability to approach seemingly ordinary subjects from extraordinary angles in his raw, honest tales of relationships, parenthood and life in general.
Tony Vino bills himself as “the only half-Spanish, half-Scottish hybrid working comic in the world”; experimental Liam Bolton favours a bewildering, train-of-thought approach to unpredictable stand-up comedy; Damion Larkin hosts in improvisational style. Box office: lolcomedyclubs.co.uk or on the door.
The Script: Returning to Scarborough Open Air Theatre this weekend
Coastal gig of the week: The Script and Tom Walker, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, today; gates open at 6pm
THE Script head to the Yorkshire coast this weekend as part of the Irish rock-pop act’s Satellites UK tour, completing their hat-trick of Scarborough Open Air Theatre visits after appearances in 2018 and 2022. Special guest Tom Walker, the Scottish singer-songwriter, performs songs from 2019 chart topper What A Time To Be Alive and 2024’s I Am. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
Dianne Buswell and Vito Coppola: Red Hot and Ready to dance at York Barbican
Dance show of the week: Burn The Floor presents Dianne & Vito, Red Hot & Ready!, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm
STRICTLY Come Dancing’s stellar professional dancers, 2024 winner Dianne Buswell and 2024 runner-up Vito Coppola are Red Hot and Ready to perform a dance show with a difference, choreographed by BAFTA award winner Jason Gilkison. The dream team will be joined by a cast of multi-disciplined Burn The Floor dancers from around the world. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Florence Poskitt’s Margaret Watson, left, Jennifer Jones’s Elizabeth Watson and Livy Potter’s Emma Watson in Black Treacle Theatre’s The Watsons at the JoRo
Play of the week times two: The Watsons, Black Treacle Theatre, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, July 9 to 12, 7.30pm and .30pm Saturday matinee; The Watsons, 1812 Theatre Company, Helmsley Arts Centre, July 9 to 12, 7.30pm
TWO productions of Laura Wade’s The Watsons open on the same night in York and Helmsley. What happens when the writer loses the plot? Emma Watson is 19 and new in town. She has been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast.
One problem: Jane Austen did not finish this story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now? Step forward Wade, who takes her incomplete novel to fashion a sparklingly witty play that looks under Austen’s bonnet to ask: what can characters do when their author abandons them? Bridgerton meets Austentatious, Regency flair meets modern twists, as Jim Paterson directs in York; Pauline Noakes in Helmsley. Box office: York, 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk; Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
York debut of the week: Kemah Bob in Miss Fortunate, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 9, 8pm
“LIFE is gunna life and brains are gunna brain,” says Kemah Bob as the American host of the Foc It Up Comedy Club and podcast brings their debut stand-up tour to York in a show directed by Desiree Burch and Sarah Chew.
Born in Houston, Texas, and now living in London, Bob has been seen on QI, Richard Osman’s House Of Games, Jonathan Ross’s Comedy Club, Don’t Hate The Playaz and Guessable and heard on the Off Menu podcast, The Guilty Feminist, James Acaster’s Perfect Sounds, Springleaf and Brett Goldstein’s Films To Be Buried With. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
An old story told in a new way: Russell Lucas’s Titanic tale of Edward Dorking in Third Class at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: Steve Ullathorne
Titanic struggle of the week: Russell Lucas in Third Class at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 12, 3pm
EDWARD Dorking was openly gay. On Wednesday, April 10 1912, he set sail for New York on a ticket bought for him by his mother in the hope his American family could put him “right”.
Writer-performer Russell Lucas’s Third Class charts Dorking’s journey from boarding the Titanic to swimming for 30 minutes towards an already full collapsible lifeboat, and how, on arrival in New York, he toured the vaudeville circuit as an angry campaigner against the injustices of the shipping disaster. Using music, movement, projection and text, Lucas gives a “thrilling new perspective on what feels a familiar tale”, topped off with a Q&A. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
In Focus:Contentment Productionsin Second Summer Of Love, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 10, 7.30pm
Second Summer Of Love: Emmy Happisburgh’s coming-of-age and midlife-recovery tale at Theatre@41, Monkgate
ORIGINAL raver Louise wonders how she went from Ecstasy-taking idealist to respectable, disillusioned, suburban Surrey mum. Triggered by her daughter’s anti-drugs homework and at peak mid-life crisis, Louise flashes back to the week’s emotional happenings and the early Nineties’ rave scene.
Writer-performer Emmy Happisburgh’s play addresses the universal themes of coming of age and fulfilling potential while offering a new perspective for conversations on recreational drug use, raising palms to the skies in fields, recovery from addiction and embracing mid-life.
Originally Second Summer Of Love was developed with producers Pants On Fire as a 15-minute and showcased by Emmy at the SHORTS Festival 2020.
“The play premiered as a one-woman performance at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe,” she says. “Then it was refreshed in 2023; some scenes were re-written, taking into consideration reviewers’ practical criticisms and audience responses.
“We enlisted two more actors and Scott Le Crass to direct and tested out this new version for Contentment Productions on a three-night run in Worthing and Guildford where it sold out.”
In this 60-minute performance, Emmy’s Louise is joined by Molly, played by Emmy’s daughter, Rosa Strudwick, and Christopher Freestone’s Brian, prompted by Louise’s flashbacks,
“Now our cast of three is playing 15 dates this summer and autumn, from York to Penzance, to connect with our target audiences, build partnerships, give us feedback and raise awareness of of our play to help us develop and upscale it into a fully cast production for larger auditoriums.”
Memories around Sterns nightclub in Worthing – a venue that Carl Cox once called “100 per cent equivalent to the Hacienda in Manchester” – wove themselves into Emmy’s play. “Second Summer Of Love isn’t a ‘true story’ but it’s inspired by real-life events and real people from when I was luckily, and very accidentally, right in the middle of the rave zeitgeist,” she says.
“It’s not a tale I’ve seen authentically told in theatres; especially not by a mid-life woman. I’m grateful to bring the ‘one love’ message of the original rave movement to the stage. I’m excited to play several different characters, using the physical skills of Le Coq again and genuinely overjoyed to be in scenes opposite Rosa and Christopher.”
Director Scott Le Crass adds: “I’m excited to direct Second Summer Of Love as it’s a fresh voice. It’s a perspective which I’ve never seen on stage. Older female voices are something we need to champion more and in a way which is strong, dynamic and playful. This play embodies that.”
Happisburgh trained at the Poor School and Guildford School of Acting; Le Crass trained as an actor at Arts Ed and was a director on Birmingham Rep’s first Foundry Programme; Freestone trained with Actor in Session, and Strudwick was trained through the LAMDA examination syllabus by Happisburgh.
Here for the cheers: Guy Garvey leading Elbow at Live At York Museum Gardens on Thursday night. Picture: Andy Hughes
NOT all eyes are on Cardiff Principality Stadium for the “rock’n’roll reunion of the century”. York has its own fiesta of outdoor delights this week: Elbow on Thursday, Nile Rodgers and CHIC on Friday, Richard Hawley tonight and the inaugural York Comedy Festival in a Sunday fun-day finale.
Welcome to Leeds promoters Futuresound Group’s second summer of Live At York Museum Gardens, where one big change from Shed Seven’s 30th anniversary revels last summer greets you on arrival.
The stage has moved: no longer in front of the Yorkshire Museum, from where the slope down to the Ouse made viewing more difficult from the back. Now, it is sited against the backdrop of the St Mary’s Abbey ruins, as was the custom with the four-yearly cycle of the York Mystery Plays from their revival for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
And, on the evidence of your 5ft 7ins reviewer’s (disad)vantage point for the first three songs, viewing was still elusive from the rear ranks of a sold-out 4,000 crowd. A case of more heads than Elbow as Starlings, 2024 album Audio Vertigo’s best song, Lovers’ Leap, and new number Adriana Again passed out of sight.
Elbow room only: Thursday’s packed crowd in York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
One chap cannily resorted to placing his phone camera above his head to watch. Meanwhile, determined to avoid a feeling of “what an imperfect waste of time”, a request to move to the seating by the museum was very kindly accommodated by event staff, facilitating the full picture for this review from Station Approach onwards: now Elbow could “be everything to me tonight” in the Bury band’s “34th year together” .
You may disagree, but Station Approach, from 2005’s Leaders Of The Free World, is still Guy Garvey’s finest lyric, his best distillation of life and love in a northern town. He is up there with Jarvis Cocker as the north’s supreme gift of the gab as a frontman too, his wit as dry as this summer’s grass.
He reaches regularly for “beautiful”: “beautiful” singalongs; “beautiful night”, “beautiful historic city”, then teases York by suggesting that this “history”, the Jorvik past, the 10th century abbey ruins, are nothing but manufactured tourist attractions, constructed in 1962, like a northern Milton Keynes.
Later he would make a joke of his singing causing a temporary sound malfunction: “I like to think I destroyed it with that last performance,” he says.
Elbow’s Guy Garvey joining Ripon folk singer-songwriter Billie Marten – regularly featured on his Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour show on BBC 6Music on Sunday afternoons – during her supporting set. Picture: Andy Hughes
Far from it, you can add Garvey’s singing to that list of the beautiful. He is very much the fulcrum, the focus, the master of ceremonies, especially as Elbow – as unglamorous as their name and body part – don’t really do Las Vegas “showbiz”. Well, aside from a five-piece choir, a trio of brass players and a gleaming, huge mirror ball, stage front, for Mirrorball (yes, yes, I know, what did the Romans ever do for us?).
The dark blue stage backdrop, reminiscent of a fossil and Leeds United’s third kit last season, does not change, like those abbey ruins to either side. That is not a problem in itself, although projections of the band’s performance would have been beneficial for those further away from the stage, just as they had such an impact in the Sheds’ shows in 2024.
The problem is more when some songs hover close to dirges: Great Expectations, Her To The Earth, The Birds, for example, while Balu, Puncture Repair and Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years are graceful but glide by.
The audience chatter rises notably on those occasions, before either Garvey’s humorous banter or a change of pace for the blood-stirring Good Blood Mexico City, from Audio Vertigo, makes its mark.
Robin Hood’s Bay folk luminary Eliza Carthy opening Thursday’s Live At York Museum Gardens bill with The Restitution. Picture: Andy Hughes
On an evening that had begun with sets by Eliza Carthy & The Restitution and Ripon singer-songwriter Billie Marten, by now the night was darkening and stage lights brightening as Elbow hit their stride with “the whistling song”, Lippy Kids. “Build a rocket, boys,” comes the audience refrain en masse. Mirrorball, Magnificent (She Says); they are on a roll now, and it’s all gonna be magnificent from here on in.
Even Sober, from their new Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP, elicits the most unlikely singalong, its perkiness at odds with the sobriety within. The crowd chanting rises for set-closer Grounds For Divorce, before being surpassed by the encore double delight of My Sad Captains (“Oh my soul”), Station Approach’s contender for Best Elbow Song Ever, and One Day Like This, the one more commonly crowned with that title.
It took its time, but from Lippy Kids onwards, “one night like this a year did see me right”.
Elbow’s set list, Live At York Museum Gardens, July 3 2025, 8.30pm to 10.30pm
1. Starlings (from The Seldom Seen Kid); 2. Lovers’ Leap (Audio Vertigo); 3. Adriana Again (new, Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP); 4. Station Approach (Leaders Of The Free World); 5. Kindling (Little Fictions); 6. Puncture Repair (Leaders Of The Free World); 7. Great Expectations (Leaders Of The Free World); 8. Her To The Earth (Audio Vertigo); 9. Balu (Audio Vertigo); 10. Good Blood Mexico City (Audio Vertigo); 11. The Seldom Seen Kid (Flying Dream 1); 12. Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years (Audio Vertigo); 13. The Birds (Build A Rocket Boys!); 14. Lippy Kids (Build A Rocket Boys!); 15. Mirrorball (The Seldom Seen Kid); 16. Magnificent (She Says) (Little Fictions); 17. Sober (new, Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP); 18. Grounds For Divorce (The Seldom Seen Kid). Encores: 19. My Sad Captains (The Take Off And Landing Of Everything); 20. One Day like This (The Seldom Seen Kid).
No songs from 2001’s Asleep In The Dark, 2003’s Cast Of Thousands or 2019 chart topper Giants Of All Sizes.
Night and Day: One Day Like This turns into ‘one night like this a year would see me right’ in the finale to Elbow’s concert at York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
