CASTLE Howard’s bumper weekend of music, dance and picnics begins with tonight’s Café Mambo Ibiza Classics.
Presented in the grounds of the North Yorkshire stately home by LPH Concerts & Events, the line-up of deck talent on dance anthem duty features NYC superstar DJ Armand Van Helden; Lola’s Theme hitmaker Shapeshifters, performing a new live show replete with vocalists; DJ and saxophone duo Lovely Laura & Ben Santiago and Café Mambo regular Erik Hagleton.
Tomorrow’s Castle Howard Proms marks the return to North Yorkshire of Welsh opera star, BBC Radio Wales presenter and car insurance advert regular Wynne Evans, performing with the London Gala Orchestra under conductor Stephen Bell.
Broadway and West End actress Marisha Wallace will be Evans’s fellow soloist in an evening of late-summer picnics, Proms classics, songs from the musicals, flag-waving favourites, a Spitfire flyover, laser displays and a firework finale.
Closing out the weekend will be Sunday’s Abba Symphonic concert, when star performers from the West End production of Mamma Mia!, Rob Fowler and Sharon Sexton among them, take to the stage, backed by a rock band and the Heart of England Orchestra.
Grammy Award winner Steve Sidwell has given epic-scaled arrangements to 25 Abba numbers, from Waterloo to Gimme Gimme Gimme, Fernando to SOS. Once more, concertgoers are welcome to bring picnics.
Tickets are still on sale from lph.live, as well as on the door (when prices increase). Parking will be available on site, free of charge. Visitors should follow the directional signage on arrival. Blue badge parking is available too. Camping chairs are allowed at all three events.
Gates open at 5pm each evening.