Looking ecstatic to be back at York Barbican: Paul Weller , booked in for November 3
YORK Barbican has a fistful of new shows going on sale on Friday: Modfather Paul Weller, comedians Jason Manford, Joel Dommett and Daniel Sloss and the dance extravaganza Here Come The Boys.
Weller, 61, has sold out his May tour
and will go back out on the road for 19 British and Irish dates in October and
November, playing York on November 3.
Jason Manford: seeking approval at York Barbican next February
Weller will play an acoustic set for
the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on March 25 as a
special guest of The Stereophonics and his new album, On Sunset, will be released
on June 12 on Polydor, his new label.
He performed previously at York Barbican in March 2015 and August 2018 and his last North Yorkshire gig was at Dalby Forest, near Pickering, last June.
Joel Dommett: new show in December
His autumn travels also will take in further
Yorkshire dates at Hull Bonus Arena on November 2 and Bradford St George’s Hall
on November 17.
Jason Manford, who reached the final of ITV’s The Masked Singer this winter, will return to York Barbican in almost a year’s time, on February 17 2021, with his new stand-up show, Like Me.
Expect “observational comedy mixed with comic gold” from the Salford comedian, presenter and actor who chalked up three Barbican performances of his Muddle Class show in October 2018 and March 2019.
Smoke alarm: Daniel Sloss will be full of Hubris on October 3
Rockhampton comedian, actor and
presenter Joel Dommett, host of The Masked Singer, will play York on December 11,
delivering a new show after this 2016 I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here runner-up
brought his Live 2018 tour to the Barbican in February that year.
Scottish comic Daniel Sloss will follow up his X show – taken to 40 countries, including Russia – with his new solo outing, Hubris, booked in for his Barbican bow on October 3.
Here come Michael, Aljaz, Pasha and Sam on June 24
Strictly Come Dancing’s Aljaž Škorjanec sold out his last appearance at York Barbican and will return on June 24, joined in the Here Come The Boys line-up by former Strictly favourite Pasha Kovalev, West End ballet star Sam Salter and NBC World Of Dance champion and Broadway star Michael Dameski, from Australia.
Ballroom, Latin, commercial, contemporary, ballet, acro and tap all will feature in a show where the Boys will perform alongside dancers, gymnasts, tap dancers and more.
Tickets can be booked from 10am on Friday (February 28) at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from Barbican box office.
Hair-raising: Milton Jones on a spying mission at York Barbican
REVIEW: Milton Jones: Milton Impossible, York Barbican, February
22
THE whole point of camouflage is not to be spotted, but in his new guise as an ex-MI5 spy, Milton Jones’s gaudy military fatigues looked like they hadn’t slept for days.
As for his fuchsia, frilly dress shirt, it would have guaranteed he had absolutely no fuchsia in spying, if blending into the background were a requirement. Definitely a case of Milton Impossible.
Mind you, Jones’s attire was not the only sartorial talking point of Saturday’s triple bill. Support act Tom Houghton was gently settling into revelations of being the Honourable Tom – now that his ex-Army chief father, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, was a Lord and the Constable of the Tower of London – when he was distracted by a Technicolor nightmare of a shirt making an even louder exit down the stairs.
“You’ve missed nothing,” said Houghton, lobbing a comedy bomb
after the escapee. “Except fashion”. Boom, off went the bomb, as if he were
sentencing him to the Tower for a fashion crime.
Cheeky, charming, posh-boy fledgling comic Houghton went on to define the rules of rugby – a game of backs and forwards and going backwards and forwards – with a wit that outwitted the well-worn tea towel trying to explain the laws of cricket.
Tom, a hawk: Tom Houghton was quick to spot fashion crimes in the York Barbican audience
“I always love to help underprivileged children,” said Jones
drily later, but Houghton, one quarter of the improv comedy troupe The Noise
Next Door, needs no leg-up through entitlement. Check out his upcoming tour at
The Basement, City Screen, York, on June 12 or The Carriageworks, Leeds, the
next night.
Before Hon Tom, Milton’s waspish “grandfather” had opened the
show, entering with a trampoline as his mobility aide, and combining a flat cap
with a dressing gown for a dressing down on the real meaning of assorted
familiar road signs.
If you could imagine a hopelessly ill-prepared learner driver trying to wing his written test with wild guesswork, Milton’s grandad goes even further. Rather than being merely daft or surrealist, however, the new meanings actually make weird sense, and the world would be a happier place if they were true.
Although, in this city of cycling, cyclists might not have
enjoyed his dig at them not recognising the meaning of a red light.
Post-interval, Jones returned, his shock of hair madder than ever at 55, to go with the aforementioned psychedelic dress code. Seventy-five minutes of the matador of piercing one-liners ensued, ostensibly on his spying past, but ranging far and wide, his timing deadly, his manner deadpan. (Ideal qualities for a spy, you might say).
From his last tour, the Kew comedian revived his droll Brexit
commentary through the novel format of national flags engaging in sparring
conversations, each seeking the last word, and no Jones show would be complete
without a run of “my other grandfather” gags.
Before the tour, Jones joked: “At a difficult time for our
country, I believe there’s a chance this show could unite the nation.
Admittedly quite a small chance.” True, but Milton is comedy paradise
found, and you wish more could see the world through his eyes. It is a lovely place
to be, warmly knowing but not devoid of a child’s sense of wonder, playful, not
cynical, absurd yet spot on.
If you missed Milton Impossible in York, your next mission, and you really should accept it, is to make it to Hull City Hall on March 18 or Leeds Town Hall the next night, 19.30 on the dot. Box office: hulltheatres.co.uk; leedstownhall.co.uk.
Opinions this way: Mark Thomas welcomes you to his 50 Things About Us show
IN his new tour show, mischief-making activist comedian Mark
Thomas is pondering “how we have come to inhabit this divided wasteland that some
of us call the United Kingdom”.
On the road since January 23, the South London satirical writer, political agent provocateur, TV and radio presenter, journalist and podcaster is bringing 50 Things About Us: Work In Progress to The Crescent, York, on March 4.
“The Crescent has a certain ramshackle charm, and it’s run with absolute integrity,” says Mark, breaking away from cooking up a pot of a very British winter warmer, leek and potato soup, to take this interview call.
Introducing the show’s theme, he explains: “I was really struck by one thought: how on earth did we get to the point we’ve got to, and part of the answer is that we’ve never come to terms with who we are.”
Was he referring to the English or the British here? “Well,
Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales; the United Kingdom includes Northern
Ireland too, and it’s been England that’s driven the creation of the union,”
says Mark, whose show combines storytelling, stand-up, mischief and typically well-researched
material.
“All these places have a very distinctive identity and culture, and it defies this binary, simplistic definition.
“The Irish language was kept alive by Presbyterians when the
English buried it, and now the Irish language is being taught by Unionist women
on the Falls Road [in Belfast], so it’s a fascinating place that defies your
normal expectations.”
“People say, ‘can’t you say something positive?’, but there’s a load of positives in there ,” says Mark Thomas of his new show
Mark notes how “English culture is seen as part of the British
empire, when Britain was ruling the world with this bombast, without
understanding the implications of that”.
So, it may be a generalisation, Mark, but why is that people
think the abiding negative aspects of the British empire are defined by Little
Englander characteristics, not British ones?
“That’s the weird thing. Scotland joined England in the union in
a time of fantastic prosperity, so Scotland doesn’t get out of its role in the empire,”
he says. “It’s fascinating that it’s
about England adopting the empire as its nationalist cause, with everyone else
slipping off.”
50 Things About Us is billed as “a show about money, history, identity, art, tradition, songs, gongs, wigs, guns, bungs, sods of soil and rich people”, as Thomas picks through the myths, facts and figures of our national identities to ask how we have so much feeling for such a hollow land”.
Summing up his night of story-telling, stand-up and subversion as a “sort of funny national edition of Who Do You Think You Are?”, Thomas says: ” It’s another slightly odd show, a sort of sweary, History Channel with laughs and creative mischief. If you’ve seen my shows before, this one’s in the vein of 100 Acts Of Minor Dissent.”
As a work in progress, the list of 50 Things is not set in stone. “It’s always being added to. You always do that. You keep going ‘b****y hell’ when you discover new things,” says Mark. “I found out the other day we’re the only nation that doesn’t have its name on its stamps.
“We have a picture of The Queen, not even a picture, but a
silhouette, and there’s a certain weirdness about that. We won’t even say where
we are! We say, ‘here’s The Queen, we’re better than everyone else’.”
Thomas, 56, has made his mark down the years by stopping arms
deals; creating a manifesto and bringing the winning policy to parliament;
walking the entire length of the Israeli wall in the West Bank and setting up a
comedy club in the Palestinian city of Jenin.
“Just looking at who we think we are, this idea we can stand alone is completely myopic,” says Mark Thomas.
He has hosted six series on Channel 4, alongside several
television documentaries and radio series; written books; grabbed a Guinness
World Record; sold out numerous tours; won awards aplenty; nabbed himself a
Medal of Honour and succeeded in changing some laws along the way.
In other words, he is a man of both action and words. How are his latest words going down on tour? “People say, ‘can’t you say something positive?’, but there’s a load of positives in there, like Britain being one of only five countries that doesn’t have a [codified] written constitution. New Zealand is one other, Canada another,” says Mark.
“We have the Charter of the Forest, our economic charter that came in in 2017, which recognises that idea of shared assets of the country [the charter re-established for free men rights of access to the royal forest that had been eroded by William the Conqueror and his heirs] .
“It was there for our mutual benefit and no-one else has ever produced anything like it. It used to be read out four times a year in church, when the squirearchy were at the front, the peasants at the back.
“It was the statute that remained longest in
force in England, but they just got rid of it in 1971 [when it was superseded
by the Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act]. But it’s something to be proud of
as part of our history; there’s an historic part of our character that, since
1217, says we have the right to run things for our common benefit.”
Where does Brexit fit into Mark’s exploration
of who we are? “I think that notion that we are a country that can go it alone
is really that characteristic of English exceptionalism, where we believe we’re
different, we’re superior, because we’re the cleverer than anyone else, reckoning
we won two World Wars and a World Cup by playing fair, which is nonsense,” he
says. “Just looking at who we think we are, this idea we can stand alone is
completely myopic.
“I’m not a great supporter of the European
Union, but I did vote Remain reluctantly, as I don’t want a move to the far right,
which is what we’ve ended up with.”
Mark Thomas’s Gilbert & George-style poster for his 50 Things About Us tour
Mark continues: “I’m a Socialist and I think
massive changes are needed but when you ignore democracy [the Brexit referendum
vote], it will bite you on the backside. If I were a Leave voter, I’d be b****y
angry. This idea that people got it wrong, and we should vote again and again
until we get it right is extremely patronising. The way they’ve been treated is
pretty awful, though I’m not defending the far right.”
Why does Mark call Britain “a hollow land”? “The fact that masses
of our history is ignored at the expense of our identity, like the history of
the NHS…that sense of absence, because we don’t tell parts of our history, is
wrong,” he says.
And now for the big question, after all Mark’s research, can he
define who we are? “It’s an important question to answer, because we’re changing
all the time, as a collective, as individuals, as parents, grandparents, how we
see ourselves,” he says.
“Though interestingly, who we think we are is not who we are.” Let’s
leave that thought hanging in the air, the perfect enticement to find out more
at The Crescent on March 4.
Mark Thomas’s 50 Things About Us: Work In Progress tour also
takes in further Yorkshire gigs at Sheffield Memorial Hall, March 1; Wakefield
Theatre Royal, March 5, and Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, April 9.
Box office: York, 01904 622510 or at thecrescent.com; Sheffield, 0114 278 9789 or sheffieldcityhall.co.uk; Wakefield, 01924 211311; Leeds, 0845 644 1881 or cityvarieties.co.uk.
Did you know?
Mark Thomas also broadcasts 50 Things About Us
as a podcast.
Five Minutes back together in 2020: from left to right: Nigel Dennis, Sean Rochester, Mark Pearson and Chris Turnbull. Fellow member Matthew “Duck” Hardy took the picture on February 22
A BAND called Five Minutes had their 15 minutes in York in the late 1980s. Now they are re-uniting for a one-off gig at the Victoria Vaults, in Nunnery Lane, on February 29.
The reason? “The singer and youngest member of the band still living here will be the last of us to turn 50 in February and in his words, ‘Let’s do it before one of us dies’,” reveals trumpet player Matthew “Duck” Hardy, now 50 and a professional musician.
“Our last gig was in January 1989 and most of us haven’t seen each other for 30 years. Now we want to get as many people from York’s late ‘80s music scene down to the gig for a huge reunion.”
In the soul and funk line-up on February 29 will be Hardy; business development manager Chris Turnbull, newly turned 50 next month, on vocals and guitar; IT consultant Sean Rochester, 53, on bass; cinema owner Nigel Dennis, 52, on drums, and retired police officer turned Criminology MSc mature student Mark Pearson, 52, on saxophone.
Not there, but there by the wonder of a video link, will be ex-pat trombonist and urban dog trainer Paul Shelbourne, 49, from his home in Brisbane.
Five Minutes in the 1980s, when they were four, before they became six, although they were never five! From left to right: Nigel Dennis, Sean Rochester, Mark Pearson and Chris Turnbull. Matthew “Duck” Hardy and Paul Shelbourne joined later
“We’ll be playing original, danceable, driving Northern Soul-esque music with hard- hitting catchy brass riffs and a couple of covers thrown in near the end,” says Matthew, introducing a set list featuring The Party; Smile; Sequels; Merry-go-round; Bridge In Time; Happy Home; Casanova; Could It Be; This Innocent Kiss; Only A Fool; Soul On Fire; Cornflake Packet; Time Will Tell; B Derdela; All The Daughters and Heatwave.
Back in their day, Five Minutes played York Arts Centre and Harry’s Bar, in Micklegate; Temple Hall, York campus of the College of Ripon and York St John; Central Hall, University of York; the Gimcrack pub (now flats), in Fulford Road, and Bretton Hall (now the Yorkshire Sculpture Park), near Wakefield.
Come February 29, Five Minutes will be back in action for rather more than five minutes, preceded by a DJ set by Rocky from Sweatbox, but why were/are they called Five Minutes?
“I’ve absolutely no idea why, as it started off as a four-piece and ended up as a six-piece!” says Matthew. “When Paul joined, the Evening Press photographer took a photo of us in the courtyard of Ye Olde Starre Inn, on Stonegate, and the paper did a write-up under the headline ‘Six appeal for Five Minutes’.”
What’s in a name?
Five Minutes start their set or encore with the instrumental B Derdela, so named after saxophonist Mark Pearson asked how singer Chris Turnbull wanted him to play the sax line. Chris gave him the note and the rhythm: B…derdela!
York artist Harland Miller stands by his York, So Good They Named It Once mock book cover at York Art Gallery on Friday morning. Picture: Charlotte Graham
AS his biggest-ever solo show, Harland Miller: York, So Good They Named It Once, opens in his home city at York Art Gallery, what is Harland saying about York in that picture title on a retro book cover, now replicated on posters, mugs, key rings, fridge magnets and tote bags?
“People have thought ‘York, So Good They Named It Once’ must be satirical, comparing York to New York, whereas I thought I was riffing on York being first; being very important way before New York – and a Roman capital.
“It was also a place of so many firsts for me; where I did my first paper round, and through these streets I can go and remember things that happened to me. Like my first kiss on some old wasteland on Taddy Road [Tadcaster Road], that’s now a Tesco.
Back to front: Harland Miller walks towards his Pelican Books spoof cover York, So Good They Named It Once. Picture: Charlotte Graham
“And just round the corner from here, behind the library, I smoked my
first joint. That’s why I got hooked on books…because I was by the library!
“This gallery is where I first saw paintings. Is it a dream to be back
here? The answer is ‘No’, because, as a boy, it would have been foolish to
dream of such a thing.
“But unless I’m about to wake up back behind the library, I sense this is the moment to thank so many people. I certainly wouldn’t be here without my mum [now 95], who’s travelled all the way from Dringhouses to be here tonight, but I want to thank everyone not once, but twice.”
Harland Miller: York, So Good They Named It Once, featuring his Penguin Book Covers, Pelican Bad Weather Paintings and Letter Paintings and Recent Work, runs at York Art Gallery until May 31.
Stagecoach Academy Senior Choir: taking part in the fifth York Community Choir Festival. Picture: Michael Oakes
THE fifth York Community Choir Festival will raise
the roof at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, from March 7 to 14
This annual event “celebrates the inclusivity of
making music in groups of all ages and friendship across the generations” by
bringing people together to share the joy of singing in seven concerts, each
featuring at least four different choirs.
“Choirs will be coming from
Easingwold in the north, Garrowby and Stamford Bridge in the east and
Knaresborough and Tadcaster in the west and south, as well as from York itself,”
says festival organiser Graham Mitchell, the JoRo’s company
secretary, fundraising and events director and trustee.
York charity Musical Connections combats
loneliness and isolation in older people by running regular music sessions in
community locations across York, and their 40-strong pensioners’ choir, The
Rolling Tones,will be taking part for the first time.
Performing too will be choirs from Wigginton Primary School, Robert Wilkinson Primary Academy,the secondary-age choir of Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate, and the “younger” adults of Dunnington Community Choir in a special matinee on March 14.
Another group of primary-school age, appropriately named Starlings, from the Hempland area of York, will sing in the Friday (March 13) concert. Secondary school-age choirs taking part will be Tutti Amici and Stagecoach Academy Choir, who have both excelled in previous festivals, and two Huntington School choirs will appear for the first time.
Dunnington Community Choir: emotion in motion in the joy of singing. Picture: Michael Oakes
York singer and tutor Jessa Liversidge, who runs her Singing For All sessions every week in Clements Hall, South Bank, York, and in Easingwold, says: “Many singers who attend my groups testify that their lives have been transformed by our weekly sessions of informal singing, tea, cake and good company.
“Looking around the room at the happy faces and
seeing everyone leave afterwards with a spring in their step is evidence enough
for me of the wonderful power of a good old sing.”
York has workplaces with choirs that employers encourage as being good for morale, among them Aviva’s Vivace! Choir and York Hospital’s Wellbeing Choir, which combines staff, volunteers and patients in one lively group in weekly sessions. Vivace! will open the festival and the hospital choir will appear on the last night.
Graham says: “I’m particularly pleased that we can
include both young and old and bring the generations together in the same
concerts. The benefits of singing have been widely researched and findings show
that communal singing has far-reaching benefits for health, happiness and
general wellbeing.
“We’re so lucky to have such a variety of choirs in
and around York, most of which welcome new members with open arms. No need to
be able to read music; just a desire to join in and sing!”
Concerts
will take place on March 7, 11, 12, 13 and 14 at 7.30pm; March 8, 4pm, and March
14, 2pm. The full list of who will be singing when can be found at
josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Tickets are on sale on 01904 501935, via josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk or in person from the JoRo box office in Haxby Road, with savings if buying five or more tickets. All proceeds will be donated to the Joseph Rowntree Theatre charity to help to maintain and improve facilities at this community venue.
The Blue Light Theatre Company members with representatives of York Against Cancer and the Motor Neurone Disease Association (York) at the cheque presentation at York’s Ambulance Station. All pictures:: Scott Atkinson
THE Blue Light Theatre Company took to the stage once again in January
at Acomb Working Men’s Club, York, to raise money for York charities York
Against Cancer and Motor Neurone Disease Association (York).
“We’re thrilled to announce that we managed to match last year’s amount
of £3,000 – despite our production costs rising,” says cast member Mark Friend,
who played Pinocchio in Oh! What A Circus on January 24, 25 and 29 to 31.
“The money raised has been split equally between the two charities. We’ve
received fantastic support from many of North Yorkshire’s tourist attractions
and businesses; without their generous support, we would not have been able to
raise this amount.”
The Blue Light Theatre Company in Oh! What A Circus at Acomb Working Men’s Club
Oh! What A Circus was the seventh pantomime performed by The Blue Light Theatre Company, made up of paramedics, ambulance dispatchers, York Hospital staff and members of York’s theatre scene, who have raised well over £10,000 over those years.
Writer and co-producer Perri Ann Barley says: “It’s great to see our
audience come back year after year to support us, plus lots of new audience as
the word gets around just how good our productions are.
“Work is already underway for Panto 2021 and the challenge is on to make
it even bigger and better than the last. The title will be announced later in
the year”.
Mark Friend, as Pinocchio, in Oh! What A Circus
Last Wednesday, the Blue Light company met representatives from York
Against Cancer and Motor Neurone Disease Association (York) MNDA at York’s
Ambulance Station to present them with their cheques.
Julie Russell, from York Against Cancer, says: “Thank you very much for
this generous donation. It will help us make a difference to cancer patients
and their families’ lives. The Blue Light Theatre Company really do know how to
put ‘fun’ into fundraising. Thank you.”
In the cheque presentation picture are Julie Russell, from York Against Cancer; James Chambers, Jen Dodd, Colin Pearson and Val Corder, from MNDA (York) and The Blue Light Theatre Company’s Zoe Paylor, Perri Ann Barley, Christine Friend, Beth Waudby, Mark Friend, Devon Wells, Mick Waudby, Craig Barley and Glen Gears.
Film-maker Tony Palmer with The Beatles’ John Lennon
A RUSH of ticket sales has prompted a change of venue for The Rock Goes
To The Movies evening with BAFTA-winning filmmaker Tony Palmer next month in
Harrogate.
This exclusive Harrogate Film Festival event on March 12 will switch from RedHouse Originals art gallery to The Clubhouse at Cold Bath Brewing Co, on Kings Road, only five minutes from the original location on Cheltenham Mount.
“The evening sold out all its stickers at £12 a pop so quickly that we’ve have had to move to a bigger location,” says Harrogate Advertiser journalist and Charm event promoter Graham Chalmers, a stalwart of the Harrogate music scene, who will be hosting the Q&A with the legendary film-maker, now 77.
“That means extra tickets have been put on sale and are available via the box office at Harrogate Theatre.”
All existing tickets are still valid for the new venue for the 7pm event that will combine a film screening with the Q&A session about Palmer’s work with The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, Rory Gallagher, Cream, Frank Zappa, The Who, Donovan and many more.
The London-born film-maker and cultural critic has more than 100 films to his name, ranging from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher (Irish Tour ’74) and Frank Zappa (200 Motels), to his classical profiles of Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn, John Osborne, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Wagner, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams and more besides.
Over the past 50 years, Palmer has received more than
40 international prizes, including 12 gold medals from the New York Film
Festival, along with numerous BAFTAs and Emmy Awards.
The Beatles: rare screening of Tony Palmer’s film of the Fab Four will be a highlight of the Harrogate Film Festival event on March 12
Palmer, who served an apprenticeship with Ken Russell and
Jonathan Miller, made the landmark film All My Loving, the first ever about pop
music history, first broadcast in 1968.
He was responsible too for the iconic live film Cream
Farewell Concert, shot at the supergroup’s last-ever show at the Royal Albert
Hall: a memorable night with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in 1968.
Harrogate Film Festival founder Adam Chandler says: “Tony Palmer’s glittering career deserves such an event, so we can’t wait to welcome him. We’re delighted this film-making legend is so popular and are grateful to our venue partners, Cold Bath Brewing Co and RedHouse Originals, for enabling this exciting event to happen.”
Host Chalmers says: “Palmer is the greatest arts documentary filmmaker Britain has produced in the past 50 years and personally knew most of the greatest figures in the classical music world, as well as rock music.
“The fact he’s making the journey to Harrogate as a stand-alone event shows how highly regarded Harrogate Film Festival is nationally and shows that Harrogate, despite appearances, is a town with a genuine rock’n’roll pedigree.”
RedHouse Originals gallery previously has played host to Pop Art doyen Sir Peter Blake and still will be involved in next month’s event, hanging classic 1960s’ artwork and photography at The Clubhouse and curating the music playlist for the after-show party.
The sleeve artwork for All You Need Is Love, Tony Palmer’s 1977-1978 series on The Story Of Popular Music
Presented by Chalmers in conjunction with Harrogate Film Society, Rock Goes To The Movies will feature a rare screening of Palmer’s film about The Beatles that featured in his All You Need Is Love TV series, with a script by Fab Four insider Derek Taylor, plus clips from Palmer’s Cream Farewell Concert film.
Tickets available from harrogatetheatre.co.uk, on 01423 502116 or in person from the Harrogate Theatre box office.More information on the 2020 Harrogate Film Festival at harrogatefilm.co.uk.
Any profits from the evening will go to Harrogate Film Society and Harrogate Film Festival.
Tony Palmer’s ten music films
1. All You Need Is Love,1975-1976,17-part series on the history of American
Popular Music from Bing Crosby to The Beatles.
2. Bird On A Wire, 1972, featuring Leonard.
3. All My Loving,1968, including The Who, The Beatles and more.
4. Cream Farewell Concert 1968.
5. 200 Motels – Frank Zappa,1971.
6. Rory Gallagher – Irish Tour,1974.
7. A Time There Was, 1979, profile of composer Benjamin Britten.
8. Tangerine Dream – Live In Coventry Cathedral,1975.
9. Ginger Baker In Africa,1971.
10. Wagner – By Charles Wood, music conducted by Georg Solti, photographed
by Vittorio Storaro; with Richard Burton, Vanessa Redgrave and Laurence Olivier,1983.
Alice Wilson: Slack Habits finale tomorrow; solo album next month
YORK singer, artist and Ph.D student Alice Wilson will sing with Slack Habits for the last time at their Old White Swan debut in Goodramgate, York, tomorrow before focusing on her solo album.
For the February 22 gig, she steps in for departed
lead singer, Marsha Knight, re-joining bassist Iain Marchant, drummer Martin
Wilson, guitarist Andy Elmslie and keyboards player Josh Hill, with whom Alice
used to perform in an earlier incarnation of the York band.
Alice and songwriter, guitarist and producer Andy
Wilson – no relation – are progressing quickly with the album’s recording
sessions at his home studio in Holgate, with Andy aiming to have it fully mixed
and mastered in time for a March launch.
Alice, nearing 30, says she has “looked to music for escapism for even
longer than she has looked to books or alcohol”.
“ I was heavily tricked into thinking theatre was not a career,” says Alice Wilson
“My first forays were into musical
theatre when I was at Millthorpe School, then Fulford Sixth Form,” she reveals,
recalling her favourite role being Tallulah in Bugsy Malone when she was 16.
“I did theatre through GCSE to A-level
but was heavily tricked into thinking theatre was not a career.”
Instead, Alice has pursued a scholarly path, starting with joint degree honours in anthropology and sociology at Durham University, “so that I could do both science and arts,” she says.
Next came an MA in urban sociology at
the University of York, specialising in housing. “I’ve blagged my way into
pretty good educational institutions as a result of being a working-class queer,”
she says.
Writing her thesis, creating her art, singing: all in a day’s passage for Alice Wilson
“I’m now doing a Ph.D over the next
three years, again at the University of York, where I’m trying to make
radically affordable houses available for the people who need them.”
As part of her Ph.D in sociology with “heavy
fraternisation with environmental science”, Alice is building a tiny house in
the garden of her Heslington home, 30 square metres in size.
“You might think it’s a glorified shed,
but it’s not that glorified,” she says. “It’s a timber-framed structure with
super-insulation made from re-claims from demolition sites.
“Ideally it does inform my Ph.D, so I want to film it in progress, as well as writing a thesis, doing my art and singing all the while – though it all leaves minimal time for singing.”
Alice Wilson “hopes you enjoy the ear feel of her voice”
The tiny house, once complete, will have three rooms downstairs – a main living room, a tiny kitchen and tiny bathroom – and a stepladder will lead to the mezzanine level above: a crawl floor where you can sleep, says Alice. “It qualifies for recreational use, like a summerhouse, so I’ll use it mainly for painting in.”
As her official profile says: “Alice draws
and paints @neither.both.illustrations and post pictures of herself at the
gym @neither.both. Alice recycles, votes left, and worries about how
productive she is being, like all other millennial snowflakes. She hopes
you enjoy the ear feel of her voice.”
As Slack Habits’ songwriter, Andy most certainly enjoys that “ear feel of her voice”. “Alice sang with Slack Habits for a while, playing the Blues Bar in Harrogate, the National Harley Davidson Convention, pubs, festivals, Lendal Cellars and the Little Festival of Live Music in York, and being featured on BBC Introducing, before abandoning us to go into academia,” he says.
“But I didn’t want to let her talent go, so ten months ago we started working together again.”
Andy Wilson and Alice Wilson working on Alice’s album at his Holgate studio in York
The result is such songs as The Other
Woman, Put That Down and Cabaret Queen. “There’s also a mash-up of Led Zep’s
Whole Lotta Love that turns into Whole Lotta Last Waltz,” says Alice. “That
turns it into being a song about domestic violence.”
Andy adds: “I’ve happened to write and
produce for three or four female singers in recent years and the songs on Alice’s
album tell stories about all kinds of different fictional women, good, happy, sad or bad.
“When I started working with Alice, I
was stunned by her talents and charisma but I was also excited by her ability
to ‘become’ the characters she sings about.
So, it was obvious that she would be the perfect musical partner in an
album project that had been brewing for a while.
“Luckily she agreed and now it’s nearly ready. I hope people are going to be moved and entertained by Alice’s ‘other women’.”
All being well, that opportunity should come next month. In the meantime, watch her singing Slack Habits’ “absolute bangers”, ranging from rock and electric blues to smoky ballads, reggae and funk, from 9pm tomorrow (February 22) at the Old White Swan, Goodramgate, York.
Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita
ITALIAN film director
Federico Fellini will be the focus of a Vintage Sundays retrospective season at
City Screen, York, from March 8.
Dave Taylor, City
Screen’s marketing manager, says: “We’re delighted to present five films from
the maestro of Italian cinema on Sundays at midday throughout March and
stretching into April.”
First up, on March 8, will be Fellini’s first international success, 1953’s I Vitelloni (PG), a nakedly autobiographical film, set in his hometown of Rimini, that follows the lives of five young vitelloni, or layabouts.
1956’s Night Of
Cabira (PG), on March 15, bridges the transition between Fellini’s early
neo-realist period and his later more fantastical works. His bittersweet and
eloquent glimpse into the life and dreams of an eternally optimistic prostitute
in Rome later provided the inspiration for the musical Sweet Charity.
La Dolce Vita (12A), from 1960, is an era-defining sensation that chronicles seven nights and seven dawns in the life of gossip journalist Marcello in a vast widescreen fresco of the glitterati of Rome at the height of Italy’s post-war economic boom. Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg star.
Fellini’s 1963 film, 8½ (15), on March 29, is a semi-autobiographical portrait of creative block and one of the great films about film-making. Beleaguered auteur Guido is unable to finish the film he has planned, luxuriating in his inner conflicts.
The Fellini finale
will be 1965’s Juliet Of The Spirits (15) on April 5. His first colour feature
is an exercise in the neuroses and fantasies of a woman, played by Fellini’s
wife, Giulietta Masina, who suspects that her husband is betraying her.
All the films will start at 12 noon. Bookings can be made on 0871 902 5747, at picturehouses.com or in person at the Coney Street Picturehouse cinema.
