Forest Floor By Night, by Tom Wilson, on show at City Screen Picturehouse
YORK punk expressionist artist, designer, playwright, theatre director and tutor Tom Wilson is exhibiting his riots of colour at City Screen Picturehouse for the first time with sale proceeds going to MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians).
Thirty-five works are on display in the café bar at the Coney Street cinema in York, priced at £175 to £700.
“My art looks like an explosion,” says Wilson, whose dynamic abstract art is influenced by Kandinsky, Max Earnst, Otto Dix, Outsider art, German Expressionism and Rayonism (Russian Expressionism).
“When my last exhibition was on at St Bede’s, in Blossom Street, last September, I got in touch with as many York artists as I could to network with them and to try and raise the awareness of my charity too, with sale proceeds being donated in aid of the Ukrainians now living in York who needed support,” says Tom.
Artist Tom Wilson standing by his exhibiition for Medical Aid For Palestinians in the City Screen Picturehouse cafébar in York
“As part of my networking campaign, I went to see some of the art being shown at City Screen and spoke to the manager, Cath Sharp. We fixed a date for me to show my art there too, which was incredible.”
In the lead-up to this summer’s show, Tom attended as many exhibitions at City Screen as he could to garner ideas of how to present and promote his work. “When my time for showing arrived, I decided to donate the funds raised this time to MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians),” he says.
“It’s a great cause, particularly right now. Harrowing and tragic and barbaric things are going on while the rest of the world looks the other way. It breaks my heart, it really does.”
For his City Screen debut, Tom had 300 bookmark-sized cards printed, along with two 6 by 27-inch banners. “I also decided to paint a banner to cover the central wall in the City Screen café bar, painting it in my own style to really try to grab people’s attention as they eat their couscous and toasted cheese wraps,” he says.
A new work byTom Wilson for his City Screen show
“I’m quite proud of it actually. Needs must and necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, or as Frank Zappa said!”
Tom had first started to paint 20 years, and after a long hiatus, he picked up the brushes once more when his younger brother, Stephen, died. “I’ve been painting for a while now and find it very cathartic and relaxing,” he says.
“I do believe very strongly that art in any form can have a transformative and spiritual power, the power to heal and cultivate emotional awareness, insights, and imbue self- esteem.
“I don’t have a studio, I paint at home, and as a result my kitchen is like a bomb site, but a productive bomb site. Now, as a way of clearing some of my artwork out of my house – I can’t move for paintings and junk – I thought it would be a positive gesture to hang some paintings in this wonderful space at City Screen and donate any monies to Medical Aid for Palestinians, having already held exhibitions for the Haiti Earthquake Disaster Fund and Ukrainians now living in York.”
Tom Wilson’s Art In Aid Of MAP exhibition banner
Tom has been networking latterly with “the fabulous fraternity of artists” a few doors along from City Screen at the Fabrication art shop in Coney Street. “That could well be my next project, showing my art there and making a documentary about this amazing franchise and amalgam of various and diverse artists, all supporting each other and rising from the pandemic like phoenixes from the fire,” he says.
“It’s a real community culture, which in fact has been going for over 12 years now. They have a branch in Leeds and this thriving one in York too.”
Tom is delighted with the response to his City Screen show, which features new works alongside “huge favourites”. “It’s getting lots of attention from other artists and also from cinema and theatregoers alike,” he says.
“It’s on for another few weeks and it would be great to see more and more people visit this warm, friendly and aesthetically pulsating venue.”
To purchase any of his works, Tom can be contacted on 07570 020694 or by email at gingerorourke@hotmail.com.
York artist Tom Wilson, pictured when setting up his St Bede’s exhibition last year
Tom Wilson: the back story
ORIGINALLY from Salford, Greater Manchester, Tom has lived and worked in York for 16 years.
Played in a rock’n’roll band for a few years in the 1980s. Studied drama and art at Dartington College of Arts and became a drama teacher after stints of acting. Continues to write and direct for film and theatre, staging his anarchic farce The Local Authority at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, in August 2021.
Spent more than 20 years living and working in London with individuals who struggled with drug and alcohol problems. His outreach and project work in the mental health field included rough sleepers, street drinkers and ex-prisoners.
Started painting 20 years ago, doing so obsessively for four years but then stopping. Re-started after the death of his younger brother, Stephen.
Likes Russian Rayonism, Surrealism, Outsider art and the work of Egon Schiele, Paul Klee, Otto Dix, Francis Bacon, Paul Cezanne, Gustave Dore, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Félicien Rops, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Richard Dadd and Robert Lenkiewicz.
Tom Wilson’s exhibition runs at City Screen Picturehouse, Coney Street, York, until July 29.
Opening Gambit, by Tom Wilson, from his City Screen exhibition
Last Maps’ poster for York River Art Market’s 2023 season
YORK River Art Market will return for its eighth summer next month, sited once more along Dame Judi Dench Walk by Lendal Bridge.
“This city-centre riverside location lends itself to the open-air events of our award-winning market,” says founder and director Charlotte Dawson. “It has often been compared to the Left Bank in Paris.”
Each of the three weekends – August 5 and 6, August 12 and 13 and August 19 and 20 – will host a different variety of more than 30 independent artists and makers from all over Yorkshire and beyond from 10am to 5.30pm.
Work by York River Art Market artists and makers taking part this summer
“Each event has something new to see, and there is always something to suit all budgets,” says Charlotte.
Among the artists and makers taking part will be illustrator and Bull bassist Kai West, noted for his gig posters; ceramicist Jill Ford, new for 2023; printmaker Izzy Williamson, also new for 2023, and Cuban painter Leo Moray, who made his York Open Studios debut this year.
Look out too for York jewellery maker and York Open Studios regular Joanna Wakefield and Last Maps, Thomas Moore and Angel Jones’s small design studio, dedicated to producing work that celebrates adventure and the natural world. They designed this summer’s York River Art Market (YRAM) poster, by the way.
YRAM’s chosen charities this summer are York Rescue Boat, the city’s independent lifeboat and search and rescue team, and Henshaws, which supports people living with sight loss and a range of other disabilities to achieve their ambitions and go beyond their expectations. The charities will be present at YRAM to raise funds and awareness of their work.
The markets are free to attend.
York River Art Market founder, director and artist Charlotte Dawson
TONY Hadley will be in the swing of things at York Barbican on March 8 on The Big Swing Tour 2024. Tickets go on sale on Friday at ticketmaster.co.uk and via yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The erstwhile Spandau Ballet frontman, 63, will perform vintage songs from the swing era of Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, complemented by stylish reworkings of his solo hits and velvet-voiced Spandau favourites such as 1983’s True and Gold.
Hadley will be accompanied by his Fabulous TH Band and a full brass section as New Romantic reinterprets old romantics. “My love of swing music began when I was very young. The preparation for Sunday lunch was never without the classic sounds of Sinatra, Bennett and many more,” he reminisces.
“Then years later, when we formed our first band at school, which eventually would become Spandau Ballet, I was reminded by my parents that although I loved punk rock, if I was serious about pursuing a career as a professional singer, never to forget the classic jazz vocalists.
“So there I was listening to The Sex Pistols and The Clash alongside Tony Bennett and Jack Jones! I’ve always loved performing live, but this swing tour is totally different from our normal rock shows. I want audiences to come and enjoy a night of amazing songs from an incredible era of music alongside some great songs from my own repertoire.”
Islington-born Hadley last played York Barbican in May 2022 on a tour marking the smooth crooner’s 40th anniversary in the music business.
Meanwhile, Harry Redknapp, footballer, manager, pundit and King of the Jungle on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, is booked to play York Barbican on February 20 2024.
The former Tottenham Hotspur, Southampton, Bournemouth, Portsmouth, West Ham United, Queens Park Rangers and Birmingham City boss, now 76, will tell stories from his football and TV careers, from winning the FA Cup with Pompey in 2008 to his Jungle triumph a decade later.
Redknapp is the second veteran football manager to be confirmed for a York Barbican date in 2024. Neil Warnock, 74, now staying in charge of Huddersfield Town for the 2023-2024 Championship season after saving the Terriers from relegation in May, has moved his June 15 2023 show to May 31 next spring.
Tickets for An Audience With Harry Redknapp and Neil Warnock: Are You With Me? are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
John Atkin: Pulling the strings – and hopefully pooling the strings – for the York Beethoven Project
WANTED! String players and students are needed for the York Beethoven Project, launched by White Rose Theatre.
Woodwind or brass pupils can apply too but their places are becoming limited for the first in the series of Beethoven concerts performing his symphonies in order, which opens with No. 1 in C major Op. 21 on Saturday, September 23.
Plans are in place for Symphonies No. 2 and No. 3 in 2024 and the series will end with Symphony No. 9 in D minor No. 125 in 2027, just in time for the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s death (March 26 1827, at the age of 56).
Each concert will take place in a different York venue and will be performed by York-based musicians and those from “not too far away”. A double bass player, from Sheffield, has signed up already.
Symphony No. 1 will be rehearsed and performed in one day at Acomb Methodist Church, in association with York Light Orchestra, York Arts Education and White Rose Theatre and sponsored by Inc Dot.
“This is a Come & Play workshop-style event with rehearsals throughout the day from 9.30am, culminating in an informal concert at 4.15pm, with the audience welcome from 4pm,” says organiser John Atkin, the stalwart York musical director. “Once informed if they have been selected, all registered players will receive their parts in advance.
The poster announcing the formation of the York Beethoven Project
“The aim is to enjoy playing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 throughout the day and then perform it alongside another well-known and popular short guest piece announced on the day! The event is free and is about taking part, experiencing and enjoying the music, with a collection box for voluntary donations from the audience to support the musicians.”
More than 30 musicians have signed up already. “If you’re a musician and want to take part, we’d love to hear from you,” says John. “We’re looking for anyone who can play an instrument that Beethoven wrote for, at Grade 6 or above, who’s over 16. Under-16s can also be considered if accompanied by an adult.”
“It’s basically on my bucket list to do the Beethoven Symphonies in their entirety at some point in my life,” says John. “I started them at university – way back when in the last century! – and did three or four there, but then life gets in the way.
“I always wanted to complete the cycle and what a better way than with local people. It should be fun.”
PETER Buck is far and away the most well-known member of The Minus Five, which is essentially a vehicle for the tuneful songs of Scott McCaughey, sometime second guitarist to Buck in REM.
Likewise, the “support act” The No Ones, comprised of exactly the same musicians, playing the same instruments.
Buck quietly played the bass in a not dissimilar style to his rhythm guitar playing. While all eyes were on him, his total attention was on following the changes in the music.
Guitarist Frode Strømstad’s solos were fast but essentially empty but his rhythm guitar was good. In truth, Buck also lacks his own voice as a bass player. This is a band whose members are happy to play in the service of the material rather than competing for the spotlight.
Drummer Arne Kjelsrud looked like he was having a wonderful time, a smile fixed on his handsome face as he and Buck held the songs together. McCaughey was the front man and singer, the one speaking to us too.
The Minus Five performing at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds. Picture: Paul Rhodes
Having toured this same venue with Luke Haines in February, Buck and The Minus Five were back in Leeds, this time playing second fiddle to a Bon Jovi act next door on the Brudenell’s bigger stage.
“Is this the biggest place I’ve ever played?” Buck joked, in response to an early audience question. “Perhaps, in Leeds, in the last month.” It was the one nod to being in the presence of a man who has sold out stadiums around the world.
While lacking any overt star appeal, the band has a loyal following. The songs are mostly strong but never scale the same heights as REM. The No Ones sported a couple of more memorable songs; one about the late, great Phil Ochs and the best about a very much alive Jenny Lewis. A song for The Beatles was by some stretch the worst of the night.
The Minus Five set was unsurprisingly the stronger. Better sound, better songs, same personnel. Quietly prolific under the critical radar, their latest is the second instalment about Neil Young. Two back-to-back Young numbers were among the highlights, a fuzzed-up Hitchhiker and then a seemingly impromptu Revolution Blues.
In short. no razzmatazz, just good songs well played. The Minus Five are not really a big deal, but fun to see live.
The King’s Singers: “Aural clarity blending seamlessly with the purity of Fretwork’s viols”
Ryedale Festival: The King’s Singers and Fretwork, St Peter’s Church, Norton, July 14
TWO of British music’s most venerable small groups, The King’s Singers and Fretwork, united to open this year’s Ryedale Festival in fine style. Marking the 400th anniversary of the deaths of composers Thomas Weelkes and William Byrd, the concert mirrored their recently released album Tom And Will.
Weelkes’s Hark All Ye Lovely Saints Above set the tone for the evening, The King’s Singers aural clarity blending seamlessly with the purity of Fretwork’s viols. His mischievous Thule, The Period Of Cosmography was given a kaleidoscopic performance with fleet changes of sonic colour, the singers revelling in the words.
Byrd’s This Sweet And Merry Month Of May was joyous: classic King’s Singers material served up with relish. Their purposeful, surefooted and expressive negotiation of Byrd’s uncompromising counterpoint in O Salutaris Hostia was a marvel.
As well as underpinning vocal numbers, Fretwork contributed instrumental consort music, always easy to listen to, rich and resonant. Rhythms in Byrd’s Prelude & Ground, The Queen’s Goodnight, were nicely sprung.
But his Canon Fantasy was peculiarly unsmiling, conveying but little delight in its imitative cleverness, no sense of the lead violist challenging the treble to reciprocate his flights of fancy.
Appropriately for a death anniversary there were tributes: Byrd’s tribute to his teacher Tallis and Weelkes’s to his teacher Thomas Morley were each succeeded by a modern counterpart commissioned specially for Tom And Will.
Sir James MacMillan’s Ye Sacred Muses is richly textured, expertly crafted, its ending quietly affecting. Roderick Williams’s Death, Be Not Proud is right up these performers’ street, with harmonic effects showcasing the familiar King’s Singers sound world. More than twice as long as their models, these new works overburdened the concert’s long first half.
A nice touch was the short first-half encore incorporating the Ryedale Primary Choir, the fruits of a masterclass earlier in the day. An initiative supported by the Richard Shephard Music Foundation, it’s lovely that these seasoned pros, and the festival, take time out to encourage such youngsters.
Shed Seven, 2023: Vocalist Rick Witter, left, guitarist Paul Banks, second from right, and bassist Tom Gladwin,right, are joined by drummer Rob ‘Maxi’ Maxfield and keyboardist Tim Willis at Millennium Square,Leeds, tonight. Picture: Barnaby Fairley
GOING for gold, whether with the Sheds or down at the maze, Charles Hutchinson heads outdoors but is drawn back indoors too.
Outdoor gig of the weekend: Shed Seven, Sounds In The City 2023, Millennium Square, Leeds, today, from 6pm
FRESH from announcing next January’s release of their sixth studio album, A Matter Of Time, York’s Shed Seven head to Leeds city centre for a sold-out, 6,00-capacity Millennium Square show.
Performing alongside regular vocalist Rick Witter, guitarist Paul Banks and bassist Tom Gladwin will be Tim Willis on keyboards and Rob ‘Maxi’ Maxfield on drums. Support slots go to fellow Britpop veterans Cast and rising York band Skylights.
Be amazed: York Maze reopens for a new season today
Opening of the weekend: York Maze, Elvington Lane, Elvington, near York, today until September 4
THE Cobsleigh Run race and Crowmania ride are among the new attractions when York Maze opens for its 21st season today with a new show marquee too – and the giant image of Tutankhamun cut by farmer Tom Pearcy into a 15-acre field of maize.
Created from one million living, growing maize plants, Britain’s largest maze has more than 20 rides, attractions and shows for a fun-filled family day out. Where else would you find a Corntroller of Entertainment, corny pun intended? Step forward Josh Benson, York magician, pantomime star and, yes, corntroller. Tickets: 01904 608000 or yorkmaze.com.
Gary Stewart: Celebrating the songs of Paul Simon at Helmsley Arts Centre
Show title of the week: Gary Stewart, The Only Living Boy In (New) York – An Evening of Paul Simon Songs, Helmsley Arts Centre, tonight, 7.30pm
GARY Stewart, singer, songwriter, guitarist, Hope & Social drummer and programmer for At The Mill’s folk bills, turns the spotlight on the songs of New Yorker Paul Simon, his chief folk/pop influence.
Born in Perthshire, Stewart cut his Yorkshire teeth on the Leeds music scene for 15 years before moving to York (and now Easingwold, to be precise). He is sometimes to be found fronting his Graceland show, another vessel for Paul Simon songs. Tonight, his focus is on The Boxer, Mrs Robinson, Me & Julio Down By The Schoolyard, Kodachrome et al. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.
The Young’uns: Playing Ryedale Festival on July 20 at 7pm at the Milton Rooms, Malton. Picture: Pamela Raith
Festival of the week outside York: Ryedale Festival, running until July 30
DIRECTED once more by Christopher Glynn, Ryedale Festival returns with 55 concerts, celebrating everything from Tchaikovsky to troubadours in beautiful North Yorkshire locations. Artists in residence include Anna Lapwood, Nicky Spence, Korean violinist Bomsori Kim and pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen.
Taking part too will be Boris Giltburg, the Dudok Quartet, Jess Gillam, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, guitarist Plínio Fernandes,trumpeter Aaron Akugbo, pianist George Xiaoyuan Fu, the National Youth Choir of Scotland, jazz singer Clare Teal and north eastern folk musicians The Young’uns, among others. For the full programme and tickets, go to: reydalefestival.com.
Mark Thomas: Performing one-man play England And Son at Selby Town Hall on Sunday. Picture: Tony Pletts
Work in Progress of the week: Mark Thomas in England And Son, Selby Town Hall, Sunday, 7.30pm
POLITICAL comedian Mark Thomas stars in this one-man play, set when The Great Devouring comes home: the first he has performed not written by the polemicist himself but by award-winning playwright Ed Edwards.
Directed by Cressida Brown, England And Son has emerged from characters Thomas knew in his childhood and from Edwards’s lived experience in jail. Promising deep, dark laughs and deep, dark love, Thomas undertakes a kaleidoscopic odyssey where disaster capitalism, Thatcherite politics and stolen wealth merge into the simple tale of a working-class boy who just wants his dad to smile at him. Box office: 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk.
Bee Scott: Presenting her queer sci-fi interactive travelogue If You Find This at Connect Festival on Thursday
Festival of the week in York: Four Wheel Drive presents Connect Festival, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, Wednesday to Sunday
FOUR Wheel Drive’s Connect Festival opens with Women’s Voices on Wednesday, staging two new shows, Giorgia Test’s Behind My Scars and Rhia Burston’s Woebegone. Thursday’s Non-Linear Narratives features Bee Scott’s queer sci-fi interactive travelogue If You Find This and Natasha Stanic Mann’s immersive insight into hidden consequences of war, The Return.
Friday’s Comedy and Burlesque bill presents Joe Maddalena in Gianluca Scatto and Maddalena’s dark comedy about male mental health, Self Help, Aidan Loft’s night-train drama On The Rail and A Night With York’s Stars burlesque show, fronted by Freida Nipples. More details next weekend. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Four Forty Theatre’s cast for the Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet comedy doube bill: Amy Roberts, Luke Thornton, Dom Gee-Burch and Amy Merivale
Unhinged comedy of the week: Four Forty Theatre in Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, Thursday, 7.30pm
MACBETH in 40 minutes? Romeo & Juliet in 40 minutes? Both shows performed by only four actors on one raucous night? Yes, welcome back Four Forty Theatre, returning to the JoRo with a brace of Shakespeare’s tragedies transformed into an outrageous, flat-out comedy double bill.
In the line-up will be actress and primary school teacher Alice Merivale; Liverpool actress, musician, director, vocal coach and piano teacher Amy Roberts; company debutant actor-musician Luke Thornton and company director and pantomime dame Dom Gee-Burch. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
The poster for Legend – The Music Of Bob Marley
Tribute show of the week: Legend – The Music of Bob Marley, York Barbican, Thursday, 7.30pm
LEGEND celebrates the reggae music of Jamaican icon Bob Marley in a two-hour Rasta spectacular. “Don’t worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing is gonna be alright” when the cast re-creates No Woman No Cry, Could You Be Loved, Is This Love, One Love, Three Little Birds, Jammin’, Buffalo Soldier, Get Up Stand Up and I Shot The Sheriff. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Jorgie Willingham’s Referee and Jim Carnall’s boxer Paul Stokes in rehearsal for The Sweet Science Of Bruising at York Theatre Royal. Picture: James Harvey
Knock-out show of the week: York College BA (Hons) Acting for Stage and Screen Graduating Students in The Sweet Science Of Bruising, York Theatre Royal, Thursday and Friday, 7.30pm
JOY Wilkinson’s The Sweet Science Of Bruisingis an epic tale of passion, politics and pugilism in the world of 19th-century women’s boxing, staged by York College students.
In London, 1869, four very different Victorian women are drawn into the dark underground of female boxing by the eccentric Professor Sharp. Controlled by men and constrained by corsets, each finds an unexpected freedom in the boxing ring as they fight inequality as well as each other. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Sarah-Louise Young: “I have made this show from a place of strength and recovery,” she says. “It is ultimately a very positive story of resilience and healing”. Picture: Steve Ullathorne
WARNING: Sarah-Louise Young’s show in York tomorrow night, The Silent Treatment, includes themes of trauma and sexual violence.
After her celebrations of Kate Bush (An Evening Without…) and Julie Andrews (Julie Madly Deeply), the Canterbury-born writer-performer returns to Theatre@41, Monkgate, with the highly personal true story of a singer who loses her voice and embarks on an unexpected journey of self-revelation and vocal healing.
In a career as a musical theatre actress, singer, writer, director, Showstopper! improviser and cabaret performer with Fascinating Aida, Sarah-Louise had “always known something wasn’t right with my voice but, like many singers, I assumed it was my fault,” as she revealed to the Guardian in June last year, ahead of the show’s Edinburgh Fringe run. “When a singer loses their voice we question their technique, their lifestyle, even their commitment.”
She had to hide how, every few months, her soprano voice would disappear, inducing a paralysing shame until it returned after few days’ rest. Then, after 11 years of ceaseless performing, “secret collapse and hidden recovery”, she lost her voice on stage mid-performance. “I was mortified,” she told the Guardian.
A consultant discovered cysts, probably there since childhood, he suggested, prompting him to ask Sarah-Louise if anything in her childhood – expressly before she was ten – could have traumatised her voice.
The answer was yes; she was sexually attacked at the age of seven, in daylight. “After the initial distress, I never gave it much thought. But the hand on my mouth, the stifled scream…what the mind forgets, the body remembers,” she wrote in her Guardian piece.
Self-care was advised, coffee became a no-no, work flowed, but after three years, her surgeon deemed an operation was necessary after her cysts burst when performing Julie Madly Deeply through bronchitis for six weeks.
Now there was something else to hide: she would be considered “damaged goods” if it became known she had undergone surgery, or so the “industry gatekeepers” forewarned. Stay silent? No, vowed Sarah-Louise, and nine years on, The Silent Treatment is her story, her voice found anew and her diary busier than ever at 47.
Sarah-Louise Young: “The first time I sang after the operation it was like night and day from singing pre-surgery”. Picture: Steve Ullathorne
Here Sarah-Louise discusses singing, healing and dealing with what life throws at you with CharlesHutchPress.
What has been the reaction to The Silent Treatment, especially to your revelations about the sexual attack you suffered aged seven?
“The audience and critical response has been overwhelmingly positive. Whenever I make a new show, especially one which is autobiographical, I ask myself the same question: why should anyone care?
“So although the details of the story are personal to me, it connects with many other people’s lived experiences of being silenced, singers and non-singers alike.
“In terms of the sexual attack, my brilliant director Sioned Jones and I spent a lot of time discussing how best to portray it without sensationalising it or traumatising anyone watching.
“Close friends who didn’t know about it were understandably moved or concerned when they watched it but I have made this show from a place of strength and recovery. It is ultimately a very positive story of resilience and healing.”
How do you structure this show?
“Without giving too much away about the piece, I play several different characters, ranging from my suave surgeon to a fruity diaphragm. It’s part quest, part journey into the past. It’s definitely not a conventional linear narrative but you’ll have to come along and see it to find out more.”
Where do songs fit in?
“Music is important and I was lucky enough to work with a fabulous composer called Chris Ash who I knew from Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. He created beautiful soundscapes for the different worlds of the piece, including scenes which take place inside the human body. He even sampled my voice electronically to add to the mix.
“I write the lyrics and we worked together on the songs, which were all created originally for the show to serve different moments. For example, the cysts get their own big solo number, which is great fun.”
An Evening Without Kate Bush and Julie Madly Deeply both had personal elements within them, but this is your most personal show. How does that feel when you perform it?
“I love connecting with an audience and have found with both of those shows that the more generous and open hearted I am, the more the audience will join me. It’s always a privilege to perform for people who have chosen to spend their time with you and the fact that they are invested in my journey is of course very rewarding for me.
“Most importantly, I want them to see themselves reflected back and find a universal meaning within the story.”
Both the Bush and Andrews shows were joyous. What is the tone of The Silent Treatment?
“It’s funny, surreal, intimate and heartfelt, incorporating songs, stories, characterisation, puppetry, movement and mime. There’s a lot going on and while I’m required to give the show a trigger warning due to its sensitive thematic content, I hope I have created a piece of cabaret which is uplifting and entertaining.”
Will there be any audience participation?
“Much less than in my other shows! I chat to the audience as they enter the space and collect tongue-twisters from them. The show is very much performed to them without a fourth wall, but I don’t invite anyone up onto the stage. Well, not yet anyway!”
“I believe it’s a story which needed to be told and I know I’m not alone in this,” says Sarah-Louise
When did you first find your voice, not the prescribed musical theatre voice?
“I think I found my voice as a child, before I was aware of training. It was free and playful. It took many years later on in life to re-discover that sense of play. I had a fantastic singing teacher, Maureen Scott, who guided me through my surgery and a wonderful vocal therapist called Dr Rehab afterwards.
“Our voices change and develop as we age and making this show has really empowered me to sing with my own authentic voice. I love singing Kate Bush and Julie Andrews’ songs too and enjoy the vocal gymnastics of switching between styles.”
Did you have to re-find your voice after the operation for the cysts?
“I did a month of vocal therapy six times a day. The minimum recovery time from surgery is four weeks and I only had four weeks and a day before opening in Julie Madly Deeply in Toronto, so I had to focus entirely on getting match fit.
“The first time I sang after the operation it was like night and day from singing pre-surgery. My voice has been strong and happy since then and I’ve never looked back.”
Describe a singer’s fear of being treated as damaged goods after an operation…
“At the time I felt vulnerable and also very angry because I knew it wasn’t true. It was someone else’s idea which I had absorbed. Singers get injuries just like athletes and there was no reason for me to feel any different.
“What happens to us is not our shame and I should never have been made to feel embarrassed or that I needed to hide the truth. The Silent Treatment is my response to being told I needed to stay quiet about my experience. I believe it’s a story which needed to be told and I know I’m not alone in this.”
“What the mind forgets, the body remembers,” you say. How have you dealt with that psychologically and physically?
“I’ve been through talking therapy and practice movement as part of my creative process. Our bodies have an incredible higher wisdom and if we listen to them, they will often guide us in the right direction.
“I’ve been mentoring a number of other artists recently and one of the things we explore is readiness to tell your story. Although the rehearsal room can feel therapeutic at times, the performer must be on the right side of therapy before they share that work with a paying audience.
“It must be safe for them and their public to perform the show. If it isn’t, in my opinion, then you might not be ready yet.”
The voice is the most vulnerable, personal, unpredictable instrument, even by comparison with a highly-strung guitar or piano. The only human instrument too.
Why are we not more understanding of its delicate nature for performers, who often pray to “Dr Theatre” to continue performing, as you did for so many years?
“Unless you are fortunate enough to have a laryngoscopy, the voice remains invisible to most people. It is a mysterious instrument and everyone’s voice is unique to them.
“I hope for the next generation of performers there will be more compassion and understanding moving forward,” says Sarah-Louise. Picture: Steve Ullathorne
“Some singers swear by gargling with cider vinegar, others smoke 20 cigarettes a day and still sing like an angel (although this isn’t a behaviour I endorse for obvious reasons).
“History also has fetishised singers who push themselves to the edge: Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Amy Winehouse, for example. How can these incredible voices come from such damaged people?
“We love watching people on the edge, on a tightrope, and when they fall, we make them martyrs for their art.
“It’s getting better for performers now, partly thanks to high-profile artists like Adele going public with their vocal challenges and partly, I think, because in general we’re waking up to the importance of looking after our mental health.
“Our voices and our well-being are intrinsically linked, and I hope for the next generation of performers there will be more compassion and understanding moving forward.
“I was chatting to the principal of an Australian musical theatre course recently and he told me they get all their students scoped in the first term, so not only do they see and understand their voices, but they also have a visual record for the rest of their careers to refer back to if they run into any difficulties.
“Had that been available to me all those years ago, I might have discovered my issue decades earlier.”
Did your voice change after the cysts were removed?
“The tone and sound was the same, but it was much stronger and I don’t have any breathiness any more, even when I’m tired.”
How does your voice behave now?
“It’s a joy to sing and I have no concerns whatsoever.”
How do you take care of your voice on tour, at the Fringe etc?
“Out of habit from so many years of looking after myself, I tend not to drink alcohol when I’m working but that is as much about mental clarity as vocal care. I used to have acid reflux but I don’t any more, so I mainly focus on getting good sleep, staying hydrated and warming down after a show as well as warming up.”
Are you off to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer?
“I’ll be there for the first week to bed-in two shows I’ve directed: Gertrude Lawrence – A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening, with Lucy Stevens, and Kravitz, Cohen, Bernstein And Me with Deb Filler. I’ll also be running a drop-in for solo performers on August 7, offering solidarity and support to artists on their own.”
Sarah-Louise Young in The Silent Treatment, Theatre@41, Monkgate, tomorrow (16/7/2023), 7pm. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
York Early Music Festival: Helen Charlston & Toby Carr, Undercroft, Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, York, July 10; The Marian Consort & Rose Consort of Viols, National Centre for Early Music, York, July 11
THERE is something special about a late-night recital, especially when the lights are low. The low-ceilinged Undercroft, with the audience in darkness and the performers dimly back-lit, was just the ticket for a spot of drama.
With the trusty theorbo of Toby Carr for support, Helen Charlston brought her considerable voice to bear on battle-hardened heroines.
Hers is no ordinary mezzo, as in soprano without the high notes. She has a considerable range, both high and low, but her tone is smoothly focused throughout, without sign of gear changing. Add to that a flair for diction which adds conviction to her theatricality, and you have a voice like no other. This was an exciting evening.
She opened and closed with Purcell. His most successful song in Bonduca (Boadicea as imagined by John Fletcher), O Lead Me To Some Peaceful Gloom, neatly captured the heroine’s inner conflict, and An Evening Hymn spoke of bold spiritual confidence.
She also evinced a special feel for the music of17th-century Italian Barbara Strozzi, a singer herself. The bitter-sweet pain of L’Heraclito Amoroso and the marvellously Italianate decorations in La Travagliata (The Tormented Woman) were meat and drink to Charlston’s skill.
She took her programme title, Battle Cry, from an eponymous work by Owain Park setting poetry by Georgia Way, which she premiered in 2021. It pictures intimate reactions to four ‘abandoned’ women: a lament for Boadicea, the solitude of Philomela, a prayer to Sappho and love-regret for Marietta.
Here she showed an uncommon affinity for the words, in vocal lines that were grateful even when occasionally flowery. Carr’s underpinnings were invaluable; as so often elsewhere, his rhythmic awareness added colour to the ebb and flow of passion. Its harmonies were modern but its aura evoked a much earlier era.
The highlight of the programme was the nobility in Charlston’s approach to Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna, which allowed us to discern a steely centre to the heroine’s emotional roller-coaster. Her dramatic style suggested that she must soon have a future on the operatic stage.
Carr was with her every step of the way. Indeed, it would have been good to hear more from him alone than the three brief solos we were allowed. Either way, they made a powerful duo.
The Marian Consort, represented by six voices at the NCEMon July 11
THE following lunchtime saw the combination of two consorts, the Rose Consort of Viols, which harks back to this festival’s origins, and the Marian Consort (of six voices). Byrd At Elizabeth’s Court celebrated the great man’s high-wire act as a Roman Catholic under a Protestant ruler.
It also allowed anthems normally heard with organ accompaniment to be experienced with the intimate richness of viols.
At its heart lay Byrd’s carol anthem Lullaby, My Sweet Little Baby, which features the Virgin Mary’s gentle retort to the Massacre of the Innocents.
Responding to a new commission from the consorts to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Byrd’s death, Juta Pranulytė sensitively chose the same text to reflect the number of children born into war, cruelty and oppression in our own day.
Pranulytė’s smooth vocal lines moved in mainly close harmony over viols required at times to produce trills and portamentos. The soprano opened at the top of her range and needed to negotiate several high semi-tonal shifts.
The atmosphere thus conjured was elegiac, combining comfort with tears, in a style reminiscent of Byrd’s own musical misgivings about the plight of Roman Catholics under Elizabeth. Apart from its prologue, which was diffuse, this was a canny piece of writing that fell easily on the ear.
Several verse anthems surrounded this centrepiece. The higher-voiced soloists mainly needed to enunciate more clearly, but choral blend was exquisite. Byrd’s rare setting of Italian, the Ariosto poem La Verginella, was delicately treated by the soprano Caroline Halls.
Other highlights included the madrigal-style Come To Me Grief, For Ever, sung unaccompanied, and a gorgeous Amen to close the New Year carol O God That Guides The Cheerful Sun. The Tallis motet O Sacrum Convivium, sung from the back of the hall, was an apt reminder of Byrd’s important mentor and (later) close colleague.
The Roses offered several pieces on their own, including a five-part Tallis fantasia reconstructed by John Milsom and Byrd’s voluntary for Lady Nevell, infused with snappy figurations. His variation-packed Browning was typical of the ensemble’s smooth dexterity.
THE King’s Singers and Fretwork open the 2023 Ryedale Festival tonight at St Peter’s Church in Norton, near Malton.
They will be marking the 400th anniversaries of Thomas Weelkes and William Byrd in a concert affectionately titled Tom & Will. Focusing on the humanity behind these two behemoths of Elizabethan music, the 7pm programme comprises well-known pieces alongside works performed less often.
New works by Sir James MacMillan and Roderick Williams find their place among the tributes to Byrd and Weelkes, and the unique fashion of The King’s Singers’ performances will bring drama, beauty and storytelling to Ryedale for the festival’s grand opening.
The King’s Singers have maintained their six-strong formation of two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass throughout their 55 years. In the 2023 line-up tonight will be countertenors Patrick Dunachie and Edward Button, tenor Julian Gregory, baritones Christopher Bruerton and Nick Ashby and bass Jonathan Howard.
The Fretwork consort of viols is heading into its 37th year of exploring the core repertory of English consort music alongside pioneering contemporary music for viols, with more than 40 commissioned new works in their repertoire of old and new.
Fretwork consists of Richard Boothby, Emilia Benjamin, Jonathan Rees, Joanna Levine, Sam Stadlen and Emily Ashton.
Fretwork
Taking part too will be the Ryedale Primary Choir, a new initiative for children aged seven to 11, run by Caius Lee and launched this year in collaboration with the Richard Shephard Music Foundation. Children attend free music sessions in school holidays, where they meet and sing with professional musicians, especially Ryedale Festival Young Artists.
The choir will be making its festival debut by appearing on stage with The King’s Singers in a special encore at this opening concert, having worked with them in a masterclass.
Festival artistic director Christopher Glynn says: “We open this year’s Ryedale Festival with a fantastic concert celebrating the life and work of two of England’s greatest composers of early music.
“Bringing together the best in a cappella singing and in viol consorts with The King’s Singers and Fretwork, there aren’t many better ways to bring up the curtain on the festival and mark the anniversaries of William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes.
“We are also very excited to have the Ryedale Primary Choir join the ensembles on stage for a very special encore. The festival is all about sharing great music with more people every year – and having this choir join us for free music sessions over the summer holidays and up on stage to open the festival is a great part of that. I look forward to seeing St Peter’s Church in Norton fill up for what will be a magnificent opening night.”
