The art beat of YORKshire
AFFIRMATIVE! Culture podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson look forward to Yes’s June 22 gig, then reappraise Fontaines DC’s Skinty Fia album, Francis Ford Coppola’s influential 1983 teen movie Rumble Fish and Harold Pinter’s rather difficult play The Homecoming.
To listen, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/10685305
NOT only a certain platinum jubilee is cause for a party. Charles Hutchinson finds reasons aplenty to head out.
What can you say in five minutes? Green Shoots, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday and Wednesday, 7.30pm
NEW work commissioned by York Theatre Royal from 20 York and North Yorkshire professional artists will be premiered in Green Shoots.
Poets, performers, singers, dancers and digital artists will be presenting bite-sized performances focused on “rebooting post-pandemic and looking to the future of the planet”.
Among them will be Fladam; Bolshee; Alexander Flanagan-Wright; Paul Birch; Hayley Del Harrison; Butshilo Nleya; Hannah Davies and Jack Woods; Gus Gowland; Joe Feeney and Dora Rubinstein. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
That’s all folk: City of York (Roland Walls) Folk Weekend, Black Swan Inn, Peasholme Green, York, today, 1pm to 11pm, and tomorrow, 1.30pm to 10.30pm
THE Black Swan Folk Club’s two days and nights of free music and song take in a marquee concert stage; rolling folk club; musicians’ sessions; singarounds; Japanese drumming; indoor concerts; the Poems & Pints hour and workshops.
Playing over the weekend will be Kaminari Taiko, The Ale Marys, The Duncan McFarlane Band, White Sail, Clurachan, Two Black Sheep And A Stallion, Holly Taymar, Blonde On Bob, Les Rustiques, Caramba, Miles And The Chain Gang, Tommy Coyle, Chechelele, Leather’O and more besides. Full programme: blackswanfolkclub.org.uk.
Art event of the month: North Yorkshire Open Studios 2022, today, tomorrow, then June 11 and 12, 10am to 5pm
FROM the rugged coastline near Whitby to the rolling Yorkshire Dales, 108 artists and makers invite you inside their studios and workshops.
Over four days, this is the chance to discover secret studio spaces and inspiring locations, watch artists at work, learn about their creative practices and buy contemporary art and design directly from the makers. To plan a route, visit nyos.org.uk to download a free brochure.
Coastal party of the weekend: Yorkshire’s Platinum Jubilee Concert, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, today, 6pm
NATIONAL treasure Jane McDonald will be joined by musical theatre stars The Barricade Boys and drag artiste La Voix outdoors in Scarborough this evening.
“It’s going to be amazing,” says Wakefield singer and television presenter McDonald. “A really rousing night, full of song. It will be a real sing-along event, so bring your voices. I expect it’ll be emotional too, but above all else we’ll have a good old party.” Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
Guitar god of the week and his (in)famous friend: Jeff Beck, with Johnny Depp, York Barbican, Tuesday, 8pm, sold out
NEWS flash. Fresh from winning his US defamation lawsuit against former wife Amber Heard, Hollywood frontman Johnny Depp, 58, is doing an impromptu victory lap as the special guest of South London rock, blues and jazz guitarist and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jeff Beck, 77, on a tour rearranged from April 2021.
Beck will take to the York stage with Rhonda Smith, bass, Vanessa Freebairn-Smith, cello, Anika Nilles, drums, Robert Adam Stevenson, keyboards, and Depp, riffing off his piratical Keith Richards vibe no doubt, on guitar. Box office for returns only: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Political drama of the week: Shakespeare’s Globe in Julius Caesar, York Theatre Royal, June 10, 7.30pm; June 11, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
PREPARE to confront today’s political landscape as Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar takes on startlingly new relevance in Diane Page’s account of this brutal tale of ambition, incursion and revolution.
When Cassius (Charlotte Bate) and Brutus (Anna Crichton) decide Roman leader Julius Caesar (Dickson Tyrrell) poses a political threat to their beloved country, ancient Rome feels closer to home than ever amid the conspiracy to kill, the public broadcast of cunning rhetoric and a divisive fight for greatness. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Soul legend of the week: Dionne Warwick, She’s Back: One Last Time, York Barbican, June 10, 8pm
DON’T walk on by. Dionne Warwick’s rescheduled She’s Back: One Last Time itinerary now carries the Farewell Tour tag too, making next Friday’s concert all the more a Must See event.
Now 81, the six-time Grammy Award-winning New Jersey singer, actress, television host and former United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture will be performing such Bacharach/David favourites as I Say A Little Prayer, Do You Know The Way To San Jose and Walk On By, plus material from her May 2019 album, She’s Back. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Hottest ticket of the week: Gary Barlow: A Different Stage, Grand Opera House, York, June 9, 10 and 11, 7.30pm; June 12, 2.30pm
FIRST, Take That’s Gary Barlow announced Friday and Saturday solo shows, then he added a Sunday matinee, and, finally, Thursday too. Ticket availability is best for the opening night; barely a handful remain for the others.
“I’ve done shows where it has just been me and a keyboard,” says the Wirral singer, songwriter, composer, producer, talent show judge and author. “I’ve done shows where I sit and talk to people. I’ve done shows where I’ve performed as part of a group.
“But this one, well, it’s like all of those, but none of them. When I walk out this time, well, it’s going to be a very different stage altogether.” Box office, without delay: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Whatever the weather with you, Crowded House play Scarborough Open Air Theatre, July 11; gates open at 6pm
CROWDED House are heading out on their first European tour in more than ten years with a line-up of founding members Neil Finn and Nick Seymour, producer and keyboardist Mitchell Froom, guitarist and singer Liam Finn and drummer Elroy Finn, Neil’s sons.
Such favourites as Weather With You, Don’t Dream It’s Over, Distant Sun and Private Universe will be complemented by material from the Antipodeans’ seventh studio album, June 2021’s Dreamers Are Waiting, their first since 2010’s Intriguer. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.
YORK band Miles And The Chain Gang play their first home-city gig in almost a year at the City of York (Roland Walls) Folk Weekend on Sunday.
Catch singer-songwriter Miles Salter and his new line-up on the Marquee Stage at 5.30pm at the Black Swan Inn, Peasholme Green, York, where entry will be free.
“Come by and see us, we’d love to see you, as we kick off a run of events that takes us on a mini ‘tour of Yorkshire’, with dates over the summer at Doncaster, Helmsley and Harrogate, as well as gigs closer to York,” says Miles.
Joining guitarist Miles on stage will be drummer Steve Purton, bassist Mathew Watt and keyboards player Daniel Bowater.
“It feels good,” says band leader Miles. “We’ve got some great little gigs lined up and we’re looking forward to heading out.”
In the Chain Gang diary are: Doncaster Leopard, June 18; Helmsley Arts Centre, July 23; Blues Bar, Harrogate, July 24; The Smithy Arms, Swinton, August 27, and Jolly Sailor Inn, Cawood, September 24.
The band’s fourth single, Love Is Blind, is out now, accompanied by a video by York filmmaker Dave Thorp that has clocked up more than 25,000 views already in only two weeks.
“It’s a good song. People are really responding well to it,” says Miles. “It’s been played on lots of smaller, independent stations in the UK, as well as in the USA and Australia. Several stations made it their ‘single of the week’, including Jorvik Radio in York. It’s great to see it going out into the world – thanks to everybody who helped make this happen.”
Recorded and mixed at Young Thugs Studios in York, Love Is Blind features Salter on vocals and guitar; Tim Bruce, bass; Billy Hickling, drums and percussion; Karl Mullen, piano; Holly Taymar, backing vocals, and Jonny Hooker, organ.
WHY is “gloriously bonkers” York performer, maker and writer Freddie Hayes a puppeteer?
“I’ve always made puppets from a young age,” she says. “But I lost in a puppet competition at Scarcroft School and it’s been revenge ever since.”
That act of revenge continues with the Edinburgh Fringe-bound Potatohead, her “starch-raving mad” solo adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s cautionary tale Doctor Faustus And The Seven Deadly Sins, directed by Sh!t Theatre.
Combining puppetry, stand-up comedy, physical theatre, film, singing, dancing and a sack of potato puns, Freddie’s hour-long “one-potato show” plays York Theatre Royal Studio on June 10, the McCarthy at the Stepehen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on June 14, and Seven Arts in her adopted home of Leeds on July 20.
“I’ve always been interested in puppets as objects and creating characters from everyday people you might see in everyday life,” says Freddie, whose absurdist work hovers between childish puppetry and late-night entertainment in its story of humble York spud Charlotte, who dreams of becoming a cabaret superstar but is blighted by a chip on her shoulder.
“I have quite a dark sense of humour too, and there seems to be something haunting about puppets that intrigues me.
“Puppetry can be very violent, with dark stories like Punch & Judy, where he defeats the Devil and death itself with his powers – so that story has a vague connection with Faust.”
After introducing York and beyond to grouchy pub landlords Fred and Sharon, unhappily married guvnors of a dated York boozer, in Fred’s Microbewery at the 2019 Great Yorkshire Fringe and York Theatre Royal Pop-up Festival, now Freddie switches her attention to the Swiss Army knife of the vegetable world, the potato, in her “unadulterated celebration of silliness”.
Expect elements of kitsch cabaret and old-school entertainment in her blend of puppetry, clowning and surrealist comedy with room for sexual content and references to religion and the devil, hence the age guidance of 14+.
Why re-tell Faustus, Freddie? “I like the darkness and the idea of being in between life and death, that power struggle, as you try to get your dream to become reality – and in the case of Potatohead, it becomes the struggle of trying to become a stand-up comedian,” she says.
Would that struggle involve selling your soul to the devil? “I’m yet to do so myself! I don’t have to worry about comeuppance! But there is connection between potatoes and Faustus…”
…Really? “The year that the potato arrived in Europe was the same year that Marlowe’s play was premiered,” says Freddie. “Back then, potatoes were very glamorous. They were considered to be exotic and aphrodisiacs too!”
Yes, but why transform Faustus into a potato, or, rather, a couch potato with aspirations of becoming a golden wonder? “What’s great about potatoes is that they can be anything, and I feel like everyone has an inner potato in them. Some days everyone feels a bit like a potato,” says Freddie.
“On top of that, there was the idea that you can become great [not grate!] one day by taking a risk and being brave. That’s the moral of this story.”
Potatoes are even more chameleon than usual in Freddie’s show. “There’s actually a little bit of puppet potato nudity!” she reveals. “They can also fly and shape-shift, disappear and re-appear, so they’re quite magical!
“What’s great is that the potato puppets play these demon spirit characters and they do have this unworldly quality about them, which works well with the narrative of Faustus.”
Seeking to capture the stupidity of life in her puppetry, she also reflects on her own life through her characters, scenarios and themes. “There’s a part of the show that’s slightly autobiographical in that I talk about my relationship with puppets and how they integrate with my life,” says Freddie, who studied for a BA in puppetry at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama from 2015 to 2018.
“I have this awareness of being dressed as a potato running around with these puppet potatoes, so I give a side-eyed look at the audience, as if to say ‘what am I doing here?’!”
Puppet potatoes abound in Potatohead. “You can probably guess there are seven potatoes for the seven demons [the ‘deadly sins’ in Faustus], and there’s obviously a Mephistopheles, played by Maurice Piper! Beelzebub is a big secret I can’t reveal, though it’s something to do with a popular potato brand,” says Freddie.
Summing up Potatohead’s comedic style, Freddie says: “It’s a very strange one! Imagine if Cilla Black collaborated with The League Of Gentlemen and The Mighty Boosh, all in a one-potato show. Old-school glamour meets general weirdness!” What a mash-up!
As for Freddie’s favourite potato dish, “I love chips,” she says. “Keep it simple. Cheesy chips. Or cheesy chips and gravy if you’re feeling really naughty.”
As part of her debut national tour, Freddie Hayes presents Potatohead at York Theatre Royal, June 10, 7.45pm; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, June 14, 7.45pm; Seven Arts, Chapel Allerton, Leeds, July 20, 8pm. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com; Leeds, 0113 262 6777 or sevenleeds.co.uk.
Copyright of The Press, York
Question? What is Freddie’s favourite among the seven deadly sins in Doctor Faustus?
“Gluttony. I think I feel I don’t think it’s a terrible sin! It seems quite sweet,” she says.
Born: York
Lives in: Leeds
Occupation: Performer, writer, puppeteer and maker, crafting bespoke puppets, props and costumes.
Studied for: BA in Puppetry at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, 2015 to 2018.
Since graduating: Created solo shows Fred’s Microbrewery and Potatohead, performing on UK comedy, festival and cabaret circuit for four years, playing Shambala Festival, Camden Fringe and Leeds International Festival.
Home city works: Strut Club cabaret; former artist-in-residence at Southlands Studios; presented Fred’s Microbrewery at 2019 Great Yorkshire Fringe and York Theatre Royal Pop-up Festival; created and filmed short puppet film Fred And Sharon on York’s streets.
Projects: Artist-in-residence at Slung Low Theatre, working with Sh!t Theatre mentors, at The Holbeck, Holbeck, Leeds; associate artist of Slap York; resident puppeteer at Folkestone Puppet Festival.
Debut national PotaTour: Potatohead, May 19 to July 20, playing Leeds, Camden, Brighton Fringe Festival, Bristol, York, Scarborough, Greater Manchester Fringe Festival (July 14, 7pm, 9pm) and Leeds again (Seven Arts, July 20, 8pm).
Support: Started work on Potatohead project with Slap York in 2019. “They’re great at helping emerging artists,” says Freddie. “Without them, I don’t think I would have got going on this show.”
Funding: Arts Council National Lottery Project Grant to create Potatohead; Luke Rollason Memorial Bursary Award winner to programme show at Brighton Fringe Festival.
Performance style: Hovering between childish puppetry and late-night entertainment. Often autobiographical, reflecting on her life through relatable characters, scenarios or themes.
Pulling strings: Makes all her puppets, costumes and props. “I see it as a sort of sculpture, and I love making props,” says Freddie. “I do a lot of puppet-making commissions, making them for York Maze and Leeds City Varieties and working freelance for Leeds Playhouse for a while.”
Next up: Presenting Potatohead at Below, The Pleasance Courtyard, 60 Pleasance, Edinburgh, at 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, August 3 to 29, 2pm. Directed by Sh!t Theatre, Freddie’s production will be appearing as a York Theatre Royal supported show with Pleasance Edinburgh National Partnerships. Box office: tickets.edfringe.com/venues/pleasance-courtyard.
SAY Owt, York’s performance poetry forum, teams up with York Literature Festival to present author and poet Pete “The Temp” Bearder in Homer To Hip Hop at The Crescent, York, on June 19.
Bearder’s 7.30pm performance lecture on a people’s history of spoken word and poetry will be “part gig, part TedTalk, part party” as he speaks truth to power.
Introducing Bearder’s show, Say Owt artistic director Henry Raby says: “As we enter the post-Covid comeback, meet the artistic revivals that have remade the world from the bottom up.
“Find out why wordsmiths have always been vilified, feared and revered, from the ballad singers and Beat poets, to the icons of dub, punk and hip hop. The spoken word has always been the most immediate tool of cultural revival. This show brings a proud history to life and asks what we can do with it next.”
Former national Poetry Slam champion, spoken word poet, author and comic Bearder brings to life the poetic movements that have shaped history. His work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service and Newsnight and his Homer To Hip Hop show follows the release of his ground-breaking book Stage Invasion: Poetry & The Spoken Word Renaissance.
Support on June 19 comes from Raby, Say Owt’s “token punk poet”, who has appeared at festivals across the UK and on BBC Radio York. “Althea Thall will be bringing her story-telling energy too and, finally, Jonny Crawshaw will be DJing a hip-hop set afterwards,” says Henry.
Tickets cost £10 via www.thecrescentyork.com/events/home-to-hip-hop-a-peoples-history-of-spoken-word/
BIG beards, food and funfairs galore, Irish whimsy, postcard art, tree theatre, Moronic music, female folk and a year’s notice of camp comedy catch Charles Hutchinson’s eye.
York Spring Festival and Food Fair, Clocktower Enclosure, York Racecourse, Knavesmire, York, running until June 5
IN its second year at York Racecourse, this event takes in the Platinum Jubilee long weekend celebrations to complement the 15 vintage funfair rides, food stalls, live music and family entertainment, highlighted by the lighting of York’s Jubilee Beacon on Thursday evening.
Look forward to 6.30pm performances by York musicians Huge, The Y Street Band, Hyde Family Jam and New York Brass Band, plus Wales’s Old Time Sailors.
Busiest of all will be York children’s entertainer, “balloonologist”, juggler and magician Josh Benson, performing his high-energy Just Josh show four times a day. Tickets: ticketsource.co.uk/yorkspringfair.co.uk.
Half-term festival of the week: Jorvik Viking Festival, York, today until Wednesday
NEARLY two and a half years after hordes of Viking warriors and settlers last descended on the city, York is ready for five days of Norse-themed fun and entertainment.
Moved from February to fit into the summer half-term holiday, the 2022 festival sees the return of a living history encampment, March to Coppergate, Strongest Viking and Best Beard contests and Poo Day at DIG, as well as a new arena event this evening, The Jorvik Games. For full festival details and tickets, go to: jorvikvikingfestival.co.uk. See full preview below.
Comedy gig of the week: Dylan Moran, We Got This, Grand Opera House, York, tonight, 8pm
DROLL Irish comedian Dylan Moran promises a joyously furious romp through the frustration and folly of modern-day life in his new tour show.
“These times have not been easy,” he says. “Learn how to make breakfast not even knowing you are out of bed. Diagnose the mirror, reason with the mice and boil yoghurt blindfolded. Enjoy the fruits of hurtling cognitive decline and your neighbours’ sprawling ghastliness, absence of humanity and so, so much more.” Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.
Art event of the weekend: PICA Postcard Show and Sale, PICA Studios, Grape Lane, York, today and tomorrow, 10am to 4pm
THE artists at the PICA Studios workshop are branching out into one-off postcard artworks for one weekend only. Each postcard will sell for £25 to raise funds towards improving the studio space and to create a gallery in the foyer.
Taking part will be Lesley Birch, Evie Leach, Emily Stubbs, Katrina Mansfield, Ealish Wilson, Sarah Jackson, Ric Liptrot, Jo Edmonds, Lisa Power, Amy Stubbs, Mick Leach, Rae George, Lesley Shaw Lu Mason and Kitty Pennybacker. Purchases also can be made online via instagram@picastudios.
Family drama of the weekend: Badapple Theatre Company in Yorkshire Kernel, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, today, 2.30pm and 7.30pm
JAMES’S Grandad is at death’s door, but he has one last mission: to find a tree. Many trees in fact, scattered around the country in memory of his Second World War comrades. So begins writer, performer and puppeteer Danny Mellor’s play for Green Hammerton company Badapple.
Divided between being haunted by his plain-speaking grandfather, his mother rekindling her romance with an old flame, and James’s pregnant partner, Rosie, thinking he is cheating on her, Mellor’s “bonkers” solo show undertakes a journey of Yorkshire wit and grit through one man’s determination to leave a long-lasting legacy. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Cracking gig of the week: The Lovely Eggs, supported by Arch Femmesis and Thick Richard, The Crescent, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
PROUDLY independent northern psychedelic punk rock duo The Lovely Eggs do not give up. After re-scheduling the tour to promote April 2020’s release of their I Am Moron album seven times, they play The Crescent at last this weekend.
Iggy Pop, no less, contributed to their track I, Moron. “For him just to say nothing but ‘moron’ over and over again fitted in with the sentiment of the song perfectly,” says Lovely Egg Holly Ross. “He just got it. We are all morons. In a world of moronic things. In a world of moronic ideas. You are Moron. I am Moron. We are Moron.” OK, Morons and Eggheads, tickets are on sale at thecrescentyork.com.
Folk gigs of the week: The Unthanks, Sorrows Away Tour, York Barbican, Tuesday, 7.45pm; Katherine Priddy, supported by George Boomsma, National Centre for Early Music, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm
RETURNING to touring after two years off the road, Northumbrian folk musicians The Unthanks will be previewing their upcoming autumn album Sorrows Away in their York Barbican debut with an 11-piece ensemble. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
The following night at the NCEM, finger-picking guitarist and haunting singer Katherine Priddy performs enchanting songs on the theme of childhood, distant memories and whatever will follow next from last June’s debut album, The Eternal Rocks Beneath. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.
Gig launch of the week: Tom Allen, Completely, York Barbican, May 28 2023
YOU will have to wait 12 months for comedian, raconteur, arch television jester and radio presenter Tom Allen’s new show, Completely, to arrive in York. Tickets go on sale rather sooner, from 10am on Monday at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
At 38, Bromley-born Allen has finally moved out of his parents’ house, prompting his eagerness to share his life updates, gain audience opinions on his vegetable patch and delve into the protocol of inviting friends with children for dinner.
TENTS for an encampment are being set up in Parliament Street and screens installed at the Eye of York. Traders are transporting their wares to the Guildhall and St Sampson’s Square and a faint smell of mead is wafting through the air. Welcome to the return of the Jorvik Viking Festival.
Nearly two and a half years after hordes of Viking warriors and settlers last descended on the city, York is preparing for five days of Norse-themed fun and entertainment, starting today (28/5/2022).
Postponed from February to fit snugly into the half-term holiday before the Jubilee bank holiday, this year’s festival will see the return of such favourite events as a living history encampment, the March To Coppergate and the Strongest Viking and Best Beard contests, alongside a new arena event at 6.45pm this evening, The Jorvik Games.
“In February, our evening spectacular is usually a dramatic presentation of a Viking story, but with the evenings being so much lighter in May, our event will also be a little more fun,” says event manager Gareth Henry.
“The Viking Games will pit the finest warriors from four teams against each other, with spectators invited to pick their champion and cheer them on to victory. Henry. Of course, being Vikings, they might not always play by the rules – and with their own horde of supporters behind them on the arena field, sparks will fly with skirmishes inevitable!”
Tickets for The Jorvik Games are still available, priced £15 for adults and £11 for concessions, with family tickets also available at jorvikvikingfestival.co.uk.
While Saturday will be the festival’s busiest day, visitors from Sunday to Wednesday will enjoy a host of events and activities too. On Sunday, at 29/31 Coney Street, visitors can meet Vikings from all over Europe, brought together under the Erasmus scheme, including fun crafting activities.
Young warriors can hone their skills in Have-A-Go Sword sessions on the Parliament Street stage and the Ting Tang re-enactors will bring theatre to the stage every day too.
The last few places remain on crafting workshops taking place Monday to Wednesday at York Medical Society, on Stonegate, including Nalebinding (Viking knitting), Trichinopoly (wire weaving) and tablet weaving.
On Wednesday, Jorvik’s sister attraction, DIG in St Saviourgate, will host the ever-popular Poo Day, a chance for children (and adults!) to try their hand at making a replica Viking poo, based on the world-famous Lloyds Bank Coprolite (fossilised poo, should you be wondering).
Jorvik Viking Centre’s exhibition of items from the Silverdale Hoard, on loan from Lancashire County Museums, is also expected to be popular, with tickets for the attraction selling out for many time slots throughout the half-term break.
“With good weather forecast for the weekend, we’re expecting York to be particularly busy, so would urge visitors to pre-book their tickets wherever possible to avoid disappointment,” says Henry.
Full details of all Jorvik Viking Festival events can be found at jorvikvikingfestival.co.uk.
RYEDALE Festival floated a powerful reminder of its status in the community with this world premiere of a new song-cycle written by a Pickering-born composer and largely performed by inhabitants of Ryedale.
Joseph Howard’s Seven Mercies was inspired by mediaeval murals in Pickering Church, which have only recently been brought back to life and decoded from beneath the whitewash of centuries.
They refer to specific acts of kindness – properly titled Seven Acts of Corporal Mercy – mentioned by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount and illustrated here by stories from the Bible.
Howard’s music is built around Emma Harding’s poetic libretto, which at its core delivers a song-cycle for mezzo-soprano and piano. Its sections use different female characters whose hardships have been alleviated by someone else’s generosity, often put into a modern context: a refugee, for example, or a hospital patient prevented by Covid regulations from receiving visitors.
That is the backbone of the work and no doubt it could stand alone. But it is immensely coloured and given depth by several choral and brass interludes, as well as introduction, prologue and finale.
Much of the text here has been devised by choir members themselves. Ryedale Festival Community Choir, under Em Whitfield Brooks, and Ryedale Primary Schools Choir (taken from Pickering Community Junior School and Gillamoor C of E and St Joseph’s RC Primary Schools), conducted by Holly Greenwood-Rogers, were joined by a brass quintet of junior members from Kirkbymoorside Town Band and bell ringer Pam Robb.
Kathryn Rudge was the inspired soloist. Her clean, clear, beautifully projected mezzo was exactly suited to evoking the plight of the desperate and the downtrodden, and Christopher Glynn’s fluently controlled piano gave her superb underpinning. When she took to the pulpit for the finale, she soared angelically above and through the combined forces below, as if offering divine support.
Both choirs had evidently been keenly trained. They represented the voices of the community coming to the aid of the needy. Where the adults were sympathetic and affectionate, the children were infectiously enthusiastic, an apt balance. The young brass were impressive too, in an early fanfare, a lament and a smooth duet for cornets.
Howard’s music, which was always attuned to the text, divided into two styles: a thoughtful, modal English for the soloist that was reminiscent of Vaughan Williams and a much more universal, generally major-key and strongly rhythmic approach for the ensembles. This made sense with such a wide range of talents on hand: all were shown to best effect.
We may thank the Richard Shephard Music Foundation for its association with an occasion that both highlighted an important piece of local history and underlines what a force for good the Ryedale Festival continues to be. The festival itself will run from July 15 to 31 with full details at ryedalefestival.com.
Review by Martin Dreyer
AFTER 26 years of “previous”, stalwart Scottish contrarians Belle & Sebastian release A Bit Of Previous. What’s their way ahead, judging by their latest album, recorded back home in Glasgow?
Two Big Egos In A Small Car culture podcasters Graham Chalmers (their fellow Scot) and Charles Hutchinson mull it over in Episode 91.
Plus: Predicting cinema’s dark future and all hail to New York art-rock pioneers The Velvet Underground. To listen, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/10651348
Jess Dandy/Martin Roscoe & Robin Tritschler/Christopher Glynn, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, April 29
THOSE of us who had not encountered Jess Dandy before, your correspondent included, cannot have avoided reading that she had been likened to Kathleen Ferrier in a national newspaper.
It is an unfortunate comparison and should be dropped before it becomes burdensome. She is indeed that endangered species, a true contralto, which alone entitles her to our attention. She may in time become the one and only Jess Dandy – but she is not Ferrier.
I confess that what initially drew my attention was her accompanist: Martin Roscoe is a supreme musician and a very busy one. Anyone who claims his time deserves our respect, especially since he is most often found as a solo performer.
With that rant out of the way, we may concentrate on Dandy’s lunchtime programme, which opened with Amy Beach and Lili Boulanger before moving onto more familiar territory with Falla, Wolf and Tchaikovsky, each of her five groups therefore in a different language.
Oddly enough, her diction in Beach’s three Robert Browning songs was almost consonant-free, but her tone was richly textured which excited anticipation.
In four unrelated songs by Boulanger, three from her teenage years, she penetrated the surface better. In two Maeterlinck poems, her high ending to ‘Reflets’, finding consolation in the moon, was beautifully controlled and the illusory ‘Attente’ (Waiting) was properly bleak. The prospect of Ulysses’s return to Ithaca brought compensatory joy to her tone.
Falla’s settings of seven traditional Spanish folksongs generally needed a lighter touch to match Roscoe’s impeccable staccatos. These works look easier on paper than they really are.
It was only when Dandy came to Wolf’s Mörike settings (1888) that her diction really began to shine. ‘Er ist’s’ (Spring Is Here) was wonderfully ecstatic, rounded off by the piano’s peerless postlude. She had a real feel for the bitter-sweet ‘Verborgenheit’ (Seclusion) and danced nimbly as the water-sprite Reedfoot alongside the piano’s curlicues. Both performers revelled in the dramatic possibilities of ‘Der Feuerreiter’ (The Fire-rider), while ending peacefully.
Dandy was equally well-suited to four Tchaikovsky songs. Voice and piano neatly intertwined in a Tolstoy poem about spring. There was a wonderfully pained melisma at the end of ‘I was a little blade of grass’ (the girl had been married off against her will). Even if the final climax of ‘Can it be day?’ was not quite full enough, we knew she had these songs in her bloodstream; Roscoe’s postlude was another little masterpiece.
This young lady certainly has talent. She can now afford to be less concerned about delivering perfect tone and concentrate more on acting with her voice.
The second evening supplied my fourth recital of the festival. But it was the first in which the singer used no music. Thirty years ago, this would not have been a cause for comment. But times have changed and musicians are no longer routinely learning their scores by heart. One might have thought that during the ‘downtime’ provided by the pandemic, this might have changed. But no.
The hero in question was tenor Robin Tritschler, whose first half – ‘Illuminated Music’ – was English, Britten’s own works framing his realisations of Croft and Purcell. After half-time, we had ‘Illuminating Songs’ from further afield, eight composers stretching from Schubert to Henry Mancini. His admirable partner was Christopher Glynn.
Coloratura flowed easily in ‘Let The Florid Music Praise’ (On This Island) and Croft’s A Hymn To Divine Musick turned the temperature up further. All his Purcell set was characterised by a focus and intensity that was communicated all the more directly by the absence of a music-stand between audience and singer.
‘Music For A While’ enjoyed crispness in both voice and piano, which spilled over strongly into the finish of ‘Sweeter Than Roses’. The darting sections and crazy swings of ‘Mad Bess’ were finely wrought, with Glynn injecting just the right level of fire without dominating.
Britten’s Canticle I: My Beloved Is Mine was hugely convincing, a tenderly felt duet that did full justice to Quarles’s spiritual paraphrase from the Song Of Solomon. Glynn’s flowing piano alongside Tritchler’s vocal freedom came to a close of the utmost serenity.
Moonlight suffused virtually all the second half. The atmosphere was movingly set by Schubert’s incomparable setting of Leitner’s ‘Der Winterabend’: the piano’s seamless line matched the tenor’s legato.
Fauré’s ‘Clair de Lune’ conjured intimacy while Hahn’s ‘L’heure Exquise’ delivered perfumed scents. Mancini’s nostalgic ‘Moon River’, with its Beethovenian opening was nicely balanced by Howells’s setting of De la Mare’s ‘Full Moon’, which disappeared into a niente finish.
Tritschler really opened out in the climactic moments of Liza Lehmann’s ‘Ah, Moon Of My Delight’ (In A Persian Garden), after which Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Big Lady Moon’ made the perfect encore. This was a particularly satisfying occasion, with both musicians on excellent form.
Review by Martin Dreyer
Dorothea Röschmann and Joseph Middleton; Wallis Giunta, Sean Shibe and Adam Walker, Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, April 28
LEEDS Lieder was back in its usual springtime slot and all the better for that. More to the point, the line-up was as star-studded as ever.
On the first evening of this 11th festival, German soprano Dorothea Röschmann made her north of England debut in tandem with festival supremo Joseph Middleton as her piano-partner in a programme of Schumann, Mahler, Wolf and Wagner.
There is something reassuring about hearing native Germans in lieder: whatever else, they have this repertory in their bloodstream.
Schumann’s settings of five letters and poems attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots delve into the heart of Mary’s isolation after imprisonment by her sister, Queen Elizabeth I.
They are an unusual starter for a programme, but Röschmann handled them with considerable refinement, capturing the happy reminiscences of France – Schumann’s major-minor alternations – and prayerful after the birth of Mary’s son.
There was no escaping Mary’s desolation at 19 years’ imprisonment and her final prayer before death was poignant indeed in Roschmann’s account.
Six of Mahler’s settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn made a welcome contrast, none more so than the opening ‘Rheinlegendchen’ (Little Rhine Legend), which was turned into a cutesy dance, full of sparkle.
There was a relentless piano momentum in the tale of the starving child, ‘Das Irdische Leben’ (Life On Earth), representing the mill-stream. She cleverly juxtaposed two duets featuring young girls disappointed in love, the one flirting in vain, the other – touchingly here – discovering that her soldier sweetheart is just a mirage: he is already dead.
Wolf’s four Mignon songs, sung by the teenager abducted from Italy by Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, are the epitome of yearning, as she longs to return home. I
n the opening one, Kennst du as Land? – which she actually sang last – there was a lovely moment where she switched mid-phrase from a fortissimo at the plunging torrent to pose the title question much more quietly, rounding off the song with a delightful portamento in the final phrase. It was typical of her attention to detail. Middleton shadowed her closely throughout.
Written in the run-up to Tristan und Isolde, Wagner’s five settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a well-heeled silk merchant (and patron of the composer), developed out of his infatuation for her.
They are essentially love-songs, whose voluptuous harmonies – twice directly prefiguring Tristan – were mirrored in Roschmann’s lush treatment. Her gear-changing into chest tone was not always entirely smooth, but she and Middleton captured their heady atmosphere to a tee, notably in the “stop the world, I want to get off” implications of ‘Stehe Still!’ (Stand Still). This was a most satisfying opening recital, if not quite a memorable one.
Mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta’s late-night recital, given with guitarist Sean Shibe and flautist Adam Walker, was a mixed bag. She is an engaging personality, whose prowess as an actress she has already proved here, and there was no doubting the skills of her two partners – especially Shibe, in a wide variety of styles – but their protest songs from the Americas were too diffuse to make a coherent whole.
Taking their title from one of the songs, ‘The Revolution Smells Of Jasmine’, they encompassed racism, revolution, female emancipation and “patriarchal oppression”: art as politics, in other words, but this scattergun approach missed too many targets.
Nevertheless, the programme had its moments. Four songs by the Argentinian composer Ariel Ramirez had the unmistakeable tang of Portuguese fado about them, as if their essence had spilled over from neighbouring Brazil: Alfonsina’s heartache was palpable and Gringa Chaqueña evoked a smoky underworld. Juana Azurduy, the song which included the evening’s title, was more upbeat, even triumphal.
No South American set would have been complete without Astor Piazzolla. Sure enough, the instruments dipped into L’Histoire du Tango, before Giunta conjured a vivid ‘Café’ and a frisky ‘Bordel 1900’, where the syncopation was succulent.
North America was not forgotten. Giunta gave her fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’ and a couple of Joan Baez numbers. All were cleanly done in good folk-style, but lacked a certain earthiness.
The most harrowing moment came in Abel Meeropol’s ‘Strange Fruit’, written in 1937 and made famous in song by Billie Holiday two years later: the ‘fruit’ was the bodies of black victims of lynching, swinging in the breeze. Not at all comfortable.
At her best, Giunta has a witty, wacky side that she kept under wraps here, in the name of protest of course, although almost as if she were under some restraint. But she is a total professional and had also chosen her accompanists wisely. They responded with lively duets as well as unfailing support.
Review by Martin Dreyer