Headliner: York poet Carole Bromley will perform at Scarborough’s Rotunda Muaeum this Christmas. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
YORK poet Carole Bromley is the headline act for the Christmas Rotunda
Night at Scarborough’s Rotunda Museum on December 21.
She will be joined at this 6.30pm to 9pm festive celebration by the Scarborough-told Tales storytellers and Whitby a cappella group The Windmill Girls.
Carole’s work has appeared in many journals and compilations and she has
three collections to her name: A Guide Tour Of The Ice House,The
Stonegate Devil and Blast Off!, a book for children. She
has won such prizes as the Bridport Prize for Poetry, Brontë Society Literary
Award and 2019 Hamish Canham Award from the Poetry Society.
The Windmill Girls: a cappella carols
Scarborough-told Tales brings together storytellers who have graduated
from a Rotunda workshop course, now making a return visit after their performance
in July.
The all-female choir The Windmill Girls sing acapella carols, many drawn
from the rich tradition of “village” carols, some dating from the18th century
and boasting exuberant choruses.
Scarborough-told Tales: stories for Christmas. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
Simon Hedges, head of curation, collections and exhibitions at
Scarborough Museums Trust, which runs the Rotunda Museum and Scarborough Art
Gallery, says: “This promises to be a brilliant festive treat, with poetry,
great stories and seasonal music – just right for getting into the Christmas
spirit.”
Tickets for this Rotunda Night cost £7.50 including a glass of wine, beer, Christmas punch or soft drink. Places are limited, so advance booking is recommended on 01723 353665.
Conflux: “a lyrical audio collage bursting with voice and music “. Image: Katie Allen
COMMON Ground Theatre and Hannah Bruce and Company present
Conflux, a lyrical audio collage bursting with voice and music in the heart of
York this weekend.
It will be launched by private invitation only to previews at 4pm, 4.30pm and 5pm today and tomorrow at Piccadilly Bridge, on the Foss, next to Tesco Express, before being made available to the public as a download from Monday, December 2, for one year.
The Conflux audio walk is an hour of stories, imaginings and musings inspired by the Castle Gateway area. Accessed via an app on personal devices, the rich sound world guides listeners on a journey through York’s oldest site of stronghold, power and resistance.
“It’s part podcast, part poem, part accidental car park,” says
Conflux host Hannah Davies, the York writer, poet, performer and Common Ground
artistic director, who has worked with sound designer and composer Jonathan
Eato and director Hannah Bruce.
“Conflux takes listeners on a trip to find the often forgotten and
mostly ignored, the stories that lurk on street corners and under the tarmac.
Starting by the river Foss on Piccadilly, listeners follow the in-audio
instructions to explore one of the city’s most fascinating and iconic sites in
a captivating and irreverent blend of past and present, with contributions from
36 York residents.”
Using art to reference the past while looking to the future of the iconic city-centre site, this free outdoor audio experience is the second of a trio of art commissions to be presented as part of City of York Council’s consultation on Castle Gateway.
Conflux is funded through Leeds City Region Business Rates Pool,
which allows local authorities to retain growth in business rates for local
investment. It is supported with public funding by the National Lottery through
Arts Council England, as well as supported by City of York Council and York
Mediale, York’s digital media arts enterprise. The University of York Music
Department has provided support for this project too.
Writer Hannah says: “As someone who lives
and works in this city, it was great to spend time in a part of town that I
usually only use as a short cut. Our city is full of history but that’s not
everything that’s important about it.
“We wanted to capture a sense of now, brushing up against the
past. The fragmented messy layers of it all. History is not neat. Nor is
everyday life.
“We spent a lot of time on the site at different times of day and
met and spoke to some really interesting people whose voices appear in Conflux.
I know so much about the site now, I’ll never see it in the same light again.
And I’ve definitely developed a thing for Clifford’s Tower, such an iconic part
of York I used to take for granted. Now I do a little inner wave to it every
time I pass.”
Those attending this weekend’s previews will need a smartphone,
earbuds or headphones and details of the event code for the app. “Please dress for the
weather and be prepared for an outdoor walk,” advises Hannah.
Details regarding the app and the event code for specific time slots have been sent in advance to the audio walkers, who will start out from Piccadilly Bridge, having met at Spark York for information and support.
For full download instructions, visit the Common Ground website, cgtheatre.co.uk/portfolio/conflux, from Monday, December 2.
Meet the new Whitney with the powerful voice: John Whitney as Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar, York Musical Theatre Company, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 7.30pm tonight; 2.30pm and 7.30pm, tomorrow. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
REJECTED as a
theatre show, Jesus Christ Superstar began life as that very 1970s’ thing, a
rock concept album, or double album to be precise.
The year was 1970;
Tim Rice was 25, Andrew Lloyd Webber, 21. By 1972, it had resurrected miraculously
as a rock opera, so successfully that it played the West End for eight years
initially.
Paul Laidlaw’s glorious
new revival in York could not be more Seventies in spirit: hippie hair;
kaftans; flared jeans; Bjorn Borg headbands; big beards; cop-show moustaches.
Only the patchouli oil and stinky Afghan coats are missing, and no-one misses
them.
The dawn of Advent
might seem the wrong time to tell the story of the last seven days of Jesus
Christ’s life, as seen through Judas’s burning eyes, but in fact its impact is
all the greater before thoughts turn towards celebrating the innocent child’s arrival.
John Whitney has long
cherished his dream role of Jesus, through his days of studying musical theatre
at York St John University and growing a tribute beard. Now, at 28, the
Middlesbrough-born actor realises that dream, with York Musical Theatre Company
as his “new source to get his awesome musicals fix,” he says in the programme,
coming over all retro Seventies.
Through a mutual
connection, your reviewer had been hearing of what a powerhouse voice Whitney had.
He was right. Wow! The new Whitney sings with a stunning range, sensitivity, emotion,
drama, soul, and did he hit that famous Everest-high top note in I Only Want To
Say (Gethsemane)? Of course, he did.
At his lowest ebb: Chris Mooney’s Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar
He was but one of
many superb casting decisions by Laidlaw. Liverpudlian Chris Mooney is making
his YMTC debut as the traitorous Judas, the narrator’s role, standing out from his
fellow disciples with cropped hair and autumnal, military colours, his manner
as intense and deceiving as Shakespeare’s Iago. His singing voice is full of fire
and angst, but sometimes tender too, although he needs to work on the clarity
of his diction in moments of heightened vocal stress.
Marlena Kellie, a
jazz singer with appearances at Ronnie Scott’s and Pride to her name, makes I
Don’t Know How To Love Him sound freshly minted, heartbreaking anew.
More than a decade after
his appearance in York Light’s chorus line for this musical, Peter Wookie has
his YMTC bow as an austere Pilate, and he is another to make a heavyweight
impact, both with his voice and imposing physicality.
Jesus Christ
Superstar, like Lloyd Webber and Rice’s fellow fledgling work Joseph And The
Technicolor Dreamcoat, loves to show off myriad song styles, whether a rock
anthem, a ballad, or a slice of Weimar cabaret in King Herod’s Song (a
twinkling, camp John Haigh and his dancing ladies in red, contrasting with the
men in black representing authority around him).
For this well paced sung-through musical, musical director John Atkin has a superb band under his command, wherein Paul McArthur and Neil Morgan’s guitars particularly shine out, while Laidlaw’s ensemble more than play their part too. Simon Spencer’s set and especially his lighting hit the mark too.
There is something
of a Nativity play, Elvis Vegas show or even Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert
about Jesus Christ Superstar, with its hip “Hey JC” lingo, but at the same time
Laidlaw’s production wholly captures its deeper, darker aspects, played out on
a bare scaffolding set provided by Brian Farrell Scaffolding. Namely, that it
is a psychological study of a man alone, or rather two men alone: Jesus, on his
pre-ordained journey to the cross, and Judas Iscariot, his betrayer, whose name
has been dirt ever since.
This makes both
their death scenes – spoiler alert! – devastating, albeit in their different
ways. The solemn finale, no song, no music, only Jesus’s final words on the
cross, reduces one and all to tears as the curtain falls. Oh, and that’s why it
is apt to stage this musical now, when eyes are on a mendacious General
Election, full of ill will and false prophets, and the Christmas tat commercials
are starting to irritate already. Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus Christ Supershow.
She’s back! New album, new tour, as Dionne Warwick says farewell to packing her trunk next autumn
THE clue
is in the title for Dionne Warwick’s show at York Barbican on October 6 2020. “She’s
back: One Last Time,” says the poster.
The
six-time Grammy Award winner will be playing her farewell British and European
tour next September and October, by when she will be 79.
Retirement, however, is not on her mind. “After almost six decades, I’ve decided it’s time to put away the touring trunk and focus on recording, one-off concerts and special events.
“I still love performing live, but the rigours of travelling every day so far from home, sleeping in a different hotel each night, one concert after the other, is becoming hard. So, I’ve decided to stop touring on that level in Europe,” says Dionne. “But I’m not retiring!” she insists.
Indeed not. In May, she released She’s Back, her first studio album since Feels So Good in 2014.
The tour’s UK leg will open at The Waterfront in Belfast on September 19 2020 and her shows will encompass her monumental career, not least the peerless Warwick/Burt Bacharach/Hal David recording catalogue: I Say A Little Prayer, Do You Know The Way To San Jose, Anyone Who Had A Heart and Walk On By.
Warwick previously played a North
Yorkshire concert on her An Evening With Dionne Warwick, Me And My Music tour
at Harrogate International Centre in February 2008.
Tickets for One Last Time go on sale on Wednesday, December 4 at 9am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the box office, should you walk on by the Barbican.
Love is in the air…a year from now in Strictly Ballroom The Musical at the Grand Opera House, York
YOU will have to wait a year, but it will be well worth it to see
Strictly Ballroom The Musical, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York.
Directed by acerbic Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood, the
show will be foxtrotting around Britain and Ireland from next September,
visiting York from November 23 to 28 2020.
Revel Horwood, the Australian-born dancer, choreographer and director,
will assemble a cast of more than 20 for the musical based on Baz Luhrmann’s
1992 Australian film.
Strictly Ballroom The Musical follows arrogant, rebellious young
ballroom dancer Scott Hastings, whose radical and daring dance style rubs
against the strict conventions of the Australian Dance Federation.
So much so that he is banished, forcing him to start all over again with
a beginner, Fran. Together they find the courage to defy tradition and discover
that to win, your steps don’t need to be strictly ballroom.
More than 30 hits will be performed on stage, such as Time After
Time, Let’s Dance, I’m So Excited, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps, I Wanna Dance With
Somebody, Sway, Mambo No. 5, Dancing With Myself, Sugar Sugar, It’s The End Of The
World As We Know It, Teardrops and Love Is In The Air.
Strictly Ballroom The Musical premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, in December 2016 before making its West End debut at the Piccadilly Theatre, London, in March 2018.
Tickets for the York run are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
The Classic Comedy Theatre Company in Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, next year. Picture: Pamela Raith
ALAN Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, the debut production by the Classic
Comedy Theatre Company, will play the Grand Opera House, York, from February 10
to 15 next year.
This touring show is produced by impresario Bill Kenwright and his team
behind the Agatha Christie, Classic Thriller and Classic Screen To Stage
theatre companies for more than 15 years.
Premiered in January 1977, Ten Times Table is “the one with the committee
from hell and a fete worse than death”.
In the long-since grand ballroom of the Swan Hotel, a most miscellaneous
assemblage gathers to conduct the business of the Pendon Folk Festival.
A tense moment in the Classic Comedy Theatre Company’s Ten Times Table. Picture: Pamela Raith
Unfortunately for excitable chairman Ray, his calamitous committee
quickly divides as his wife, Helen, has a bone to pick.
Add a Marxist schoolteacher, a military dog breeder and an octogenarian
secretary, and the table is set for a tumultuous comedy by committee.
In the cast will be Robert Dawes, Deborah Grant, Mark Curry, Robert
Duncan, Elizabeth Powers, Gemma Oaten and Craig Glazey.
Tickets are on sale on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
GRAHAM Gouldman will
play Leeds City Varieties Music Hall on March 25 on next spring’s tour to launch
his first solo album in eight years.
The 10cc luminary’s
14-date travels with his semi-acoustic band, Heart Full Of Songs, will run from
March 19 to April 4, coinciding with the March 20 release of his as-yet-unnamed
record on the British independent label Lojinx.
One notable guest
on Gouldman’s first solo set since 2012’s Love And Work is The Beatles’ Ringo
Starr, who plays drums on Standing Next To Me.
Last year, Gouldman,
73, was invited by Starr to join his All Starr Band for tours of Europe and the
United States that featured three 10cc songs.
“Playing with Ringo
Starr and The All Starr Band was absolutely brilliant, and having Ringo play
drums on one of my new album’s songs was the icing on the cake,” says Gouldman.
“Absolutely brilliant”: Graham Gouldman’s verdict on playing with Ringo Starr in the Beatle’s All Starr Band last year
“The song is about
how I came to be asked to join his band, and about my experience of being on the
road with Ringo alongside Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Gregg Rolie, Warren Ham
and Gregg Bissonette, who also plays drums on three of the album’s tracks.”
When Gouldman formed
what became Heart Full Of Songs, it was for the pleasure of playing his songs
in their simplest form, leading to the acoustic four-piece’s first tour in
April and May 2013.
Gouldman’s band now
tours Britain, Belgium, Holland and Germany with a line-up of Gouldman, Ciaran
Jeremiah, Dave Cobby and either Iain Hornal, Nick Kendal or Andy Park,
depending on their commitments.
The Heart Full Of
Songs set list will feature such golden Gouldman hits as 10cc’s I’m Not In
Love, Dreadlock Holiday and The Things We Do For Love, The Hollies’ Bus Stop,
The Yardbirds’ For Your Love and Wax’s Bridge To Your Heart, complemented by
new material.
“I always love
taking my Heart Full Of Songs show on tour,” says Gouldman. “Acoustic
performances always create a very intimate atmosphere where every song – which
is what it’s all about – can truly be heard. It also gives me a chance to
explain how the songs came about and something of the writing process. We’ll
see you there.”
Tickets for his Leeds concert, Gouldman’s only Yorkshire date, are on sale on 0113 243 0808 or at cityvarieties.co.uk.
Did you know?
In 2014, Graham
Gouldman was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, an arm of the USA’s
National Academy of Music. Previous inductees include Noel Coward, Irving
Berlin, Burt Bacharach, Neil Sedaka, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan,
Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and Leonard Cohen.
Mark Hird’s Ebenezer Scrooge and Frankie Bounds’ Young Ebenezer in Pick Me Up Theatre’s Scrooge The Musical. Picture: Matthew Kitchen
Scrooge The Musical, Pick Me Up Theatre, Grand Opera House, York, until Sunday, December 1. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york
FOR years and years, Pick Me Up Theatre artistic director Robert
Readman has applied for the performing rights for Scrooge The Musical, more in
hope than expectation.
This year, at last, the answer was affirmative, and so Readman
reckons he must be the first director/producer to stage Leslie Bricusse’s
musical on this scale since Bill Kenwright’s long-running tour show.
Those were the days with Tommy Steele in the lead, with
songs specially added for his knees-up brand of showmanship, but Readman has restored
the 1992 score, when Bricusse transferred his 1970 film musical to the stage as
a vehicle for Anthony Newley, six new songs and all. Back come the likes of
Good Times, the best in the show, says Readman.
Mark Hird’s Ebenezer Scrooge and Rory Mulvihill’s Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooge The Musical
Ironically, if anything, there are too many songs, or, more precisely, there are not many memorable songs, making it feel like too many.
This is in part because the dialogue is largely true to Charles Dickens’s novel, save for the occasional modernism, and you wish for rather more of it, but another song is always nudging it out of the way.
While you could not call it a “sung-through musical”, it is veering towards that style, yet the great joy of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol lies in its storytelling and the myriad ways of presenting it, whether James Swanton’s one-man show, Alexander Wright’s pub supper two-hander with audience participation or Deborah McAndrew’s beautifully resonant adaptation for Hull Truck Theatre.
Readman goes for spectacle, garland upon garland of snowy white flowers decorating the stage; a huge door; a big four-poster bed; loud, very loud, sound effects for Jacob Marley’s entry, rattling chains et al; echoing voices; a company of more than 40; and two flying sequences. One for Tony Froud’s Marley; the other for Rory Mulvihill’s Ghost of Christmas Present and Mark Hird’s Ebenezer Scrooge, where they are held in suspense rather more than this ghost story holds us, in the absence of more darkness.
Sonny Love as Tiny Tim in Scrooge The Musical
Hird’s diminutive Scrooge carries the last residue of his
wonderful Captain Mainwaring in Pick Me Up’s Dad’s Army, and consequently he is
humorous from the start, full of bluster rather than the coldness of a blasted
heath. You find yourself liking him, even when he is mithering and being
miserly, rather like Rowan Atkinson’s penny-pinching Mr Bean, but Scrooge’s
transformation is still highly enjoyable in his impish hands.
What’s more, his scenes with Young Ebenezer (Frankie Bounds) and his lost true love, Isabel (Jennie Wogan), and later with Bob Cratchit (Alan Park), Tiny Tim (Sonny Love) and the Cratchit family, are poignant to the core. Bounds, by the way, is the pick of the young talents, with a lovely singing voice in Happiness, while Olivia Caley, as the Ghost of Christmas Past, definitely has a future.
Look out too for Flo Poskitt’s comic cameo as Ethel Cratchit:
not for the first time this year, she gives a peach of a supporting
performance. Maybe next year, a director will reward her with an overdue lead.
Mulvihill amuses by lounging like Jacob Rees-Mogg in the
House of Commons, in his Christmas green silks and ermine; Sam Johnson leads
his musical forces with customary skill, and Iain Harvey and Readman’s choreography
has most fun when Andrew Isherwood’s Tom Jenkins leads the stand-out Thank You Very Much.
Overall, however, while it may feel “Bah Humbug” to say it, by
Pick Me Up standards, this Scrooge falls
short of a Christmas cracker.
Royal appointment: Louise Henry as Princess Snow White in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs at the Grand Opera House, York. Picture by David Harrison.
LOUISE Henry will swap flat whites for Snow White next week after being picked to lead the Grand Opera House pantomime cast in York.
Louise, 22, from
Knaresborough, works at the Hoxton North café bar in Royal Parade, Harrogate,
but will join rehearsals for Three Bears Productions’ Snow White And The Seven
Dwarfs from Monday (December 2) for the December 13 to January 4 2020 run.
After playing Liesl
von Trapp in York Stage Musicals’ The Sound Of Music at the Cumberland Street
theatre, now she will star as Princess Snow White alongside Mark Little’s
villainous Lord Chamberlain, regular dame Steve Wickenden’s Nurse Brexit, ’Allo,
’Allo! star Vicki Michelle’s Wicked Queen and Martin Daniels’ Muddles.
From producer Chris
Moreno’s search for a local principal girl in Three Bears’ fourth Opera House
panto, Louise was among 30 invited from the many applicants for a day’s
auditions in May.
After queueing in the rain in the line of Snow White hopefuls that formed along the stage door wall, she won through to the shortlist of 12 for the afternoon’ s second session and was then picked for panto principal girl after a nervous wait.
Meet the Grand Opera House pantomime cast: Mark Little, left, Steve Wickenden, Martin Daniels, Louise Henry, Jonny Muir, and Vicki Michelle. Picture by David Harrison.
“The auditions were
on the Wednesday, and they rang me just as I was setting off to work on the
Friday afternoon,” Louise recalls. “I’d been refreshing my emails, hoping for
news, and it was such a euphoric moment when the phone call came.
“I’m so thankful to have been chosen. I’ve
been beaming whenever I’m reminded that I’m signing my first professional
contract. I’m really looking forward to getting into the theatre and putting
the show together. Performing is all I have ever wanted to do and I feel so
lucky that my Christmas this year will be doing just that.”
Although Louise has not studied at drama school
since leaving school, “I’ve had acting and singing lessons for as long as I can
remember and I’ve done lots of theatre work, like school plays when I was at
King James’s in Knaresborough,” she says.
“From the age of nine to 17, I went to the
ACTAcademy in Harrogate, run by Kelly Creates, when we took part in the
Harrogate Festival of Speech and Drama and did The Big T talent show at
Harrogate Theatre, and I’ve had singing tuition with Jacqueline Bell in
Wetherby too.”
Louise impressed in Nik Briggs’s April production of
The Sound Of Music, playing the eldest von Trapp daughter, Liesl. “I was 21
playing 16, and the next in age to me was 12, playing 15!” she says. “It’s such
a nice show to do because it’s so honest, and it was sad when it came to an end
as we all made such good friends.
Welcome to York: Louise Henry, from Knaresborough, is pictured by Clifford’s Tower after landing the role of Snow White in the Grand Opera House pantomime. Picture: David Harrison
“It was lovely to be able to become familiar with the
Grand Opera House stage too before doing the panto.”
Since The Sound Of Music, Louise has appeared in
two more York shows, the first being another Nik Briggs production, Joseph
McNeice and Matthew Spalding’s new musical comedy, Twilight Robbery, at 41
Monkgate in May.
“I played Jane, the daughter, who’s 40 years old,
so I went from one extreme, 16-year-old Liesl, to another…and now I’ll be
playing Snow White!”
The nearest she has come to playing her own age was
her most recent role, a young Australian woman, Gabrielle York, in Rigmarole
Theatre Company’s debut production, Andrew Bovell’s apocalyptic family drama When
The Rain Stops Falling, at 41 Monkgate in November.
Louise Henry, right, playing Gabrielle York in Rigmarole Theatre Company’s When The Rain Stops Falling earlier this month. Picture: Michael J Oakes
Now her focus turns to her professional bow, billed
as “York’s very own Louise Henry” in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.
“I’ve done one panto before, Aladdin, an amateur one
for the Pannal Players when I was maybe 14,” says Louise,
Looking forward to starting rehearsals on Monday,
she says: “This opportunity is what I’ve been waiting for, and I’ve just got to
have faith in my abilities.
“Snow White is on stage for most of the time, so I’ll
always need to react in the moment, and that’s something that will add to my
repertoire of skills, which I’m always working on.”
Imagine how Louise feels as the first night approaches,
knowing she is taking on the title role in a star-laden show. “I know! It’s my
show! How crazy is that!” she says. “When I rang my sister to tell her I’d got
the part, she didn’t believe it…and when I rang my mum, I had to say, ‘no, I’m
not kidding’. That was a really fantastic day!”
Louise Henry stars in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Grand Opera House, York, December 13 to January 4 2020. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.
Fieri Consort: taking a trip to Christmas Eve in 1629 Rome in York
THE 2019 York Early Music Christmas Festival is starting earlier, two hours earlier, to be precise, after Solomon’s Knot’s sold-out opening concert on December 7 was moved to 4.30pm.
Performing without a conductor and from memory at the National Centre for Early Music, the 14-piece baroque group will present Festive Music from 17th century France, as they make their much anticipated Christmas festival debut with a brace of Charpentier works, A Song On The Birth Of Our Lord and Pastoral On The Birth Of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
“We’re a group of singers and players who are prepared to take risks in order to communicate more directly with our audiences,” they say.
To make sure they arrive in York well in time for their 12.30pm Sunday concert, the recorder group Palisander will be travelling by car, rather than risking public transport!
Lydia Gosnell, Miriam Monaghan, Caoimhe de Paor and Elspeth Robertson will perform A Yuletyde Eve on recorders of all shapes and sizes, as they return to the NCEM, in St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, after playing there in March.
Expect an afternoon hour of “very entertaining” Renaissance music, including works by Praetorius and Tye, as well as some more familiar carols.
Owain Park, a former winner of the NCEM Young Composers Award, will direct his ensemble, The Gesualso Six, in Videte Miraculum at 6.30pm on December 8.
Inspired by Advent being a time of mystery, reflection and wonder, this two-hour journey through the ages and across borders will weave Christmas carols, such as Praetorius’s Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen, seamlessly with 21st century works, including Park’s luscious On The Infancy Of Our Saviour.
On December 9, wind ensemble Boxwood & Brass re-create A Georgian Country House Christmas at 7.30pm. Their “Band of Musick” play as a traditional Georgian militia ensemble of clarinets, horns and bassoon, regaling their audience with quintets, marches, dance music and regional carols.
Very sadly, Joglaresa’s Sing We Yule concert on December 10 at 7.30pm will be their last visit to the NCEM. “Their leader, Belinda Sykes, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer,” says NCEM artistic director Delma Tomlin. “I shall deeply miss Belinda and her wonderful consort; she has been such a fantastic leading light of the Early Music world, and Joglaresa’s concerts here have been a joy.”
Belinda, singer and recorder and bagpipe player, will lead Joglaresa in an effervescent programme of traditional carols and wassails, lullabies and dance tunes, from Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales as they “chase out the chill from the Celtic fringes of Europe”.
On Wednesday, December 11 at 6.30pm, Fieri Consort will take a trip to Rome on Christmas Eve in 1629, where a performance of Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger’s oratorio The Shepherds Of Bethlehem is taking place in the lavishly decorated Vatican palace.
Featuring a libretto by the future Pope Clement IX, this Christmas play tells the story of the Nativity through solos, duets, trios and full choruses, interspersed with instrumental and vocal pieces by Kapsperger and his contemporaries.
A second concert is on the move, this one on account of the NCEM being a polling station for the General Election on December 12. Ceruleo will now perform Burying The Dead at St Lawrence’s Church, Hull Road, instead.
Written by Clare Norburn and directed by Thomas Guthrie, with lighting by Pitch Black and costumes by Hannah Pearson, this new theatre show for the 21st century will take the 7.30pm audience on a fictional journey into the head of composer Henry Purcell, played by actor Niall Ashdown.
Purcell is in the throes of his final illness, suffering from feverish hallucinations, wherein the past, present and fantasy collide and his songs take on a life of their own.
Fretwork’s December 13 concert with mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, winner of the 2018 Handel Singing Competition, has sold out. Their 6.30pm programme, From Virgin’s Womb, will interweave William Byrd’s In Nomines with seasonal Elizabethan music by Holborne, Peerson, Weelkes and Gibbons, the songs being accompanied by viols. Jollity meets piousness, rejoicing and reflection meet drunkenness and misbehaviour, in Fretwork’s company.
The Mellstock Band’s Philip Humphries has an interesting programme credit: not only voice, but also serpent. “Yes, this Dorset band bring real serpents,” says Delma, ahead of snakes arriving on December 14 at 1pm.
Humphries and co’s Christmas Frolics in period costumes will be an uproarious celebration of dance, drink and general misbehaviour, as carried on in many villages until a century ago, along with sobering admonitions from the puritans, parsons, preachers and angels.
Carols dedicated to dancing, bell ringing and cider will vie for attention with “the Devil’s own tunes”, complemented by the Wessex stories of Thomas Hardy and William Barnes.
The York musicians of the Yorkshire Bach Choir, under the direction of Peter Seymour, will close the festival with a 7pm performance of Handel’s Messiah at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, on December 14.Helen Charlston will be among the soloists, alongside soprano Bethany Seymour, tenor Gwilym Bowen and bass Gareth Brynmor John.
“We will echo Handel’s London performances, including some rarely heard versions,” says Peter.
All concerts will take place at the NCEM unless otherwise stated. Tickets are on sale on 01904 658338 or at tickets.ncem.co.uk.
