“It’s such a pleasure to be back performing orchestral music in York,” says Academy of St Olave’s musical director Alan George
THE Academy of St Olave’s will play its first concert since January 2020 on September 25, performing Mozart works at St Olave’s Church, Marygate, York.
The York chamber orchestra’s 8pm programme will feature Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with soloist Lesley Schatzberger, followed by his exquisite Symphony No. 40 in G minor.
A short symphony by Baroque composer William Boyce will complement the Mozart pieces, carrying special significance for the Academy, having been performed at its inaugural concert more than 40 years ago.
Lesley Schatzberger will play the Mozart concerto on her basset clarinet, an instrument that can accommodate the low notes of the phrases as Mozart composed them, unlike the smaller modern instrument.
Musical director Alan George says: “It’s such a pleasure to be back performing orchestral music in York. This will be our first time playing together since January 2020, so we really are excited to be reunited after our enforced sabbatical.
Lesley Schatzberger: Soloist for Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto
“We have selected a programme of two of Mozart’s acknowledged masterpieces – the ever-popular Clarinet Concerto and the passionate 40th Symphony – that are sure to delight our audience, and we can’t wait to perform to an audience again.”
The Academy’s chair, Christine Smith, says: “We’re thrilled to be returning with what we believe will be the first York orchestral concert for nearly two years. This has probably been the most challenging concert to organise in the Academy’s history, but we’re confident we have all the measures in place to ensure the concert is a tremendous success, and it will be such a tonic to be able to make music together again after such a long absence.”
The September 25 concert will support Jessie’s Fund, a York charity founded by director Lesley Schatzberger to help children through music therapy.
Tickets are available online only, so must be booked in advance at academyofstolaves.org.uk, priced at £15, £5 for accompanied under-18s, with no booking fee.
Please check the Academy website the week before the concert for confirmation of the Covid-19 mitigation measures being taken.
AS part of their At The Mill residency in Stillington, Second Body duo Max Barton and Jethro Cooke present Styx, their theatre-concert exploration of family, myth, memory loss and Max’s grandma, on Sunday and Tuesday.
In the wake of lockdown x 3, the show with Australian roots now comes with remixed music and bearing wounds wrought by 18 months of disrupted human connectivity.
“What does it mean to lose the memories that make us who we are?” they ask. “How can we continue to be ourselves when we are separated from our loved ones.”
CharlesHutchPress discovers the award-winning Max factor in a series of questions put to Mr Barton.
Introduce yourself, Max…
“I’m Max, a theatre maker, musician and climate activist, currently floating between various parts of the UK.”
Introduce Jethro….
“Jethro is a composer, sound designer and multi-instrumentalist based in Amsterdam.”
How did you meet?
“We first worked together on a piece called Boat by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, where we hung microphones around a little theatre in Balham, and then made a seascape out of the sounds made by our audience and actors.
“The connection was made through a designer called Shawn Soh who had done some collaborating with Guildhall [School of Music & Drama], where Jethro was training at the time.”
Explain the company name Second Body…
“We took the name Second Body from a book of the same title by Dr Daisy Hildyard, which is one of the best pieces of writing about climate change we’ve come across. It is built around the central idea that we have two bodies, one that’s made of flesh and blood and a second one which incorporates all the physical impact we’re having on the planet at any given moment.
“This metaphor interfaces really beautifully with the work we make. We play around a lot with scale, juxtaposing the personal against the structural in order to find emotional access into big topics.”
Why is the show called Styx?
“The story behind Styx is a bit more prosaic. We knew we were going to create a piece that incorporated music I’d written about Orpheus and Eurydice, and Styx is the river they cross to get into the underworld.
“We had to come up with a title before we knew exactly what the show was going to be about, and ‘Styx’ is a brilliant word, so we went with it.
“I then began recording interviews with my grandma, who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and discovered that she and my grandpa had started a club called the Orpheus Club in the early 1950s, and the show began to take form.
“Since then, I’ve always thought that Lethe – the underworld’s river of forgetfulness – would have been a better title, but sometimes a name just…sticks.”
How do you know Stillington theatre-maker Alexander Wright and how did this residency at At The Mill come about?
“We met Alex out in Perth during the Fringe World festival in 2019, when he too was doing a show about Orpheus alongside Phil Grainger. Naturally both companies went to check out the competition.
“We loved what each other did, and then the following year we shared two venues for our remount of Styx and our first sharing of the piece that would become Terra (playing here at the Mill on September 18) and Alex’s remount of Orpheus and its sister show Eurydice.
Yoshika Colwell: Taking part in the Theatre At The Mill Residency with Max Barton and Jethro Cooke from September 12 to 20
“This is where we met the other artist on this residency, Yoshika Colwell, who was performing in Eurydice at the time, and with whom we’re now making work. So, I guess we’ve gradually become absorbed into the Mill family.”
What opportunities does the residency afford you?
“This is a brilliant opportunity to share a whole array of our work at various different stages of development. It’ll be lovely to share the seasoned Styx with the people of Stillington and its environs, and very exciting to do the first public performance of the music from Terra, a concept album and show that we’ve been developing throughout lockdown.
“It’s also provided space for Yoshika Colwell and I to develop her piece Invisible Mending, which will have its first work-in-progress sharing on September16.
“There’s something very special about going away somewhere to work: the energy shift of a new space, particularly one as beautiful as this, is really palpable. On our last night here, on September 19, we’ll also be doing the first public performance of Yoshika’s EP, which we’ve been working on with her for the past year.”
What attracts you to the theatre-concert format and why?
“First off, it’s the only art form we’ve found that brings together all our interests and skills in one place: writing, storytelling, music and visuals.
“Placing live music at the centre of the work enables an emotional scale that is really releasing, without the earnestness that this might bring in a different format, and it’s really satisfying being able to juxtapose that against cleaner, more factual content, or autobiographical verbatim material.
“It’s also a place where we feel we can excel as performers of our own work, which gives us a more immediate access to the creative process.”
In what ways have you created a “completely new form” – as it says on the At The Mill website – of theatre-concert shows?
“Ha-ha, uh-oh, that’s our marketing spiel coming back to haunt us. Obviously, this is a liberal use of the word ‘completely’ – anything completely new would probably be by definition awful and unwatchable.
“BUT… I think what we’re doing that is kind of new is fusing diverse, original music and theatrical storytelling with science research. It means that the pieces flit between some pretty varied modes, sometimes feeling almost like a TED talk, other times like a gig, and sometimes very confessional and emotionally vulnerable.
“Maybe this is a way of distinguishing the work from the sort of thing people think of when they hear the words ‘gig theatre’.”
Styx offers an exploration of family and myth. What draws you to putting those two elements together and what draws you to Greek tragedies?
“I guess this fulfils that same desire to play with scale. When dealing with something as intimate as one’s own family, I think there’s a compulsion to find something epic to flow alongside and against it.
The artwork for Second Body’s Styx
“I suppose that’s a tendency with auspicious precedent, as it sits in Arthur Miller’s wheelhouse – finding the tragedic within the mundane. There are few literary examples as ubiquitously borrowed from or known than the Greek tragedies, so they’re really useful archetypes to bring to bear on more personal work.”
Memory loss? Are we talking dementia here or the fading of memories as one grows older or even memory loss by choice to eradicate life’s duff days?
“We’re talking dementia, yes, but also the slow fading, and also the neuroscience behind the creation of memory. We’re looking at what it means to remember and questioning all our preconceptions about how the past functions in our present.”
How does your grandma come into the storyline?
“Her voice sits at the heart of the piece, as we play back pieces of my interviews with her. The show is built around her love story with my grandpa Michael, her battle with Alzheimer’s and the founding of the Orpheus club. She is, I suppose, the star of the show.”
What is the history of this production?
“We first performed it in Perth in 2019 with a seven-piece band and were then invited to perform it in Edinburgh and London later that year, with extra dates added at Streatham Space Project following the Edinburgh run.
“We then performed it again in Perth in 2020, now with an eight-piece band, in the intimidatingly large Girl’s School space. We were due to do a UK tour later that year before Covid struck.
“We then did a virtual tour, where we streamed to the social-media pages of various venues. This year, it’s been very strange to come back out on tour, in a much-changed version, which we’ve performed in London, Edinburgh, Coventry and Kent.”
How has Styx changed for these new performances, “now bearing wounds wrought by 18 months of disrupted human connectivity”?
“Well, by far the most apparent wound is the gap where six musicians used to be. The show is now a two-man affair, as the rest of the band is stuck in Australia for the time being.
“But also this time has been horrendous for people like my grandma, and that subtly makes itself known in the work.”
How have you re-mixed the music for the new version?
“Well, it used to be a big eight-piece sax-resplendent experience, so now we’ve completely reworked the music to retain the epicness as a duo.
And when there were seven: Styx in its first inauguration in 2019 with Jethro Cooke, second from left, and Max Barton, centre
“This has involved the use of fresh-pressed vinyl records – my grandparents ran a record store, so it’s like we’re duetting with them – and embracing electronics, in addition to bowed percussion and a much more multi-instrumental Jethro.”
Styx has achieved award-winning success and ten five-star reviews. What ingredients/chemistry/magic make for a hit show?
“It’s now 13, I believe! We’ve won one award, and been shortlisted for two, including the Total Theatre Award, which was a massive honour. Oh man, I don’t know. I guess you’ve gotta just make stuff that feels true to you, and hopefully that will chime for some other people too, and if you’re lucky the plaudits come.”
One final question prompted by Styx: how can we continue to be ourselves when we are separated from our loved ones?
“I’m not sure we can. Part of the message of the show is that we are what we are right now, not some consistent narrativised self that spans our whole life.
“This is a way of finding hope in the loss of memories, and finding value in the interactions that you can still have with loved ones that are no longer cognitively healthy.
“But this last 18 months or so has wrought incredible damage on people in those positions. And that needs some heavy recognition.”
Residency At The Mill presents Second Body in Styx at Stillington Mill, near York, on September 12 and 14, 8pm, followed by Terra, music from a new climate change theatre-concert in development, September 18, 8pm.
In between, Yoshika Colwell performs Invisible Mending on September 16, 8pm, and her new EP in concert by Yoshika & Friends on September 19, 8pm. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill.
INVISIBLE MENDING: A work in progress exploring creativity, knitting, the strange journey of grief, and the transcendent act of swimming in the sea. Text, music, and performance by University of York graduate Yoshika Colwell. Directed by Max Barton.
TERRA: Marking the debut of Slowstepper, Max Barton and Jethro Cooke’s new experimental multi-media music outfit, the climate-change concept album Terra will have its first public sharing at Stillington.
YOSHIKA & FRIENDS: A first public performance of the epic soul-searching songs of 22-year-old Yoshi’s debut solo EP will be complemented by performances by Slowstepper and other acts.
Big news! York artist Freya Horsley, right, and According To McGee co-director Ails McGee stand by Freya’s largest-ever paintings, Turning Tide, left, and Liquid Light, ahead of her Contemporary Seascapes exhibition opening tomorrow
ACCORDING To McGee reopens its York doors this weekend to the biggest paintings that the Tower Street gallery has ever exhibited.
York painter Freya Horsley’s solo show, Contemporary Seascapes, launches on Saturday morning in a bold statement of her artistic practice.
“These aren’t only the biggest paintings we’ve exhibited, they’re the biggest commercial paintings in the UK”, says a laughing gallery co-director Ails McGee.
Message, by Freya Horsley, at According To McGee
“Freya has created a stunning collection. The size is not a gimmick. Combined with her evolving compositions and palette on both her large-scale pieces and her smaller works, it’s a confident demonstration of where she is as a painter, at the top of her game, and selling to collectors from all over the world.”
According To McGee’s front room will be displaying the new series, a mixture of seascape paintings depicting the Cornish, Scottish and North East coastlines, including the two large mixed-media works on canvas, Liquid Light and Turning Tide, each priced at £4,500.
Co-director Greg McGee points to the “integral optimism” of these new works. “It’s been a rough time for everybody. Loss and loneliness have been a steady drizzle on life for over a year, but things are slowly clicking back into gear, and I can’t think of a better way to reflect that than through beautiful paintings of the sea,” he says.
Freya Horsley on a sketching trip to the coast
“There’s restlessness, depths, and enough luminosity to help hammer home our message as gallery curators at this time: nature can heal. Because of that, Freya’s art connects with collectors internationally.”
Greg delights in pointing out that Freya is the only artist with whom he has appeared on the Beeb. When BBC One’s Best House In Town featured York in its inaugural series in February 2019, Greg was among the five judges, and Freya’s art was instantly recognisable in one of the houses.
“Her art makes you look twice because it has a calming quality and, like a good sunrise, it makes you go ‘wow!’,” he says. “That came across very powerfully on TV. We have clients who watched the show in Dubai who got in touch, saying ‘I’m watching in Burj Khalifa the guy who sells me paintings and the art I like to collect most’.
Open Eyes, by Freya Horsley, on show at According To McGee from this weekend
“It was a very good showboat for York. We’re glad that we’re still here to celebrate the increasingly powerful art of one of Yorkshire’s most collectable painters.”
Freya Horsley’s Contemporary Seascapes exhibition runs at According To McGee, Tower Street, York, from September 11 to October 11. Gallery opening hours are: Monday to Friday, 11am to 3pm; Saturdays, 11am to 4pm, or by appointment on 07973 653702.
Foy Vance: Storytelling singer-songwriter from Bangor, Northern Ireland, now living in the Scottish Highlands
NORTHERN Irish singer-songwriter Foy Vance will play York Barbican on March 25 on next year’s British tour in support of his fourth studio album, Signs Of Life.
His second release on Ed Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man Records label arrives today on CD, vinyl and digital formats as his follow-up to 2016’s The Wild Swan.
Signs Of Life finds Bangor-born Vance – husband, father, hipster, sinner, drinker – belatedly coming to terms with his demons at 47. Driven by percussion, lead single Time Stand Still features a soaring, emotive vocal from Vance, who was struggling with an addiction to alcohol and painkillers at the time of writing.
Likewise, Vance tackles the subject head on in Hair Of The Dog, listing his self-medicating crutches while confessing, “You no longer make me happy/You no longer make me smile/You take everything that’s good within me.”
“I had my first extended period off the road after 20 years of constant touring,” says the moustachioed storytelling bluesman, survivor, rocker and folk hero. “I realised: wow, I drink two bottles of wine and at least a half bottle of vodka a day. I’d start the day with codeine to get myself sorted, and I’d smoke joints throughout the day.
“So, I realised: I have so many incredibly bad habits here. I’m showing all the signs of death, getting ashen, grey, smoking more, drinking more, smoking more…I hit a wall.”
“Signs of Life is about re-emergence: me in my own soft revolution, the world re-emerging in what we’re about to see as we hopefully go back to some semblance of normality,” says Foy Vance
His manager urged him to seek help. “And in those moments, you do wish time would stand still,” says Vance. “Can’t I just stop here and sit in this moment before I have to take up that mantle?”
Alternative/indie vocalist, guitarist and piano player Vance released his debut album, Hope, independently in 2007 before signing to Glassnote Records for his second full-length album, 2013’s Joy Of Nothing, winner of the inaugural Northern Ireland Music Prize. He has since toured the globe with Ed Sheeran, Bonnie Raitt, Marcus Foster, Snow Patrol and Sir Elton John, as well as on his solo headline tours.
In 2015, Vance became the second signing to Gingerbread Man Records, Sheeran’s label division within Atlantic Records. The Wild Swan surfaced in 2016, executive-produced by Sir Elton John, with the singles Coco, Upbeat Feelgood and Noam Chomsky Is A Soft Revolution all being playlisted on BBC Radio 2. That year too, Vance performed on NBC’s Today and CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden.
Now comes Signs Of Life. “As always, Foy has knocked it out of the park,” says Sheeran. “I love giving him the creative freedom to do what he wants as I’m at the end of the day just a huge fan of his work. It’s such a joy to be able to put out such great bodies of work from him, I hope everyone enjoys it as much as me.”
“As always, Foy has knocked it out of the park,” says Ed Sheeran of Foy Vance’s second album for his Gingerbread Man Records label
“I feel like I’ve got a confidante in Ed, a real ally,” responds Vance. “In many ways he has found a way to afford me the ability to keep on making art the way I want to make it. It’s comforting to know that no matter what I wanted to do, he would fight for it.”
This week, Vance is playing six intimate sold-out shows on his An Evening With Foy Vance Tour 2021, taking in Leeds Brudenell Social Club on Tuesday, and tonight’s London gig at St Pancras Old Church will be livestreamed globally from 9pm BST with multiple broadcasts to follow. Tickets are available at: dice.fm/artist/foy-vance.
Signs Of Life was recorded in three locations: Vance’s Pilgrim studio at home on the shores of Loch Tay in Highland Perthshire, another recording set-up in nearby Dunvarlich House and at Plan B’s Kings X studio in London.
The album was written and played more or less entirely by Vance, with assistance from young Northern Irish producer Gareth Dunlop.
Among the first tracks Vance wrote was the mea-culpa album opener Sapling – now rapidly approaching two million streams on Spotify –and it showed him the path forward.
“I once built a bower, I could build you a home,” he sings in his promise to his new wife, after her move from London to join Vance in his adopted Highland home, that he would do more than simply offer a new domestic setting. Or, as he puts it in his inimitable style: “Let me go further and do the actual right thing instead of being a drunken ballbag.”
Fashioned out of the grimness of 2020, Signs Of Life is an album of dawn after darkness, hope after despair, engagement after isolation, uplift after lockdown. It comes encased in bold sleeve artwork that reflects Vance’s desire to embrace all sides of everything, all humanity’s textures.
The “mad, striking image” for the album cover for Foy Vance’s Signs Of Life
Shot on a 160-year-old camera that “does arresting things with colours and shading”, the front image depicts him in a dress, blond wig and theatrical make-up back; on the back, he becomes a bare-chested, bare-knuckle boxer.
“They’re just mad, striking images, and I loved the fact that it was male and female,” explains Vance. “You know, life’s extreme, life’s volatile, life explodes into reality sometimes, and stops just as quick. So, to be struck by images on the cover made sense.”
A new collection of Foy Vance songs would be a tonic at any time, not only for devotee Ed Sheeran. Right now, in pandemic times, they cannot arrive a moment too soon. “That’s a huge part of it,” says Vance.
“Signs of Life is about re-emergence: me in my own soft revolution, the world re-emerging in what we’re about to see as we hopefully go back to some semblance of normality. But just life in general – flowers growing through the cracks in Chernobyl. Life finds a way, doesn’t it?”
The full track listing is: Sapling; We Can’t Be Tamed; Signs Of Life; Roman Attack; People Are Pills; Time Stand Still; If Christopher Calls; System; Hair Of The Dog; Resplendence; Republic Of Eden; It Ain’t Over and Percolate.
Tickets for Vance’s March 25 2022 gig – his first in York since playing Fibbers in June 2008 – go on sale at 10am on September 17 at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Knockout punch: Foy Vance in boxer mode on the back sleeve of Signs Of Life
Tonderai Munyevu: Zimbabwean-born performer and writer, premiering his new play, Mugabe, My Dad And Me, at York Theatre Royal from tonight’s first preview
ZIMBAMWEAN writer-performer Tonderai Munyevu’s new one-man show, Mugabe, My Dad & Me, appears in York Theatre Royal’s brochures for both the Summer Of Love and The Haunted Season.
“Which one suits it best, Tonderai?”, he is asked, when shown both. He smiles, then decides: “I think ‘Haunted’. It sounds longer lasting. ‘The Summer Of Love’ sounds impermanent.”
Tonderai is sitting by the first-floor bar at the Theatre Royal, ahead of his long-promised, pandemic-delayed world premiere opening tonight (9/9/2021), directed by Theatre Royal associate artist John R Wilkinson.
“I did a job in Bristol, then one week off, and we were going into rehearsals when everything stopped,” he says. “It’s just been postponed and postponed but I’m glad that John and the Theatre Royal have stuck with it.”
Mugabe, My Dad & Me, running until September 18 in the main house, charts the rise and fall of one of the most controversial politicians of the 20th century through the personal story of Tonderai’s Zimbabwean family and his relationship with his father, against the backdrop of the abiding legacy of British colonisation.
“Around the time when Robert Mugabe was deposed as president in 2017, I just felt like I needed to be back there,” he recalls. “At that point, I hadn’t been there for a few years, not for safety, but more for work and family. I found it was triggering a reaction in me, thinking, ‘I’m going to be in England, and not part of this amazing turnaround’, when I want to experience it’.”
Initially, Tonderai pondered doing a play based solely on freedom fighter-turned despot Mugabe’s speeches from 1962 to 2017, or “potentially to 2018, when he did that final press conference that was so telling”. “But then I thought, when I looked at my father’s story, being born in subjugated Rhodesia, I should tell that story too,” he says.
“I just knew my father’s basic story; I knew he was my dad; he drank too much; he womanised; he was fantastic, such fun, but he was a wife beater too. He lost his job as an accountant – I was about 11; he was in his 40s – and life just changed for him at that point.
The poster for Tonderai Munyevu’s Mugabe, My Dad & Me, premiering at York Theatre Royal
“Just as Mugabe’s speeches changed from calling for equality and England knighting him to the speeches of the 1990s and his fall-out with [international development secretary] Clare Short and ‘Prime Minister] Tony Blair, going against the Lancaster Agreement, over how land was to be dealt with and how people would be compensated. That fall-out led to an impoverishment of Zimbabwe that was unparalleled.”
Based in London, Tonderai set to writing Mugabe, My Dad And Me. “I knew if I made it too political, we’d lose the sense of a story being told, but if we could see it through a family’s eyes, with the story of my father dying in an impoverished state, after I left for England with my mother when I was 12, that would work better,” he says.
“The story of Zimbabwe is the story of Mugabe and the story of my father’s generation, but also the story of my generation, who have moved away from home and are grappling with who they are, when you’re asked, ‘Where do you belong?’, and you know you are technically part of that culture but you’re not there anymore, so where do you belong?”
A quarter of Zimbabweans left southern Africa in the big exodus around 2003. “That happened once the economy tanked, the white farmers left and the land was not being cultivated. It started a very tragic downward turn,” says Tonderai.
What about his father losing his job? How come? “The issue involved my father and another accountant at work having a dispute. They said my father wouldn’t be fired if he offered an apology, but he felt hard done by and so he didn’t apologise.” Instead, he left the company.
“My mother and I then left [for London] before it got really bad for him, and I would keep in touch with letters, but not really knowing how things were for him. But then, when I went back, I learnt what really happened, with my uncle being killed when he was only 17 by white Rhodesians who had paraded his body as a warning to those who were guerrilla-fighting in the fields for freedom,” says Tonderai.
“My family was never offered the land that was promised to freedom fights, so Mugabe didn’t deliver on that promise. There’s no-one with moral authority in this story as you can’t defend Mugabe, but equally Blair had a superficiality about him.”
Learning more of his father and his family’s back story led Tonderai to feel more sympathetic towards him. “Though my mother says, ‘No, whatever happens in your life, it doesn’t justify you being a wife-beating, womanising drinker’.”
“Until I wrote this play, there were things that I’d never written about; things that were holding me hostage,” says Tonderai
As for Tonderai’s own sense of identity as an African, Catholic, gay artist, he says: “It had always been connected with Mugabe’s long, long life, like his contemporaries, The Queen and Prince Philip. Now I had to grapple with the President no longer being on pictures everywhere, but also that joy that now we have a democracy, we can protest on the street.
“I started looking at things, about where I wanted to be, and I wanted to understand myself, and part of that was understanding my father. If you’re an artist, you’re an emotionally and intellectually mature person, and I want to investigate that.”
Nothing is simple in his assessment. “The colonisers were ostensibly a negative force in that land, but in some ways positive too, just as Mugabe was an icon of liberation but then tainted by his later actions, and my father was an amazing man, but he was violent too,” says Tonderai.
“In Africa, we have been colonised, but we have colonised ourselves too…some people think Zimbabwe is worse now [post-Mugabe]. I think it’s a very journey to having the opportunity for young people to have the choice of what happens in that country because Zimbabwe is still locked into that thing of ‘What war did you fight in? Why do you, as a young person, have the right to say what Zimbabwe should be?’.
“It does feel like we have to wait for a while to see what the future path will be for Zimbabwe. We have a military hold on religion. You feel despondency because you have hope, just like in South Africa, with Nelson Mandela’s presidency, so when we start looking at African culture, maybe it will be more attuned to Marxism, Socialism for sure, but not democracy as it stands now.
“What I have to do humbly in this story is to show how complex it is and to say there are no easy solutions.”
Tonderai ponders: “Is it more helpful to say that humans have always done it – subjugating people – but we don’t have to define ourselves now by the same standards, when we solve our problems by focusing on our resources, on education, to be fully human, without racism.
“Rather than having to be respected by a white person, or a white person having to admit that they did wrong, instead our priority is our children and our sense of worth that is not defined by subjugation or being considered lesser by another race.
“We move forward. The broader thing that has humbled me in doing Mugabe, My Dad & Me is I could write something where everything feels it’s about race, but instead in this play I’m writing about my culture, the complexities of that legacy and now not defining myself as a migrant in Britain. No-one is ever just a ‘migrant’.”
Tonderai Munyevu, right, in Leeds company Eclipse Theatre’s Black Men Walking, on tour at York Theatre Royal in 2019
Tonderai, who last took to the Theatre Royal stage in Eclipse Theatre’s touring production of Testament’s Black Men Walking in September 2019, turns to discussing the “Me” in Mugabe, My Dad & Me. “There’s a point in this play when I say ‘I’m a gay man, I’ve just got engaged and I’m getting married next year’, and though there’s a necessity to say it, I’m a free man and I’m incredibly privileged to be supported,” he says.
“I think my father always liked me because I was confident, erudite, intelligent, fun, and for my father in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, he loved that about me, and I loved that about him. My parents were both bright people and I loved that about them.
“My father said, in the last conversation we ever had, ‘I know I don’t have to ask you if you have a wife’. My feeling is, I think he knew I was gay, rather than him saying I was too young to marry!”
Writing Mugabe, My Dad & Me has proved cathartic for Tonderai. “Yes, things have been resolved by writing it. I think I know who I am now because of writing it; I’m definitely a writer because, until I wrote this play, there were things that I’d never written about; things that were holding me hostage,” he says.
“I never had a straight answer about Zimbabwe, but to have the confidence to be able to talk to a white farmer, Ben, about his life there was important to me. He knew everything by the book and had a very clear argument as to what he thought.
“When I was doing my preparation for this play, I would say, ‘hey, I’m writing this play and I’d like a white man’s perspective on Zimbabwe’, and to have a conversation with such clarity about being Zimbabwean was fantastic. We’re friends now.
“Ironically, he stayed in Zimbabwe, unlike me, and his rhythms of life are dovetailed with the rhythms of nature.”
The pandemic lockdowns have held back the premiere of Mugabe, My Dad & Me, but that has worked to Tonderai’s advantage. “Originally, it was going to be in the Studio, but I’ve always wanted to be on the main stage with a piece like this because I believe it can hold the main stage and I can hold the main stage, and I’m really excited to be performing it on that stage,” he says.
Summing up his one-man show about three men, Tonderai says: “This play is not a raking-up of the past; it’s a play about the present. One of the things that the pandemic has made us realise is that a leader can **** up a country, and sometimes in Europe, we don’t realise how dangerous it is to put people in this position, taking you in a dangerous direction.”
Cue Mugabe, My Dad And Me, premiering from tonight in English Touring Theatre and York Theatre Royal’s co-production in York. For tickets: 01904 623568 or online at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Copyright of The Press, York
“I’ve always wanted to be on the main stage with a piece like this because I believe it can hold the main stage,” says Tonderai Munyevu, as he sits on the York Theatre Royal stage
Getting Away With Murder(s) documentary filmmaker David Wilkinson at the gate of Auschwitz 1
AS the Grand Opera House reopens, diaries are starting to fill to pre-pandemic levels, much to the delight of a post self-isolating Charles Hutchinson.
Film world premiere of the week: Getting Away With Murder(s); Everyman York, Blossom Street, York, tonight, 6.30pm to 10.30pm
IT has taken 18 years for Yorkshire filmmaker David Wilkinson to bring his documentary, Getting Away With Murder(s), to the big screen.
Exploring an overlooked aspect of the Holocaust, he reveals that “almost one million people in 22 countries willingly carried out the unprovoked murder of 11 million innocent men, women and children but 99 per cent of those responsible were never prosecuted”.
Wilkinson, who examines the reasons behind the disregard for justice, will take part in a post-screening Q&A. Box office: everymancinema.com.
Fisherman’s Friends: Hooked on sea songs at York Barbican
They inspired a film and now they are back: Fisherman’s Friends: Unlocked & Unleashed, York Barbican, tomorrow, 7pm
CORNISH “buoy band” Fisherman’s Friends – combined aged 401 – re-emerge from lockdown for their Unlocked & Unleashed tour.
As celebrated in the film that shares their name, for 40 years they have met on the Platt of Port Isaac’s harbour to sing the songs of the sea.
In the line-up are lobster fisherman Jeremy Brown; writer, shopkeeper and master of ceremonies Jon Cleave; smallholder and engineer John ‘Lefty’ Lethbridge; Yorkshire-born builder John McDonnell; Padstow fisherman Jason Nicholas; filmmaker Toby Lobb and the new boy, former ambulance driver Pete Hicks. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
One Night In Dublin: One night in York for Irish songs aplenty at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre
Irish gig/jig of the week: One Night In Dublin, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Saturday, 7.30pm
SATURDAY night is the chance to spend One Night In Dublin – in York – when “Murphy’s Irish Pub” opens its doors at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre.
Join in the craic as the lively Irish tribute band covers such Irish staples as Galway Girl, Tell Me Ma, Dirty Old Town, Irish Rover, Seven Drunken Nights and Whiskey In The Jar. Box office: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Gary Meikle: Scottish comedian in Surreal mode at York Barbican
This experience really is “Surreal”: Gary Meikle: Surreal, York Barbican, Sunday, 8pm
DELAYED from April 8 to this weekend, playfully dark cheeky-chappie Scottish comedian and “viral sensation” Gary Meikel presents his second tour show in York.
Looking to “get away with talking about anything that will have you laughing at things you probably shouldn’t be”, punchy storyteller Meikle draws material from his own experiences, not least his unique family dynamic.
New show Surreal covers such topics as evolution, social media, how to deal with burglars, single mums, bee sex and small-man syndrome. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Exploration of family, myth and memory loss: Second Body’s Max Barton and Jethro Cooke in Styx at Theatre At The Mill
Residency of the week: Second Body in Styx, Theatre At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Sunday and Tuesday, 8pm
SECOND Body duo Max Barton and Jethro Cooke present their theatre-concert exploration of family, myth, memory loss and Max’s grandma, now with remixed music and bearing wounds wrought by 18 months of disrupted human connectivity.
“What does it mean to lose the memories that make us who we are?” they ask. “How can we continue to be ourselves when we are separated from our loved ones.” Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill.
Back in Black: Robert Goodale and Antony Eden in the ghost story The Woman In Black, haunting the Grand Opera House, York, from Monday. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Re-opening of the week: Grand Opera House, York, for The Woman In Black, Monday to Saturday
AFTER 547 days, the Grand Opera House, York, steps out of the darkness and into The Woman In Black from Monday.
In PW Productions’ latest tour of Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s ghost story, Robert Goodale plays Arthur Kipps, an elderly lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over his family by the spectre of a “Woman in Black” for 50 years now.
Antony Eden is the young Actor he engages to help him tell that story and exorcise his fears, but soon reality begins to blur and the flesh begins to creep. Box office: atgtickets.com/york
Bird song: Henry Bird, pictured in his Vampires Rock days, will be the special guest for You Can’t Stop The Beat
Community concert of the week: You Can’t Stop The Beat, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm
GENERATION Groove and Community Chorus are joined by special guest Henry Bird, the well-travelled York singer and guitarist for Tuesday’s fundraiser.
“Concerts and performances have been on hold for well over a year and we’re all delighted to be back getting you singing and even dancing and raising money to help the wonderful Joseph Rowntree Theatre go from strength to strength,” say the organisers. Box office: josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Waitress: Serving up a slice of musical pie at Leeds Grand Theatre from Tuesday
Musical of the week outside York: Waitress, Leeds Grand Theatre, September 14 to 18
MEET Jenna, a waitress and expert pie-maker who dreams of some joy in her life. When a hot new doctor arrives in town, life turns more complicated and challenging, but with the support of her workmates Becky and Dawn, she finds that laughter, love and friendship can provide the perfect recipe for happiness.
Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson’s comedy musical stars Lucie Jones as Jenna, Emmerdale’s Sandra Marvin as Becky, Evelyn Hoskins as Dawn and Busted’s Matt Willis as Dr Pomatter. For tickets: 0113 243 0808 or at leedsheritagetheatres.com.
Destiny calling: Kirk Brandon’s Spear Of Destiny are heading to The Crescent in York
Cult band you really should see: Spear Of Destiny, The Crescent, York, September 19
LEADING Spear Of Destiny for 38 years now, Kirk Brandon heads out on their Worldservice@35 tour on the back of releasing last November’s lockdown album.
Brandon’s post-punk band – featuring Adrian Portas (New Model Army/Sex Gang Children), Craig Adams (Sisters Of Mercy/The Cult /The Mission), Phil Martini (Jim Jones And The Righteous Mind) and saxophonist Clive Osborne – re-recorded 1985’s WorldService album during 2020.
The WorldService@35 tour features the album and B-sides in full plus an extended career-spanning encore at three Yorkshire shows: York, then Leeds Brudenell Social Club on September 21 and The Welly, Hull, September 25.
Pie thrower: Jonathan Pie will vent his anger at the truth vacuum at the Grand Opera House, York
Angriest man of the month award: Jonathan Pie, Fake News (The Corona Remix), Grand Opera House, York, September 19, 7.30pm
JONATHAN Pie, the no-holds-barred fictitious political broadcaster alter-ego of Tom Walker, is resuming his Fake News tour that began in 2019 and had to twiddle its agitated thumbs through lockdown.
In that hiatus, Walker continued to post Jonathan Pie content to his social-media channels, whether commenting on the global reaction to the 2020 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement or woke culture.
Now he unleashes his righteous rage once more on stage. Tickets for the York slice of Pie are on sale at atgtickets.com/york.
Getting Away With Murder(s) director David Wilkinson at Clifford’s Tower, the site of the former Castle in York, where in 1190 the city’s entire Jewish population were massacred
YORKSHIRE filmmaker David Wilkinson’s Holocaust documentary, Getting Away With Murder(s), has taken 18 years to reach the big screen.
Tonight, Everyman York, in Blossom Street, York, will host the world premiere at 6.30pm, concluding with a post-screening question-and-answer session with Wilkinson, chaired by Dave Taylor, the Independent city councillor for the Fishergate ward.
Exploring an overlooked aspect of the Holocaust, Wilkinson’s feature-length film reveals that “almost one million people in 22 countries willingly carried out the unprovoked murder of 11 million innocent men, women and children but 99 per cent of those responsible were never prosecuted”.
Examining the reasons behind the disregard for justice, Wilkinson says: “I filmed in ten countries, including the UK, where I question our turning a blind eye that allowed 400 alleged Nazi war criminals to live in this country, completely untroubled by justice.
“The only prosecution that ever occurred went ahead 53 years after the perpetrator’s arrival in London. He was sent to prison for murdering 18 Jews, although in reality, he was responsible for a great many more deaths.”
Director David Wilkinson at the train entrance to Auschwitz – Birkenau during the film-making for Getting Away With Murder(s)
Wilkinson’s studies brought him to York. “In 1190, Britain inflicted its own Holocaust when York’s Jewish population were massacred while under the King’s protection.
“At a time of increasing attacks on Jews throughout England, they fled to the Castle – now the site of Clifford’s Tower – to be besieged by an incited angry mob, and then committed mass suicide rather than wait to be killed or be forcibly baptised. Those who did choose to be baptised and came out were slaughtered by the mob.”
York in the 21st century is a different place, notes Wilkinson, who is chairman of film-makers Guerilla Films. The city now commemorates the massacre at Clifford’s Tower annually, along with Holocaust Memorial Day, as it acknowledges these atrocities and works to ensure that they never happen again.
York was one of the first British cities to receive City of Human Rights status, while York City of Sanctuary seeks to promote an environment of compassion and understanding in the city and provides support and assistance to refugees and asylum seekers.
York Interfaith Group meets regularly to promote mutual understanding between all of York’s faith groups and helps promote mixed-faith events hosted by its members.
Alex Fischer showing director David Wilkinson around Court 600 at Nuremberg
Wilkinson says York is an example of how a city can turn itself around and learn from events that happened within its walls almost 900 years ago, as well as from more recent history.
For many years, Jews thought that because of what happened at the Clifford’s Tower site, there was a ‘herem’ (ban) on Jews living in York. This was never the case and the relatively ‘new’ York Liberal Jewish Community (YLJC) is flourishing.
Celebrating its seventh birthday this year, and with around 100 members of all ages, YLJC is an active member in the York Interfaith Group and works regularly with other community and civic organisations.
YLJC is partnering with English Heritage and My Castle Gateway (for City of York Council) to achieve a new lasting legacy for the city’s history by seeking to influence the redevelopment plans of the car park at the base of Clifford’s Tower into a new public park.
The consultation plans include a small public plaza with a new memorial space to the 1190 massacre victims, yet to be detailed or funded.
“It seemed appropriate and particularly fitting to me that the city of York should be where I launch this film,” says documentarian David Wilkinson
Wilkinson explains how this influenced his choice when deciding where Getting Away With Murder(s) should be launched: “Normally with the films I make, the world premieres are either in London or at one of the prestigious film festivals such as Sundance or Edinburgh.
“I have thought long and hard about where to hold the important first screening of this film. As a Yorkshireman I have always felt singularly uneasy that my own county city was the setting for such a horrific crime.
“Therefore, it seemed appropriate and particularly fitting to me that the city of York should be where I launch this film. It is an example of how a city and a Jewish community has and continues to move forward together.
“I am, therefore, delighted that the Everyman Cinema in York is supporting this important screening and that the York Liberal Jewish Communityhas agreed to co-host the event.”
Wilkinson ponders the possibility of York erecting a “deferential memorial” to what many consider to be the darkest day in the city’s history. “In the documentary, I filmed numerous reverential memorials to the murdered Jews, in Berlin, Vilnius, Kaunas, Liepaja, Günzburg, Dachau, Vienna and Auschwitz,” he says.
Auschwitz survivor Arek Hersh, who features in Getting Away With Murder(s)
“The more locations I visited, the more I became convinced that York too should have its own deferential memorial to those Jews murdered in the city, no matter how long ago it took place.”
Lilian Coulson, chair of York Liberal Jewish Community, reflects on Wilkinson’s documentary: “When David approached us to discuss his film, we were amazed to be told about the extent of this ‘hidden’ part of all our history.
“On a personal level, coming from a Jewish family who had to flee Nazi Germany to survive and whose grandfather was one of many lawyers working at the Nuremburg Trials, I have always wondered why nothing was done earlier by the outside world to stop the genocide of 11 million people, including six million Jews.
“Or what happened subsequently to those people who implemented this genocide. I look forward to viewing David’s film at its world premiere in York to learn more about what has happened (or not) since the Nuremburg Trials finished 75 years ago.”
Lilian continues: “YLJC, as York’s only formal Jewish community, is delighted to welcome David and his film to this city and to help open doors to our friends here to promote his film to those who also wish to learn more about our more recent past.
Benjamin Ferencz, 101, the last living prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials to give an eye-witness account, watches a 27-year-old Benjamin Ferencz prosecuting, as director David Wilkinson looks on
“We are lucky to live in a city that positively tries to encourage good interfaith relationships and tolerance and actively stretches out a hand to those in need. The continued dialogue of the proposed redevelopment of the Clifford’s Tower and Eye of York area provides a unique opportunity for us all to work together to commemorate its history and, at the same time, look positively to the city’s future.”
Wilkinson has great hopes that tonight’s screening could launch a campaign to raise money for an improved memorial for the 1190 victims, to be sited within a wider contemplative space, as being proposed for the English Heritage site under the My Castle Gateway plans.
“This could be undertaken in conjunction with York Liberal Jewish Community, who are already fundraising to employ the first resident rabbi in York since the Middle Ages, to help grow and develop their community,” he suggests.
“We hope that this will help in bringing about a successful outcome and that, after 831 years, the memory of those 150 people massacred inYork will be respectfully and informatively remembered.”
For tickets for tonight’s world premiere, go to: everymancinema.com.
Getting Away With Murder(s) director David Wilkinson at the gate to Auschwitz 1
Director’s statement by David Wilkinson
“I HAVE been trying to make Getting Away With Murder(s), either as a film or a TV series, since 2003.
I was baffled as to why it has taken so long to find the funding as, to me, it was essential to know why so very few of the murderers of the Holocaust were ever prosecuted.
I had hoped that others would also wish to know this answer.
When I was distributing his film Talking Sides in 2003, I discussed this in great detail with Sir Ronald Harwood as we drove around the country promoting his movie in key cities.
Ronnie wrote over a dozen plays, films, books and articles dealing with the Holocaust and told me that it “informed him”. When I mentioned to him that I was considering making the film, he instructed me to get on with it as he too wanted to know the answer.
The numbered arm of Auschwitz survivor Arek Hersh
It was intended that he be in the film (he later appeared in another documentary of mine), but his contribution in this was sadly not to be.
The film is dedicated to him.
My sole motivation for making Getting Away With Murder(s) was simply to find that answer as to why so many got away with their crime – the crime of mass murder on an industrial scale.
A simple question, you might think.
I knew long before I began filming that the answer(s) would be far from simple.
The film is almost 200 minutes long. The subject is so complex that I found it impossible to fit the answers into a neat 90 or 110 minutes. One of the advantages of not having any funding from a broadcaster means that I was free to explore the subject as I felt in detail.”
The poster for Getting Away With Murder(s), the Holocaust documentary set for British release on October 1, the 75th anniversary to the very day of the end of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. David Nicholas Wilkinson’s film covers what happened after the trial was over
100 not out: Courteeners playing the landmark 100th show at the reopened Scarborough Open Air Theatre tonight. Picture: Cuffe and Taylor
COURTEENERS have the honour tonight of performing Scarborough Open Air Theatre’s 100th show since its 2010 reopening.
Supported by Wirral wonders The Coral, the Manchester band will perform under the East Coast setting sun in a week when fellow Mancunians James will play Britain’s largest purpose-built outdoor concert arena tomorrow and Snow Patrol on Friday.
More than 450,000 people have attended a concert at Scarborough OAT since Her Majesty The Queen re-opened the refurbished Scarborough Borough Council-owned venue in Burniston Road 11 years ago.
Headliners to grace the Scarborough stage include Elton John, Tom Jones, Lionel Richie, Kylie Minogue, Noel Gallagher, Dionne Warwick, Cliff Richard, The Beach Boys, George Benson, Bryan Adams, Michael Ball & Alfie Boe, Status Quo, Happy Mondays, Katherine Jenkins, Little Mix and Britney Spears.
After a pandemic-enforced fallow 2020, this year’s star-studded return has featured Stereophonics, Kaiser Chiefs, Culture Club, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Keane, Olly Murs, UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro and Anne-Marie before concluding with Duran Duran’s sold-out finale on September 17.
Councillor Jim Grieve, Scarborough Borough Council’s cabinet member for quality of life, said: “Since reopening in 2010, Scarborough Open Air Theatre has established itself as the borough’s premier outdoor live music venue.
“Working with our partners, we’ve brought some of the biggest names in the music industry to the Yorkshire coast. This has boosted the area’s reputation for high- quality events and contributed millions of pounds to the local economy.
“As we reach the milestone of 100 shows at the theatre this week, we look forward to many more years of fantastic events to come.”
Scarborough Open Air Theatre venue manager Stuart Clark: Worked on 90 of the 100 shows since the 2010 reopening
Live music is programmed at Scarborough OAT by promoters Cuffe and Taylor, who are part of Live Nation and have a ten-year contract to deliver headline shows at the 8,000-capacity venue.
Venue programmer Peter Taylor said: “What a week we have in store here at Scarborough Open Air Theatre. Courteeners, James and Snow Patrol are three of the biggest names in British indie rock and to bring all three here in the same week is just fantastic. This really is going to be a week to remember.
“Cuffe and Taylor are so proud to have programmed live music at this wonderful venue since 2016, in which time we have brought many world-famous music icons to the Yorkshire coast. We absolutely love it and we cannot wait to add to the 100 big-name headliners in the years to come. Watch this space!”
Shows at Scarborough OAT attract thousands of visitors to the Yorkshire coast each summer and have created an estimated benefit to the borough of more than £25m in the past decade.
Cuffe and Taylor work hand in hand with the council-led team at Scarborough OAT. Venue manager Stuart Clark has worked on more than 90 of the 100 headline shows since 2010. “It’s a brilliant venue – a real jewel in the Yorkshire coast’s crown,” he said. “You only have to look at the calibre of artists who come here regularly to realise how well thought of Scarborough OAT is.
“It’s such a team effort to put these shows on and I cannot thank the incredible team here at the venue and Cuffe and Taylor enough. But, above all, we’d all like to thank the people of the borough and the Yorkshire coast for their incredible support of the venue down the years – and here’s to many more brilliant nights at the OAT.”
Tickets are still available for James and Snow Patrol at scarboroughopenairtheatre.com or on 01723 81811. Gates open at 6pm each night.
Mad about the Boy: Boy George lapping up the cheers at Culture Club’s August 14 concert at Scarborough Open Air Theatre this summer . Picture: Cuffe and Taylor
Details of 100 Scarboroughian Nights
1. Gala Opening Night, 23/7/2010
2. 80’s Rewind Night, 31/7/2010
3. The Doves, 7/8/2010
4. N Dubz, 5/6/2011
5. Elton John, 21/6/2011
6. Musicport, 14/8/2011
7. Last Night Of The Proms, 28/8/2011
8. 80’s Rewind 2011, 2/9/2011
9. Dionne Warwick, 6/6/2012
10. John Barrowman, 21/6/2012
11. Olly Murs, 15/7/2012
12. Russell Watson, 4/8/2012
13. Big Night Out, 18/8/2012
14. JLS, 25/8/2012
15. Olly Murs, 6/6/2013
16. The Wanted, 13/6/2013
17. Happy Mondays, 22/6/2013
18. Leona Lewis, 12/7/2013
19. Status Quo, 27/7/2013
20. Katherine Jenkins, 3/8/2013
Ricky Wilson at Kaiser Chiefs’ gig at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on August 8 2021. Picture: Cuffe and Taylor
21. The Saturdays, 23/8/2013
22. McFly, 30/8/2013
23. Jessie J, 25/6/2014
24. McBusted, 27/6/2014
25. Last Night Of The Proms, 28/6/2014
26. Status Quo, 12/7/2014
27. Boyzone, 26/7/2014
28. Little Mix, 27.7/2014
29. Legends Of Pop 2014, 2/8/2014
30. Union J, 23/8/2014
31. James, 22/5/2015
32. Boyzone, 13/6/2015
33. The Vamps, 20/6/2015
34. Last Night Of The Proms with Alfie Boe, 27/6/2015
35. Jessie J, 10/7/2015
36. Elaine Paige and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 11/7/2015
37. McBusted, 18/7/2015
38. Tom Jones, 29/7/2015
39. Legends Of Pop, 1/8/2015
40. UB40, 14/8/2015
Nile Rodgers & Chic performing at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on August 20 2021. Picture: Cuffe and Taylor
41. Scouting For Girls, 30/8/2015
42. Will Young, 30/6/2016
43. Status Quo, 9/7/2016
44. James Bay, 12/7/2016
45. Wet Wet Wet, 30/7/2016
46. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, 3/8/2016
47. Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott, 5/8/2016
48. Legends Of Pop 2016, 6/8/2016
49. Bryan Adams, 8/8/2016
50. Simply Red, 12/8/2016
51. Busted, 2/9/2016
52. The Beach Boys, 24/5/2017
53. Kaiser Chiefs, 27/5/2017
54. The Charlatans, 16/6/2017
55. The Jacksons, 17/6/2017
56. Michael Ball and Alfie Boe, 28/6/2017
57. Cliff Richard, 29/6/2017
58. UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro, 30/6/2017
59. George Benson, 1/7/2017
60. Tom Jones, 2/7/2017
Keane caught in torrential rain at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on August 21 2021. Picture: Cuffe and Taylor
61. Little Mix, 6/7/2017
62. Olly Murs, 9/7/2017
63. Madness, 3/8/2017
64. 80s v 90s, 5/8/2017
65. Jess Glynne, 11/8/2017
66. Lionel Richie, 19/6/2018
67. The Script, 21/6/2018
68. Gary Barlow, 22/6/2017
69. Nile Rodgers & Chic, 24/6/2018
70. Steps, 29/6/2018
71. Alfie Boe, 30/6/2018
72. Emeli Sande, 5/7/2018
73. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, 6/7/2018
74. Stereophonics, 19/7/2018
75. Pete Tong Ibiza Classics, 20/7/2018
76. Il Divo, 21/7/2018
77. James Arthur, 26/7/2018
78. Bastille, 28/7/2018
79. Texas, 11/8/2018
80. Britney Spears, 17/8/2018
Anne-Marie, arms outstretched, at Scarborough Open Air Theatre’s 99th show on August 29 2021. Picture: Cuffe and Taylor
81. James, 18/8/2018
82. Hacienda Classical, 8/6/2019
83. Biffy Clyro, 14/6/2019
84. Cliff Richard, 26/6/2019
85. Years And Years, 18/7/2019
86. Madness, 19/7/2019
87. Lewis Capaldi, 20/7/2019
88. Jess Glynne, 21/7/2019
89. Kylie Minogue, 1/8/2019
90. Lewis Capaldi, 30/8/2019
91. Queen Machine, 31/8/2019
92. Stereophonics, 28/7/2021
93. Kaiser Chiefs, 8/8/2021
94. Culture Club, 14/8/2021
95. Nile Rodgers & Chic, 20/8/2021
96. Keane, 21/8/2021
97. Olly Murs, 27/8/2021
98. UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro, 28/9/2021
99. Anne-Marie, 29/8/2021
100. Courteeners, 8/9/2021
Courteeners’ Liam Fray leading tonight’s 100th concert at Scarborough Open Air Theatre. Picture: Cuffe and Taylor
Ensemble Molière: First New Generation Baroque Ensemble
ENSEMBLE Molière will be the first New Generation Baroque Ensemble from October, backed by the National Centre for Early Music, York, BBC Radio 3 and the Royal College of Music.
The new scheme will showcase and nurture exceptional British-based ensembles in the early years of their professional careers in the baroque sphere, supporting them to new heights of professionalism and artistry over two years, using the range of expertise, performance and recording opportunities available through each partner organisation.
A new group will join the programme in 2023 to begin a new two-year programme, helping to encourage UK Baroque ensembles of the future, supporting artists at a crucial stage in their careers.
Comprising five musicians playing on historic instruments, Ensemble Molière combine flute, violin, bassoon, viola da gamba/cello and harpsichord in creative programmes from the 17th and 18th century repertoire, performed at many of the leading Baroque and Early Music festivals.
Chosen through a non-competitive process to become the first New Generation Baroque Ensemble, ensemble musicians Flavia Harte, Alice Earll, Catriona McDermid, Kate Conway and Satoko Doi-Luck can build on their early success through residencies at the NCEM and Royal College of Music (RCM) and a regular presence on BBC Radio 3, enabling them to further develop their professional skills, reputation, profile and artistry.
BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show will feature Ensemble Molière on Sunday, September 19 at 2pm in the first of a series of regular updates, performances and features about the group.
Ensemble Molière say: “We are thrilled and honoured to be appointed the first ever BBC New Generation Baroque Ensemble and to become part of the New Generation family. We are looking forward to collaborating with the wonderful team from three organisations – BBC, RCM and NCEM – as well as to the opportunities and experiences we will enjoy on the scheme, including live performances and broadcasts.
“It will be a fantastic springboard for Ensemble Molière and will help us reach the next step as a group. We are very grateful to the New Generation Baroque Ensemble team for their support.”
“Ensemble Molière have an amazing future ahead of them,” says NCEM director Delma Tomlin
NCEM director Delma Tomlin says: “We are thrilled to be part of this UK-based venture that takes place over the next two years and we look forward to welcoming Ensemble Molière, who will be performing in our festivals in Beverley and York.
“It’s wonderful to be working with the Royal College of Music and BBC Radio 3 once again and this is a fabulous opportunity for Ensemble Molière, who have an amazing future ahead of them.”
BBC Radio 3 controller Alan Davey says: “For some time, we have been keen to see if we can offer help and support to UK-based period-instrument ensembles in the early stages of their careers to allow them to develop and thrive with the same kind of spirit of innovation and adventure we see in the best ensembles across the world.
“With this new scheme – as with our hugely successful New Generation Artists and New Generation Thinkers programmes – we want to support the best new talent and by working in partnership with the chosen Baroque ensembles and with the NCEM and RCM, we hope to build an even richer world of ambitious, innovative and thrillingly excellent music-making for the future.
“We are delighted to welcome Ensemble Molière and look forward to working with them over the coming years to bring their extraordinary music to wider audiences.”
Professor Ashley Solomon, head of historical performance at the Royal College of Music, says: “I am absolutely delighted that together with our colleagues at the NCEM and BBC Radio 3 we have appointed Ensemble Moliere as the first ensemble in the New Generation Baroque Ensemble scheme that we are now launching.
“Nurturing and inspiring the new generation of historical performers is part of our ethos at the Royal College of Music and I look forward to working with and mentoring the players in this exceptional ensemble. We hope that this unique opportunity will help support and enable them to thrive.”
Ensemble Molière’s musicians are: Flavia Hirte, flute; Alice Earll, violin; Catriona McDermid, bassoon; Kate Conway, viola da gamba/cello, and Satoko Doi-Luck, harpsichord.
Dexys’ Kevin Rowland, second left, announces the second coming of Too-Rye-Ay, “as it could have sounded”
COME again, Eileen. Dexys, now shorn of the Midnight Runners appendage, are reworking their 1982 album, Too-Rye-Ay, for a 40th anniversary release and accompanying tour.
Led as ever by Kevin Rowland, Dexys will play York Barbican on September 30 2022 on their Too-Rye-Ay, As It Could Have Sounded Tour, in what may well be the veteran Birmingham band’s first ever York appearance, unless you know otherwise.
Released in July 1982, the one with strings, brass and dungarees attached reached number two, Dexys’ highest ever album chart position, buoyed by the top-spot success of ubiquitous wedding-party staple Come On Eileen.
The Van Morrison cover, Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven When You Smile), went top five too and Let’s Get This Straight (From The Start) peaked at number 17, but the notoriously perfectionist, restless Rowland says: “For many years, I’ve struggled with Too-Rye-Ay.
“I was never happy with many of the mixes on the record. Tracks like ‘Eileen’ and one or two others were really good, but with most others, while I felt the performances were really good, that didn’t come over properly in the mixes.”
The iconic 1982 album artwork for Kevin Rowland & Dexys Midnight Runners’ Too-Rye-Ay
The strongly devoted, long hooked on such exquisite highs as The Celtic Soul Brothers, Let’s Make This Precious, All In All (This One Last Wild Waltz), Old and Until I Believe In My Soul, may raise an eyebrow at Rowland’s assertion, but nevertheless he says: “I even felt fraudulent promoting the album, because I knew it didn’t sound as good as it should have.
“And of course, the irony was, it was by far our most successful Dexys album, because of the worldwide success of Come On Eileen. I knew there were other songs on there just as good as ‘Eileen’, but they hadn’t been realised properly.
“So, I was absolutely delighted to get this opportunity to remix the album with the masterful Pete Schwier, who has worked with Dexys since 1985, and Helen O’ Hara [violinist on the original album] is also helping.”
Too-Rye-Ay, As It Could Have Sounded will be released in this “brand new way and sound” next year via Universal on various formats, whereupon Rowland’s band will head out on the road to perform the album in full, complemented by soulful Dexys’ gems such as their first number one, Geno.
“I’m so into doing this album, that we are doing shows to promote it next year, where we will play the whole of the album from start to finish, as well as other Dexys’ favourites,” says Rowland, who turned 68 on August 17.
“There is no way on Earth I would be doing this tour, or even promoting a normal 40th anniversary re-issue, if it wasn’t for the opportunity to remix it and present it how it could have sounded.
“This is like a new album for me. It is an absolute labour of love. I want people to hear the album as it was meant to sound.”
York will be the only Yorkshire location on next year’s 11-date tour taking in The Forum, Bath, on September 17; New Theatre, Oxford, September 18; Brighton Dome, September 19; Albert Hall, Manchester, September 21; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, September 22; Symphony Hall, Birmingham, September 26; Cambridge Corn Exchange, September 27; St David’s Hall, Cardiff, September 29; York Barbican, September 30, and London Palladium, October 2.
York tickets go on sale on Friday (10/9/2021) at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk. Let’s make this precious all over again.
