La Palatine: “Building a happy hour around two important Italian visitors to Baroque Spain”
York Early Music Christmas Festival: La Palatine and Ensemble Augelletti, National Centre for Early Music, York, December 8 and 9
JUST as the nights turned chill, Early Music’s Christmas celebration in York blazed into life with two young groups determined to bring warmth. In their different ways, they succeeded.
La Palatine’s Fiesta Galante built a happy hour around two important Italian visitors to Baroque Spain, Domenico Scarlatti and Luigi Boccherini, framing them with lesser-known but equally talented locals.
Directed from the harpsichord by Guillaume Haldenwang, La Palatine’s complement includes soprano Marie Théoleyre, backed up by violin, cello and theorbo or guitar.
José de Nebra (1702-1768) is a name not as well known in this country as it should be, but he staged more than 50 zarzuela-style works in Madrid, while holding down a church job. His punchy rhythms reinforced by strumming were right up Théoleyre’s street, playing to the mezzo side of her voice.
In Nebra’s Que Contrario, Señor, which involved two arias, one song-like, one cheerful, Théoleyre delivered some tricky coloratura as she ornamented repeats, and her colleagues backed her to the hilt, especially violinist Murielle Pfister, who sometimes doubled her line.
Her style was less idiomatic, although equally fiery, in two higher-lying arias by Scarlatti, where she tended to fly off onto top notes without covering the tone.
More restrained was a trio sonata by Jose Herrando, although sunshine quickly re-emerged with Jeremy Nastasi’s account of Santiago de Murcia’s rhapsodic Marizapalos for solo guitar, which bordered on flamenco by the end. In such solo pieces, Nastasi would do well to face his audience so that his sound projects better into the audience.
A Boccherini cello sonata elicited much tricky double-stopping, which Cyril Poulet despatched briskly, especially in its central military allegro. A keyboard sonata by Scarlatti, K.144 in G (of no less than 555 that he wrote), enjoyed a smooth line at the hands of Haldenwang amid numerous deceptive cadences. A Spanish encore brought the full ensemble back into joyous life. More of that, please: it suits you perfectly.
Ensemble Augelletti: “A group whose enthusiasm is infectious”
The following evening saw Ensemble Augelletti, another quintet although all instrumental, take the stage in Pick A Card!, which highlighted some historical playing cards in the British Museum collection.
These were shown on a back-screen. They were amusing enough, although the link with the group’s Baroque programme was sometimes tenuous.
Olwen Foulkes, who is a dab hand on a variety of recorders, is the prime mover and most dominant voice among the Augellettis. But equally important to the ensemble’s success is the highly intelligent cello of Carina Drury, whose every note is attuned to what is going on around her. Her phrasing is exemplary.
She was largely responsible for the success of Bach’s Trio Sonata in G major, BWV 1039, especially in the incredibly active bass line of the concluding Presto. Its earlier Allegro had also generated terrific momentum. It was the group’s crowning glory.
Two dances from Purcell semi-operas were beautifully shaped and there was special entertainment in hearing Geminiani base his Third Trio Sonata on the folk-tune The Last Time I Came O’er The Moor.
After Handel at his most effervescent in part of a trio sonata, it was good to hear the dancing shepherds’ Piva from Messiah. It was immediately followed by Corelli’s Christmas’ Concerto Grosso, Op 6 No 8, moving gracefully from its dark opening through excitement into its closing lullaby. This was exactly what the festival needed.
Along the way we had appreciated Ellen Bundy’s lithe violin and Johan Lofving’s deft theorbo, but we had not heard quite enough from the harpsichord of Benedict Williams. Even so, this is a group whose enthusiasm is infectious.
Review by Martin Dreyer
York Early Music Christmas Festival runs until December 16. Full details at: ncem.co.uk. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Late Music presents Gemini, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, December 3
NICOLAS LeFanu’s 75th birthday earlier this year was celebrated in fine style by one of our most distinguished and long-lived groups, Gemini, itself only a year short of its half-century. Two of her own works framed eight others, including one by her husband David Lumsdaine.
Gemini is a flexible ensemble led from the clarinet by Ian Mitchell. Here he was joined by a piano trio for the premiere of LeFanu’s appropriately titled Gemini Quartet, newly commissioned and written only this summer.
As an opener it was designed to reflect how we welcome others, in a dozen or so brief “bagatelles” (her word), some of only a few seconds. It charms with surprises, moving seamlessly between comfort and anguish, impressionism and rhythm, sometimes noisy, more often gentle, using the instruments in a variety of different groupings. Gemini delivered it with loving care. I could only have wished its 13 minutes had lasted longer.
At the end of the evening, more than two hours later, we heard her Piano Trio of 2003. Its single movement is rhapsodic, all its material developed from high harmonics and tremolos, which are soon amplified by a piano solo. It charts a fascinating course between nerviness and relaxation, the two moods changing between strings and piano, as dialogue influences their responses to one another.
As always with LeFanu, her orchestration is imaginative. It eventually reaches a harmonious conclusion, with trills in the piano as the strings disappear into the ether. Gemini interacted intuitively throughout.
Only a handful of the other works on the programme reached these levels. One of them was another premiere, David Lancaster’s Hell’s Bells Bagatelles, inspired by church bells, especially those of York Minster, and conceived over the last five years.
In his words, its five sections may reflect ecstasy or doom, but within those extremes his use of rhythm verges on dance most appealingly and pizzicato cleverly and regularly evokes the percussive ping of bells.
Lumsdaine’s Blue Upon Blue (1991), for unaccompanied cello, also fell pleasingly on the ear, combining slow melody with more urgent, un-tuned ‘commentary’ from wood, gut and hair, and transitioning between the two by means of glissandos. Sophie Harris teased out its essential lyricism with focused intensity.
Thomas Adès’s suite from his 2005 opera The Tempest was predictably clear-cut in its reactions to six Shakespearean scenarios, always with an ear to vocal characteristics in the four instruments.
Space forbids discussion of the other works, most of which fell into the category of vignettes. For the record they included two pieces without piano, Dorothy Ker’s Water Mountain (1999) and Blaze And Fall (2017) by Charlotte Bray, Martin Suckling’s Three Venus Haikus (2009), setting poetry by George Bruce, and two lockdown pieces for solo piano (Aleksander Szram) by Janet Graham, Church Blackbird and Advent Thoughts. All had something positive to offer.
But most of all we were reminded just how valuable an asset Nicola LeFanu is to York, Yorkshire and well beyond. Many happy returns!
Nicholas Carter: Musical director of the Micklegate Singers
Late Music presents Micklegate Singers, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviouragte, York, December 3
LATE Music’s latest double-header – two concerts in one day on the first Saturday of autumn and winter months – welcomed the Micklegate Singers under Nicholas Carter at mid-day.
They belong under the Late Music umbrella: they established a reputation early on, under their founder-director Dennis Freeborn, for tackling new and often challenging repertoire.
This one was seasonal, entitled And There Were Shepherds…, but wisely included several Renaissance pieces alongside some 20th century favourites and others on which the ink was barely dry, the most recent being a new commission from James Else enjoying its premiere.
The Road Of Evening is a setting of Walter de la Mare’s Nod, which speaks of an old shepherd and his dog, Slumber-soon, and by inference of God tending his flock through the ages. Its Christmas message is negligible, but Else’s modal evocation of serene solitude is effective, if without focusing on any one aspect of the poetry.
Another premiere came with Absence, a setting by Joe Bates of various texts taken from William Penn’s More Fruits Of Solitude. This was the second of three pieces commissioned by the Micklegates from student composers at the University of York.
Bates’s penchant for parallel fifths is reminiscent of Vaughan Williams, although his use of two texts in conjunction, one in female voices, one in male, is certainly unusual – but it works. Humming later contributes to a sense of resolution from the conflicts of life; again, not specifically seasonal, but offering imaginative food for thought.
There were four other 21st century pieces. Bob Chilcott’s moving setting of Clive Sansom’s The Shepherd’s Carol (2000) was smoothly atmospheric, while the angular lines and bouncy rhythms of Cecilia McDowall’s Now May We Singen (2008) were the best projected of the evening.
The climax of U A Fanthorpe’s stunning poem BC – AD was not quite captured by David Bednall’s chordal setting of 2013. More effectively meditative was Alexander L’Estrange’s Epiphany Carol of the same year.
A Jonathan Dove lullaby joined other established favourites by Holst, Leighton, Poulenc and Richard Rodney Bennett, whose sensitivity to words was especially notable. The three Renaissance pieces, healthy reminders of a 500-year tradition of Christmas music, were by Palestrina, Lassus and Dering, all keenly negotiated.
The Micklegates tended to go easy on their diction in slower numbers, but in general we should rejoice that they are back from lockdown in fine fettle.
ARMAGEDDON is coming to York on Tuesday, January 10 2023 at 7.30pm precisely.
It’s not the end of the world as we know it – and I feel fine – but the name of grouchy comedian, actor, screenwriter, director, singer, podcaster and awards ceremony host Ricky Gervais’s new tour show, booked into York Barbican for that night.
Should you not have been paying attention, Gervais, 61, is the creator, writer and star of The Office, Extras, Derek and two Netflix series of After Life. “I never doubted a comedy about a suicidal man whose wife dies of cancer could be anything other than hilarious,” he blogged of his latest hit.
In 2019, Gervais opened his SuperNature world tour at York Barbican on May 13, going on to play a second gig the following night, when taking a sceptical look at the absurdity of superstition, magic and all unsubstantiated beliefs, all leading to a celebratory conclusion that nature is already super enough.
Ricky Gervais: The face of Humanity at York Barbican in February 2017
On his previous York Barbican visit, on February 28 2017 on his Humanity tour, he high-tackled such taboo subjects as rape, death and terrorism, as well as nut allergies, on his Humanity tour.
Gervais’s nasal Estuary English comic delivery and disbelieving tone had earlier been aired in York on his Animals travels in 2002 and at two sold-out nights on his Politics tour at the Grand Opera House in April 2004.
What can be expected in Armageddon next March when Gervais puts the ‘barb’ into the Barbican?
The Guardian’s two-star review of this month’s “weak and boorish” show – ouch! – at the Apollo, Manchester suggests he will be ripping into “woke over-earnestness, the contradictions of modern political correctness and so-called cultural appropriation”, while “imagining how it all might end for our ‘one species of narcissistic ape’”. One scathing review in the Guardian? It’s not the end of the world, Ricky.
Did you know?
RICKY Gervais’s The Office is the most successful British comedy of all time, shown in more than 90 countries with seven remakes.
Too late! Update at 14.53pm, 16/12/2022
IT is the end of the world for non-ticket holders for Armageddon! Ricky Gervais’s January 10 gig at York Barbican and a hastily added January 11 show have both sold out today…in 27 minutes.
Out Of Sight, digital photomontage, by Adele Karmazyn, from her City Screen Picturehouse exhibition in York
INSPIRED by October’s York Unlocked event, York Open Studios regular Adele Karmazyn is opening doors to Hidden Spaces in her new exhibition.
Embracing the opportunity to visit the city’s historic hidden places, she took photographs on the way, and now those photos form the backdrop for her new body of digital photomontages on show in the City Screen Picturehouse café, in Coney Street, York, until January 14 2023.
Each piece in Hidden Spaces evolves into an individual story when Adele brings in her 19th century characters, taken from old cabinet photographs, and combines these with other photographs of objects, landscapes and creatures.
By merging multiple layers and concentrating on light and depth, she creates “realistic, believable scenarios, which at the same time could never possibly be”.
Adele Karmazyn at work in her Holgate garden studio
Here CharlesHutchPress asks questions to send Adele into her flights of fantasy…or maybe ghost stories of lives that could have been.
What drew you to the City Screen café as a location for an exhibition? Is this the first time that you have exhibited there?
“I love the City Screen building with the river backdrop. I’ve exhibited once before upstairs but never in the café. It’s a wonderful spot for my work, being full of stories and imagination, just like the films on show there.”
Which hidden places in York did you visit during the York Unlocked weekend in October?
“York Unlocked was a great opportunity for me to take lots of photographs to use in my work. I ran around the city like a headless chicken! I was particularly impressed with the Masonic Hall and the York Guildhall, which I‘d never been to before. I’m sure these spaces will feature not only in this collection but again in future collections.”
Cat And Canaries, by Adele Karmazyn
How did the buildings spark your imagination for Hidden Spaces?
“I was already planning to create a collection centred around the old (Grays Court) and present Treasurer’s House, which I’d visited and photographed already. So when I heard about this event, I decided ‘Hidden Spaces’ could be any historic building in York.”
How did you settle on that title?
“Well, when I choose a title, I spend a moment looking at the images as they are ‘in progress’. They all look like secretive places, hidden away from the crowds. This is the feeling I got also when these doors opened, and I got to see behind these (often) closed doors.”
Why do creatures as well as humans feature so prominently in your work?
“I think there’s a creature of some sort in every image, be it a bird, a butterfly or a beetle. I feel it brings more life to the image and creates a connection between the character and nature. I also love it when you don’t always see everything on first glance, and hiding some creature makes the images more interesting and surprising.”
The 19th century photograph of a father and daughter, adapted by Adele in Cat And Canaries
How long does it take to create each multi-layered work?
“Some pieces flow really nicely and I can complete it in a few weeks, but some can have a rough ride, where I get stuck and nothing makes sense or I don’t have the right character.
“I may have ‘something’ but there’s a missing piece and these can sit in my folders for months. My images are a tornado of imagination and chance. It’s a really fun and also sometimes frustrating process, but when that magic happens and the ideas and images come together, it’s really exciting and why I love working this way.”
Further explore your assertion that each piece features a “realistic, believable scenario, which at the same time could never possibly be”…
“Digital collage artists can create so many scenarios, from totally surreal and roughly pieced-together images to the subtle changes of a realistic photograph.”
All Of A Flutter, by Adele Karmazyn
“What I’m trying to achieve is an image that looks almost painted, as opposed to ‘photographic’, and by mixing water where there would never be, or a cloud in a room, or wild animals inside a Victorian skirt, so your eyes see this is actually happening in the image but the brain knows this could not actually happen. I believe it’s called ‘Magic Realism’.”
Are they images of ghosts coming alive or of lives that could have been?
“I like to think of it as giving them another life, full of adventure and stories untold. Of course there is a ghost-like quality to the images but nothing too dark.”
Is it lazy to label them as “surrealist”?
“A couple of my pieces I would say are bordering on surreal, but mostly they are dreamlike images, theatrical, imaginative and curious.”
Two Girls, 19th century photograph, whose image re-emerges in Adele Karmazyn’s All Of A Flutter
Are there hidden meanings to these Hidden Spaces?
“If the viewer finds a meaning, then that is what it is. I like to leave the interpretation up to each individual. I do like to work with a theme, and some have meaning to me that may mean something entirely different to someone else.”
Who would be your influences? Magritte? Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam? Maybe even Glen Baxter?
“I do love the work of Magritte. I follow many modern-day artists who inspire me, such as Daria Pertilli, Maggie Taylor and Christian Schloe.”
“My images are a tornado of imagination and chance,” says Adele. Witness Into The Lights, above
There seems to be a balance between humour and something more troubling: the images are frozen in time past awaiting release in the viewer’s imagination that could take both the incumbents and the viewer anywhere. See above: Those Canada Geese in flight….how did they get in there? Where are they going? Why are they in there? Will they get out? So many possibilities! Like in Tracy Chevalier’s novel, inspired by Johannes Vermeer’s Dutch Golden Age oil painting Girl With A Pearl Earring. Discuss…
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if a whole story was written from an image. This is what I love about the process of image making. I start with nothing, then I find a character, then a space, then things get thrown in and taken out and a story evolves and changes.
“My best-selling image is ‘Survival’, a picture of a young girl sailing in an upturned umbrella with a bird and a nest on her head. Part of the success of this image I think is the girl herself.
“She speaks volumes just to look at her. She is strong-willed and she will survive! This could easily be a still from a film and the rest of the story is up to the viewer to imagine.”
“The young girl is strong-willed and she will survive,” says Adele of Survival, the York digital photomontage artist’s best-selling work
What’s coming up for you in 2023?
“Next year begins with York Open Studios [April 15, 16, 22 and 23], hopefully followed by Saltaire Open Houses arts trail [May 27 to 29] (although this hasn’t been confirmed yet).
“I’m bringing in oil paintings and working on creating curiosity boxes too, as something new to accompany my digital images.
“I’ve also written a children’s book, which I’m now illustrating, so it’s all go in my Holgate garden studio. The book is called ‘The Life Of A Bee, It’s Not For Me’ and it’s a rhyming story for ages three to five, I would say. It’s all about a bee called Clive, who saves the world with the help of the swallows…I don’t want to give any more away!
“It’s very exciting as I may have a contract…once I send off the illustrations, which is my project for in between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.”
The exhibition poster for Adele Karmazyn’s Hidden Spaces in the City Screen café
Jane Dignum at work on a linocut print in her studio conservatory
THE contrasting styles of York artists Jane Dignum and Mark Druery unite in Village Gallery’s winter exhibition in Colliergate, York.
York Printmakers’ member Jane studied Fine Art at Leeds College of Art and Design, where she was introduced to a variety of printmaking methods. She tends to favour linocut but still experiments with other methods.
“Jane loves to create images showing plants and wildlife and often includes scenes from her allotment or things she sees when out walking,” says gallery owner Simon Main. “She finds inspiration everywhere and always has her sketchbook and camera with her, so that she can make visual notes wherever she goes.”
Beehives And Sunflowers, by Jane Dignum
Jane prints her linocut images on her etching press, often on handmade paper and using specialist oil-based printing inks.
Mark, who trained at Canterbury School of Art & Design, describes himself as inseparably both an architect and artist.
“Drawing has always been an integral part of his studies and later his professional life as an architect,” says Simon. “He always carries a sketchbook and camera around, often stopping to study interesting buildings and features.
Shambles, York, by Mark Druery
“His favourite medium at work and in art is the drawing pen, loving the immediacy of the medium and the decisiveness of the pen stroke, when committing pen to paper. He then applies watercolour over the pen strokes.”
Bold, colourful, nature -inspired prints versus original detailed architectural studies of York form Jane Dignum and Mark Druery’s exhibition, running at Village Gallery until January 21 2023. Opening hours are: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm.
To complement its regularly changing art exhibitions, Village Gallery stocks Lalique glass and crystal, along with jewellery, art, ceramics, glass and sculpture, much of the work made by York artists. “Perfect for Christmas gifting,” suggests Simon.
Patrick Kelly: Journalist, editor and now novelist
YORK journalist and editor Patrick Kelly’s first foray into “the novel-writing business”, A Hard Place, will be launched in the Upstairs Bar at Everyman York, Blossom Streetr, York, at 6pm tonight (12/12/2022).
Inspired by his own childhood in Belfast, his ill-fated love story is set against the backdrop of a political event that foreshadowed the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Inside every journalist is a novel, the saying goes – even if Austrian writer and journalist Karl Kraus (1874-1936) quipped “and if he’s smart, he’ll keep it there” – and now Patrick is joining that club, bringing all his experience of long service to the fourth estate.
What’s more he is doing so in York, the city where Kate Atkinson, Matt Haig and Fiona Mozley’s novel-writing talents blossomed.
“There’s an awful lot of writing going on in York, and that’s helpful if you’re going to write a novel – which I discovered was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be,” says Patrick.
“As a journalist, you think it will just be writing a long story, but it turns out it’s a completely different animal.
“What I found useful in this city is that there are lots of writers and writers’ groups, and I must praise Lizzi Linklater, who was a creative writing tutor at the University of York (and is now Teaching Fellow for Creative Writing at the university’s Centre for Lifelong Learning at Heslington).
“She convened this little group that met once a month at the library [now York Explore] and encouraged each other in our writing.”
How did Patrick find the novel-writing experience? “It can be very lonely writing, and even if you’re writing from home as a journalist, part of the job is going out and meeting people,” he says. “Writing a novel, you have to create an atmosphere of your own, but the great thing about being part of a group is that you do it in an atmosphere where you’re willing to accept criticism, and that criticism is informed criticism from people who are doing the same things as you are.
“When you show your writing to friends and family, they usually say, ‘I don’t like it, but I don’t know why,’ whereas fellow writers can spot common mistakes or things that don’t sound quite right.”
Lizzi Linklater’s group morphed into another one. “Now there are two or three around York, and York St Jon University now does a creative writing programme with poetry readings in various places around the city,” says Patrick.
So, to the business of writing A Hard Place. “I knew I didn’t want to write a Troubles novel,” he says. “That’s been done to death, and there are some appalling novels…as well as good ones.
“I wanted to focus on Northern Ireland before the Troubles and maybe explain how the Troubles came to be, and also what it was like growing up there at that time.
“I left in 1973, pretty much at the start of the Troubles, but I had five years’ experience of what it was like before I left at 18 to study History and Politics at Warwick University.”
Those studies could be called on all these years later when writing the book. “It’s about looking at the evidence,” he says.
Patrick had grown up as a Roman Catholic living in a Protestant area of east Belfast. “Everything was more mixed in those days than it is now, which is one of the legacies of the Troubles,” he says. “Communities have become more divided, physically, geographically and politically.
“As a child, I would play with both Protestant and Catholic children. You went to a Catholic school, but your neighbourhood was mixed. I mainly played with Protestant children, and we all went to watch the Protestant football team because they were the local club.
“Those were the days when you were lifted over the turnstiles by friendly adults, and I saw George Best play at Windsor Park. He was a beacon on a dark day, a shining light who transcended the whole Protestant-Catholic thing.
“There’s now a programme to replaces sectarian murals with ones that are more acceptable: Bestie, Van Morrison, CS Lewis, because he was born in east Belfast.”
Patrick vowed to write about not only the roots of the Troubles but also about the society that existed in Northern Ireland at the time and just how different it was. “The storyline is based on a true incident, when the Northern Irish government employed an English academic, Sir John Lockwood, to decide on the siting of a new university,” he says.
“He was a knight of the realm, a Latin scholar, a man who had experience of setting up universities…in colonial Rhodesia, South Africa and Nigeria. So, he was the obvious man to go to Northern Ireland!
“He comes along with a bunch of his mates from English academia and a smattering of locals, but not a single Catholic among them.”
The assumption was that Derry/Londonderry would be the obvious place to site the university. “But the committee, at the end of their deliberations, decided not on Derry, the largest centre of population after Belfast, but on Coleraine, a small Protestant town some 20 miles from Derry, which had lobbied hard, and it caused a huge outcry.
“In the book, I try to be fair to Sir John, who was trying to do his best in a difficult situation he didn’t really understand, but it emerged that people high up in the Unionist Party had persuaded the Northern Ireland government not to place it in Derry.
“The reason being that they didn’t want a Catholic city to prosper, which having a university there definitely would have helped it to do. This was the 1960s, when the idea of an influx of politically minded students into a Catholic city was not considered desirable – though Derry now has a campus that’s part of the University of Ulster.”
In A Hard Place, Sir John Lockwood employs the entirely fictional David McMaster, a young English Oxford graduate, recruited in 1965 to help look for a site for the new university in Ulster. “His job is to act as secretary to the committee and to be Sir John’s eyes and ears in Northern Ireland when he’s elsewhere,” says Patrick.
“So, this young man, intelligent but naïve, finds himself at a complete loss within this world, but he makes a friend who shows him the ropes and, more importantly, he falls in love with a young Catholic girl, Catherine Connolly, and it’s their ill-starred love story that’s at the core of the book.
“He’s Protestant but not religious at all; she’s Catholic, religious, but quite critical and radical in her views, a political firebrand. Through their relationship, they learn something from each other.”
Patrick says that “when you start writing, you’re not entirely certain what they will do”, “but I I knew from the beginning of their relationship that it would not work out. I think I even say in the blurb on the back that it’s not going to be a happy ending.
“They’re in their 20s, she’s a student, reading English Literature, and they meet at the Maritime Hotel, in Belfast, where Van Morrison used to have a residency, when he was in the band Them, (so there’s a scene where Van sings Gloria).
“Anyway, I wanted to say something about how Northern Ireland was changing at the time, how young people were throwing off the shackles of their elders and enjoying a different kind of music – and who knows where it might have led, had it been allowed to develop [in Derry].
“I try to suggest what could have happened. If you think of all the new universities being built in the 1960s, like in York and Warwick, when the idea was to bring a new dynamic, to create a future economy and a society that was highly educated, open to the world and to new horizons.
“That was the political consensus at the time, for the Conservatives and Labour, that what you needed to do to prosper was to invest in education. So there’s something in the book about a lost opportunity, though I’m hoping the book is not a polemic.
“It’s not meant to be polemical; it’s a novel about a time and a place when opportunities were opening up but in Northern Ireland that vision was closed down because of a narrow, sectarian view of the world, which sadly triumphed briefly.”
Explaining the title, Patrick says: “It’s an acknowledgement of both being between a rock and a hard place and in that hard place. The reason I went with that title is that I thought it captured how the protagonist, David, experienced Northern Ireland in the end.”
Patrick has settled on the self-publishing route, in tandem with Silverwood Books, with A Hard Place being available in paperback at £10.99 and on Kindle at £3.99, initially via Amazon. Orders also can be made directly to Patrick at patrickkelly1@hotmail.co.uk or www.jornalistpatrickkelly.com.
Patrick Kelly’s book launch for A Hard Place takes place at Everyman York, Blossom Street, York, tonight (12/12/2022) at 6pm. Drinks and nibbles provided. RSVP to patrickkelly1@hotmail.co.uk.
Patrick Kelly biography
Born and brought up in Belfast, Patrick has been living in York for many years. He is a freelance journalist and editor, who has contributed to many newspapers and magazines in the United KIngdom and Spain, including the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Independent On Sunday, Irish Times, Evening Standard, New Statesman and The Times.
He has written regularly on the arts for Museums Journal, Arts Industry and a number of other publications.
He is a former board member of York Theatre Royal, York Music Hub and York at Large.
Simon Loxley’s book cover for Patrick Kelly’s A Hard Place
A Hard Place synopsis
PATRICK Kelly’s ill-fated love story is set against the backdrop of a political event that foreshadowed the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
David McMaster returns to Belfast after discovering a cryptic, posthumous note from his friend Roddy, whom he last saw 40 years ago.
As a young English Oxford graduate in 1965, David had been recruited to help look for a site for a new university in Ulster. David is excited by the job, one he sees as a kind of undercover operation.
But he finds Belfast strange and unwelcoming, until he befriends Roddy and falls in love with Catherine Connolly, a political firebrand from a working-class Roman Catholic family.
However, David fails to tell her why he is in Northern Ireland and as their relationship develops, his secret is a burden, particularly as the university becomes the cause of a major sectarian row.
A quarrel between Roddy and Catherine exposes David’s subterfuge and Catherine leaves. After failing to find her at a rowdy political meeting in Derry, David has to be rescued and bundled on a plane back to London. He never sees Catherine again, but thanks to Roddy’s note, he eventually learns of her fate.
The book cover was designed by Felixstowe graphic designer Simon Loxley.
Anastasia Crook’s Mary with infant Jesus wrapped in swaddling bands in A Nativity for York. All pictures: John Saunders
COVID cancelled last winter’s edition of A Nativity for York and did its worst to scupper this year’s return after a two-year absence.
Nine out of 16 cast members had tested positive during rehearsals, one actor’s all-important negative reading on the day of the dress rehearsal ensuring clearance for take-off.
Divine intervention, you might say, and the arrival of this new-born production under the guiding light of Alan Heaven’s direction is indeed something of a miraculous conception. The very subject of A Nativity, of course.
The shepherds: James Tyler, left, Effie Warboys and Mark Comer
Note the title: A Nativity for York. Heaven’s production is the essence of community theatre, rooted in York’s unrivalled mediaeval Cycle of Mystery Plays. From the streets, those plays move indoors, onto the stone slabs of the ever-convivial Spurriergate Centre, where mulled wine and mince pies spice up the arrival scene.
Writer, director and designer Heaven has constructed a backdrop as if from a builders’ guild – ladders, a plank, dust sheets, work bench – affording a mezzanine level for the Angel Gabriel, and providing the edifice for drapes of changing colours: blue to signify Anastasia Crook’s Mary; red for Nick Jones’s ruthless Herod; black for the hellish scene of Herod’s slaughter of the babes.
Even a clothes line pops up to emphasise the Mystery Plays’ meeting point between the utilitarian and the work of the Lord.
Nick Jones’s Herod and Wilma Edwards’s Chamberlain at a helluva party
Storytelling theatre lies at the heart of Heaven’s Nativity, a familiar story but here told with fresh imagination, shards of humour, especially for Michael Maybridge’s disbelieving, weary Joseph and the shepherds, peppered with bursts of traditional song and communal dance, to the accompaniment of arrangements by The Bertie Set, played by Diane Heaven (keyboards) and Petra Wade (recorders).
Alice Melton’s all-in-flowing-white Angel Gabriel has a shimmering radiance and even a hint of Shakespeare’s Puck when she rouses Joseph from his slumbers with a nudge in the back.
Crook’s Mary – the role every (competitive) girl wanted to play in the school Nativity Play – is played with virtue, calm purpose and awe-struck duty by Crook, with Sally Maybridge’s Anna often by her side.
The Massacre of the Innocents under Herod’s orders
Mark Comer’s Symeon is central to the lovely opening scene under an umbrella as the company spins around him in a whirl of ribbons. Harold Mozley, Daniiel Zavalniuk and Rachel Curnow’s earnest Kings contrast with the country-bumpkin airs of James Tyler and Effie Warboys, sheep under her arm, as they lead the audience in a participatory folk song that needed more clarity on Wednesday to make out what exactly chorus line was when urged to join in.
Jones’s Herod, dapper in his waistcoat and coat but devil-red in his butchery, has a sparring relationship with his truculent son (Tristan Heaven), in the tradition of theatrical fraternal frictions. Their scenes heighten the drama with a Shakespearean edge.
In keeping with Heaven’s renderings of the Last Judgement in wagon plays on the streets of York, the visual peak is the Massacre of the Innocents under Herod’s orders, a scene of terror and horror as the mothers’ screams pierce the night chill. Where earlier the ribbons signified joyful news, now they represent the guts of slaughtered children.
Anastasia Crook’s Mary, seated, in a joyous scene in York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust’s A Nativity for York
As Alan Heaven puts it: “Our production is built on juxtapositions of light and dark, joy and despair, community and isolation as we witness the depths of human suffering alongside the hope brough by the birth of Jesus.”
Words that echo through the streets of today, Christmas lights shining out against a backdrop of financial struggles, strikes, freezing temperatures and an ever greater need for hope and re-birth.
Tickets are on sale at £10, students and under 18s £6, on 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.
Into The Lights, digital photomontage by Adele Karmazyn, from her Hidden Spaces exhibition at City Screen Picturehouse, York
IT’S beginning to look a lot like Christmas will be the be all and end all of Charles Hutchinson’s list. Except for a bite of comedy, a Scotsman and hidden digital artworks, that is.
Exhibition launch of the week: Adele Karmazyn, Hidden Spaces, City Screen Picturehouse café, York, from Monday to January 14 2023
INSPIRED by this year’s York Unlocked event, York Open Studios regular Adele Karmazyn has embraced the opportunity to visit this historic city’s hidden spaces, taking photographs on the way.
These photos create the backdrop for her new body of work, each piece evolving into an individual story when she brings in her 19th century characters, taken from old cabinet photographs, and combines these with other photographs of objects, landscapes and creatures in her digital photomontages. By merging multiple layers and concentrating on light and depth, Adele creates “realistic, believable scenarios, which at the same time could never possibly be”.
Promenade light for dark nights: Quinn Richards leads the way as Charles Dickens in Be Amazing Arts’ A Christmas Carol in Malton Market Place
Promenade event of the week: Be Amazing Arts in A Christmas Carol, Malton Market Place, until December 24, 7pm nightly (except December 16 and 22); 5pm on Christmas Eve
AFTER a sell-out debut run in 2021, Be Amazing Arts return to Malton Market Place with Rozanna Klimaszewska’s promenade adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in the market town where Dickens himself performed at the long-gone theatre.
Starting out at Kemps General Store, this immersive theatre and dining experience invites you to follow Dickens (Quinn Richards, who also plays Ebenezer Scrooge) as he tells the story and brings to life Dickens’s characters alongside fellow professionals James Rotchell and Kirsty Wolff and Be Amazing’s Young Company. Festive canapes and a warming winter drink are provided by The Cook’s Place. Box office: 01653 917271 or beamazingarts.co.uk.
Mari Christmas: Mari Wilson in festive mood at Selby Town Hall tonight
Have yourself a Mari little Christmas: Mari Wilson, Selby Town Hall, tonight, 8pm
JUST what you always wanted: A Mari Christmas from Neasden’s “Nymphette of Nail Varnish and High Priestess of Hair Spray”, Miss Beehive, songstress Mari Wilson, who will be combining her Eighties’ hits with tunes of Yuletide yesterdays, a Singalong-a-Christmas and seasonal surprises. Dressing up is a must for the complete Wilsational night. Box office: 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk.
Fresh from Squeeze’s Food For Thought autumn tour, Chris Difford is doing the solo rounds, returning to Selby on Friday. Sold out, alas.
Mostly Autumn: Winter songs at The Crescent
Entirely winter from… Mostly Autumn Christmas Show!, The Crescent, York, Sunday, 8pm (doors 7pm)
YORK prog-rockers Mostly Autumn celebrate Christmas with a standing show at The Crescent, sure to feature For Everyone At Christmastime. Expect hard rock, Celtic themes, traces of trad folk and more contemporary influences too in a set of festive fireworks from Bryan Josh, Olivia Sparnenn-Josh, Angela Gordon and co for devotes of Seventies’ Genesis, Pink Floyd, Camel, Renaissance and Jethro Tull, before they head off to Belgium next week. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
O little voices of Barbican: York’s community carol concert
Christmas institution of the week: York Community Carol Concert, York Barbican, Sunday, 2pm
AFTER 64 years, York’s community carol concert draws in all ages and still plays to full houses. Taking part this time will be York Railway Institute Band; Osbaldwick Primary Academy Choir; St Oswald’s CE Primary School; Stamford Bridge Community Choir and York singer, songwriter and guitarist Steve Cassidy.
Mike Pratt is the musical director, with the Reverend Andrew Foster and BBC Radio York presenter Adam Tomlinson as the co-hosts, for an afternoon of Christmas carols and songs in aid of the Lord Mayor and Sheriff of York’s Christmas Cheer Fund and Martin House Children’s Hospice. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Rick Wakeman: Re-awakening songs with a Christmas twist and festive flair at York Barbican
More Christmas events at York Barbican: Disney’s The Muppet Christmas Carol: Live In Concert, Monday, 7pm; Rick Wakeman’s Grumpy Christmas Stocking, Tuesday, 7.30pm; Emma Bunton: The Christmas Show 2022, December 16, 8pm
DISNEY’S The Muppet Christmas Carol, the one with Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit, Michael Caine as stingy Ebenezer Scrooge, Gonzo as Charles Dickens and Miss Piggy as Emily Cratchit, will be accompanied by a live performance of the musical score.
Yes organist Rick Wakeman gives a Yuletide twist to his grand piano and electric keyboard arrangements of songs from his own career and others, plus a few surprises, punctuated by stories.
Emma Bunton spices up her Christmas Party with solo career hits, Spice Girls staples and festive favourites. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
No More, vows Steve Mason, in his tour show at The Crescent, York
Most welcome Scottish visitor of the week: Steve Mason, No More Tour, The Crescent, York, Thursday, 7.30pm
SCOTSMAN Steve Mason is joined by keyboardist Darren Morris on his No More Tour, named after his new single. Melodious material from his Beta Band days and solo catalogue are promised, along with a showcase of songs from Brothers And Sisters, his first album since January 2019’s About The Light, ready for release in 2023. Cobain Jones is the support act. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.
Russell Kane: His strain of comedy will keep on running in 2022
Comedy gigs of the week: Russell Kane Live!: The Essex Variant, York Barbican, Wednesday, 8pm; Dara OBriain: So…Where Were We?, York Barbican, Thursday, 8pm
MAN Baggage and Evil Genius podcaster, comedian, actor, writer and presenter Russell Kane discusses “the two years we’ve just gone through” in his Essex variant of Covid comedy.
By way of contrast, in his sold-out return, Irishman Dara OBriain will “hardly mention the last year and a half, because, Jesus, who wants to hear about that but will instead fire out the usual mix of stories, one-liners and audience messing”. Box office: for Kane tickets only, yorkbarbican.co.uk.
So…where are you on Tuesday, Dara? At a sold out York Barbican for “the usual mix of stories, one-liners and audience messing”
Deck chairs at the ready: Sit down and relax into a “Zen-style” immersive experience surrounded by Van Gogh’s animated artworks at York St Mary’s. All pictures: Charlotte Graham
THE Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience exhibition at York St Mary’s, Castlegate, York, has been further extended to the end of March 2023.
For the festive season, art lovers can enjoy a “Zen-style escape” from the bustling streets in the former church that offers a sanctuary of peace, tranquillity, mindfulness amid the chance to “step inside” Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings as an antidote to the Christmas crowds.
As exhibition manager Evie Blackstock says: “The run-up to Christmas has to be one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year, so we’re encouraging frazzled shoppers to come and recharge their batteries with a calm, relaxing experience surrounded by Van Gogh’s paintings, animated and projected onto the nave walls of York St Mary’s.
Making a big Post-Impression: Vincent Van Gogh surveys his artwork projected onto York St Mary’s nave walls
“The best way to enjoy the experience it is to settle into a deck chair and let the soothing soundtrack wash over you as you are surrounded by stunning artwork. It instils a real sense of calm, so people are ready to face the outside world again with renewed vigour.”
In the 360-degree son-et-lumière presentation, many of Van Gogh’s most famous works are shown on the nave’s four walls and floor, accompanied by an emotive soundtrack, interspersed with “commentary” from Van Gogh.
The Dutch Post-Impressionist painter’s story is told through 200 of his artworks, from his peaceful time in the French countryside, to the mental turmoil that brought his life to an end through suicide at 37 on July 29 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise. He had sold only one of his 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, in his lifetime.
York St Mary’s: The setting for Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
After the immersive sound-and-light show – run on a 35-minute loop to enable visitors to enter and leave at any point – and projections of his floral artworks onto a huge vase, visitors can partake in mindful colouring of Van Gogh’s works, with their illustrations being projected onto a virtual gallery on the wall.
“Some people initially think that this is just for children but engaging the creative part of your mind is very soothing for adults, too,” says Evie. “There’s great satisfaction from finishing an artwork.”
A small exhibition about Van Gogh’s life and work awaits on the mezzanine floor, along with an optional extra (with a £3 additional charge): a virtual-reality visit to Arles, France, where Van Gogh was at his most productive.
“Starry, starry night, Paint your palette blue and grey,” as Don McLean sang on his 1972 chart topper, Vincent
Donning VR headsets, visitors are taken on an 11-minute digital recreation of the village, starting in the house where Van Gogh stayed, before travelling around the streets and sights so familiar from his later paintings.
York was the first British venue chosen to host Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, opening at York St Mary’s, next to the Jorvik Viking Centre, on July 5 2019, followed by Leicester, with temporary exhibitions in such cities as Manchester, London and Bristol (and a New York show too). The Immersive Experience has just opened at Carlisle Memorial Church, in Belfast, where it will run until late February.
“We opened in York in summer 2019 with an original plan to remain until early January 2020, but it has been so popular that we’re delighted to be confirming another extension until March 31 2023,” says Evie. “This year, we had already extended to August and then to the end of the year!
The Dutch Post-Impressionist painter’s life story is told through 200 of his artworks in Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
“We’ve had quite a number of visitors visiting us several times – it’s like they come in to recharge their cultural and emotional batteries – and we’ve had a couple of changes, including upgrading our virtual reality systems and extending the gift shop, during our stay to cater for the numbers of people through the door each day.”
Urging a winter visit, Evie says: “As a visit takes around an hour, this is something that people can easily fit into a trip to York – to rest their feet and their minds. It’s little wonder that we’re the longest-running version of the exhibition in the world!”
Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, Castlegate, York, is open every day except Tuesdays, from 10am to 6pm; last admissions at 5pm. Tickets: adults £13, concessions £11, children £9, with an additional charge of £3 per person for the optional Virtual Reality experience. To pre-book, go to: vangoghexpo.co.uk/york
