Category: Music

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More Things To Do in York and beyond when it’s never too late for Early Music. Hutch’s List No. 30, from The York Press

Richard Hawley: Revisiting Coles Corner with strings attached at Live At York Museum Gardens today. Picture: Dean Chalkley

WHAT happens when York Museum Gardens turns into Coles Corner and the same play opens in two places at once? Find out in Charles Hutchinson’s leisure list.

Open-air concert of the week: Futuresound Group  presents Live At York Museum Gardens, Richard Hawley, today; gates open at 5pm

SHEFFIELD guitarist, songwriter and crooner Richard Hawley revisits his 1995 album Coles Corner with a string section on its 20th anniversary this evening, complemented by Hawley highlights from his 2001 to 2024 albums (9pm to 10.30pm).

He will be preceded by Mercury Prize-winning Leeds band English Teacher (7.45pm to 8.30pm); Manchester-based American songwriter BC Camplight, introducing his new album, A Sober Conversation (6.30pm to 7.15pm), and Scottish musician Hamish Hawk, whose latest album, A Firmer Hand, emerged last August (5.40pm to 6.10pm). Box office: seetickets.com.

The Tallis Scholars: Performing Glorious Creatures, directed by Peter Philips, at York Minster at 7.30pm tonight at York Early Music Festival. Picture: Hugo Glendinning

Festival of the week:  York Early Music Festival, Heaven & Hell, until July 11

EIGHT days of classical music are under way featuring international artists such as The Sixteen, The Tallis Scholars, Academy of Ancient Music, Helen Charlston & Toby Carr and the York debut of Le Consort, performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons “but not quite as you know it” on Sunday.

Directed by Delma Tomlin, the festival weaves together three main strands: the 400th anniversary of Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons, the Baroque music of Vivaldi and Bach and reflections on Man’s fall from grace, from Heaven to Hell. Full programme and tickets at ncem.co.uk/whats-on/yemf/. Box office: 01904 658338.

Bridget Christie: Late replacement for Maisie Adam at Futuresound Group’s inaugural York Comedy Festival. Picture: Natasha Pszenicki

Comedy event of the week: Futuresound Group presents Live At York Museum Gardens, York Comedy Festival, Sunday, 2.30pm to 7.30pm

HARROGATE comedian Maisie Adam will not be playing the inaugural York Comedy Festival this weekend after all. The reason: “Unforeseen circumstances”. Into her slot steps trailblazing Bridget Christie, Gloucester-born subversive stand-up, Taskmaster participant and writer and star of Channel 4 comedy-drama The Change.

The Sunday fun-day bill will be topped by Dara Ó Briain and Katherine Ryan. Angelos Epithemiou, Joel Dommett, Vittorio Angelone, Clinton Baptiste and Scott Bennett perform too, hosted by “the fabulous” Stephen Bailey. Tickets update: last few still available at york-comedy-festival.com.

Justin Panks: Headlining Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse

The other comedy bill in York this weekend: Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club presents Justin, Panks, Tony Vino, Liam Bolton and MC Damion Larkin, The Basement, City Screen, York, tonight, 8pm

COMEDIAN and podcaster Justin Panks tops tonight’s Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club with his skewed observational eye and ability to approach seemingly ordinary subjects from extraordinary angles in his raw, honest  tales of relationships, parenthood and life in general.  

Tony Vino bills himself as “the only half-Spanish, half-Scottish hybrid working comic in the world”; experimental Liam Bolton favours a bewildering, train-of-thought approach to unpredictable stand-up comedy; Damion Larkin hosts in improvisational style. Box office: lolcomedyclubs.co.uk or on the door.

The Script: Returning to Scarborough Open Air Theatre this weekend

Coastal gig of the week: The Script and Tom Walker, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, today; gates open at 6pm

THE Script head to the Yorkshire coast this weekend as part of the Irish rock-pop act’s Satellites UK tour, completing their hat-trick of Scarborough Open Air Theatre visits after appearances in 2018 and 2022.  Special guest Tom Walker, the Scottish singer-songwriter, performs songs from 2019 chart topper What A Time To Be Alive and 2024’s I Am. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Dianne Buswell and Vito Coppola: Red Hot and Ready to dance at York Barbican

Dance show of the week: Burn The Floor presents Dianne & Vito, Red Hot & Ready!, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm

STRICTLY Come Dancing’s stellar professional dancers, 2024 winner Dianne Buswell and 2024 runner-up Vito Coppola are Red Hot and Ready to perform a dance show with a difference, choreographed by BAFTA award winner Jason Gilkison. The dream team will be joined by a cast of multi-disciplined Burn The Floor dancers from around the world. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Florence Poskitt’s Margaret Watson, left, Jennifer Jones’s Elizabeth Watson and Livy Potter’s Emma Watson in Black Treacle Theatre’s The Watsons at the JoRo

Play of the week times two: The Watsons, Black Treacle Theatre, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, July 9 to 12, 7.30pm and .30pm Saturday matinee; The Watsons, 1812 Theatre Company, Helmsley Arts Centre, July 9 to 12, 7.30pm

TWO productions of Laura Wade’s The Watsons open on the same night in York and Helmsley.  What happens when the writer loses the plot? Emma Watson is 19 and new in town. She has been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast.

One problem: Jane Austen did not finish this story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now? Step forward Wade, who takes her incomplete novel to fashion a sparklingly witty play that looks under Austen’s bonnet to ask: what can characters do when their author abandons them? Bridgerton meets Austentatious, Regency flair meets modern twists, as Jim Paterson directs in York; Pauline Noakes in Helmsley. Box office: York, 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk; Helmsley, 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk. 

An old story told in a new way: Russell Lucas’s Titanic tale of Edward Dorking in Third Class at Theatre@41, Monkgate. Picture: Steve Ullathorne

Titanic struggle of the week: Russell Lucas in Third Class at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 12, 3pm

EDWARD Dorking was openly gay. On Wednesday, April 10 1912, he set sail for New York on a ticket bought for him by his mother in the hope his American family could put him “right”.

Writer-performer Russell Lucas’s Third Class charts Dorking’s journey from boarding the Titanic to swimming for 30 minutes towards an already full collapsible lifeboat,  and how, on arrival in New York, he toured the vaudeville circuit as an angry campaigner against the injustices of the shipping disaster. Using music, movement, projection and text, Lucas gives a “thrilling new perspective on what feels a familiar tale”, topped off with a Q&A. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

In Focus: Contentment Productions in Second Summer Of Love, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, July 10, 7.30pm

Second Summer Of Love: Emmy Happisburgh’s coming-of-age and midlife-recovery tale at Theatre@41, Monkgate

ORIGINAL raver Louise wonders how she went from Ecstasy-taking idealist to respectable, disillusioned, suburban Surrey mum. Triggered  by her daughter’s anti-drugs homework and at peak mid-life crisis, Louise flashes back to the week’s emotional happenings and the early Nineties’ rave scene.

Writer-performer Emmy Happisburgh’s play addresses the universal themes of coming of age and fulfilling potential while offering a new perspective for conversations on recreational drug use, raising palms to the skies in fields, recovery from addiction and embracing mid-life.

Originally Second Summer Of Love was developed with producers Pants On Fire as a 15-minute and showcased by Emmy at the SHORTS Festival 2020.

“The play premiered as a one-woman performance at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe,” she says. “Then it was refreshed in 2023; some scenes were re-written, taking into consideration reviewers’ practical criticisms and audience responses.

“We enlisted two more actors and Scott Le Crass to direct and tested out this new version for Contentment Productions on a three-night run in Worthing and Guildford where it sold out.” 

In this 60-minute performance, Emmy’s Louise is joined by Molly, played by Emmy’s daughter, Rosa Strudwick, and Christopher Freestone’s Brian, prompted by Louise’s flashbacks,

“Now our cast of three is playing 15 dates this summer and autumn, from York to Penzance, to connect with our target audiences, build partnerships, give us feedback and raise awareness of of our play to help us develop and upscale it into a fully cast production for larger auditoriums.”

Memories around Sterns nightclub in Worthing – a venue that Carl Cox once called “100 per cent equivalent to the Hacienda in Manchester” – wove themselves into Emmy’s play. “Second Summer Of Love isn’t a ‘true story’ but it’s inspired by real-life events and real people from when I was luckily, and very accidentally, right in the middle of the rave zeitgeist,” she says.

“It’s not a tale I’ve seen authentically told in theatres; especially not by a mid-life woman. I’m grateful to bring the ‘one love’ message of the original rave movement to the stage. I’m excited to play several different characters, using the physical skills of Le Coq again and genuinely overjoyed to be in scenes opposite Rosa and Christopher.”

Director Scott Le Crass adds: “I’m excited to direct Second Summer Of Love as it’s a fresh voice. It’s a perspective which I’ve never seen on stage. Older female voices are something we need to champion more and in a way which is strong, dynamic and playful. This play embodies that.”

Happisburgh trained at the Poor School and Guildford School of Acting; Le Crass trained as an actor at Arts Ed and was a director on Birmingham Rep’s first Foundry Programme; Freestone trained with Actor in Session, and Strudwick was trained through the LAMDA examination syllabus by Happisburgh.

For tickets, go to: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

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REVIEW: Futuresound Group presents Elbow, Live At York Museum Gardens, Thursday ***1/2

Here for the cheers: Guy Garvey leading Elbow at Live At York Museum Gardens on Thursday night. Picture: Andy Hughes

NOT all eyes are on Cardiff Principality Stadium for the “rock’n’roll reunion of the century”. York has its own fiesta of outdoor delights this week: Elbow on Thursday, Nile Rodgers and CHIC on Friday, Richard Hawley tonight and the inaugural York Comedy Festival in a Sunday fun-day finale.

Welcome to Leeds promoters Futuresound Group’s second summer of Live At York Museum Gardens, where one big change from Shed Seven’s 30th anniversary revels last summer greets you on arrival.

The stage has moved: no longer in front of the Yorkshire Museum, from where the slope down to the Ouse made viewing more difficult from the back. Now, it is sited against the backdrop of the St Mary’s Abbey ruins, as was the custom with the four-yearly cycle of the York Mystery Plays from their revival for the 1951 Festival of Britain.

And, on the evidence of your 5ft 7ins reviewer’s (disad)vantage point for the first three songs, viewing was still elusive from the rear ranks of a sold-out 4,000 crowd. A case of more heads than Elbow as Starlings, 2024 album Audio Vertigo’s best song, Lovers’ Leap, and new number Adriana Again passed out of sight.

Elbow room only: Thursday’s packed crowd in York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes  

One chap cannily resorted to placing his phone camera above his head to watch. Meanwhile, determined to avoid a feeling of “what an imperfect waste of time”, a request to move to the seating by the museum was very kindly accommodated by event staff, facilitating the full picture for this review from Station Approach onwards:  now Elbow could “be everything to me tonight” in the Bury band’s “34th year together” .

You may disagree, but Station Approach, from 2005’s Leaders Of The Free World, is still Guy Garvey’s finest lyric, his best distillation of life and love in a northern town. He is up there with Jarvis Cocker as the north’s supreme gift of the gab as a frontman too, his wit as dry as this summer’s grass.

He reaches regularly for “beautiful”: “beautiful” singalongs; “beautiful night”, “beautiful historic city”, then teases York by suggesting that this “history”, the Jorvik past, the 10th century abbey ruins, are nothing but manufactured tourist attractions, constructed in 1962, like a northern Milton Keynes. 

Later he would make a joke of his singing causing a temporary sound malfunction: “I like to think I destroyed it with that last performance,” he says.

Elbow’s Guy Garvey joining Ripon folk singer-songwriter Billie Marten – regularly featured on his Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour show on BBC 6Music on Sunday afternoons – during her supporting set. Picture: Andy Hughes

Far from it, you can add Garvey’s singing to that list of the beautiful. He is very much the fulcrum, the focus, the master of ceremonies, especially as Elbow – as unglamorous as their name and body part – don’t really do Las Vegas “showbiz”. Well, aside from a five-piece choir, a trio of brass players and a gleaming, huge mirror ball, stage front, for Mirrorball (yes, yes, I know,  what did the Romans ever do for us?).

The dark blue stage backdrop, reminiscent of a fossil and Leeds United’s third kit last season, does not change, like those abbey ruins to either side. That is not a problem in itself, although projections of the band’s performance would have been beneficial for those further away from the stage, just as they had such an impact in the Sheds’ shows in 2024. 

The problem is more when some songs hover close to dirges: Great Expectations, Her To The Earth, The Birds, for example, while Balu, Puncture Repair and Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years are graceful but glide by.

The audience chatter rises notably on those occasions, before either Garvey’s humorous banter or a change of pace for the blood-stirring Good Blood Mexico City, from Audio Vertigo, makes its mark.

Robin Hood’s Bay folk luminary Eliza Carthy opening Thursday’s Live At York Museum Gardens bill with The Restitution. Picture: Andy Hughes

On an evening that had begun with sets by Eliza Carthy & The Restitution and Ripon singer-songwriter Billie Marten, by now the night was darkening and stage lights brightening as Elbow hit their stride with “the whistling song”, Lippy Kids. “Build a rocket, boys,” comes the audience refrain en masse. Mirrorball, Magnificent (She Says); they are on a roll now, and it’s all gonna be magnificent from here on in.

Even Sober, from their new Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP, elicits the most unlikely singalong, its perkiness at odds with the sobriety within. The crowd chanting rises for set-closer Grounds For Divorce, before being surpassed by the encore double delight of My Sad Captains (“Oh my soul”), Station Approach’s contender for Best  Elbow Song Ever, and One Day Like This, the one more commonly crowned with that title.

It took its time, but from Lippy Kids onwards, “one night like this a year did see me right”.

Elbow’s set list, Live At York Museum Gardens, July 3 2025, 8.30pm to 10.30pm

1. Starlings (from The Seldom Seen Kid); 2. Lovers’ Leap (Audio Vertigo); 3. Adriana Again (new, Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP); 4. Station Approach (Leaders Of The Free World); 5. Kindling (Little Fictions); 6. Puncture Repair (Leaders Of The Free World); 7. Great Expectations (Leaders Of The Free World); 8. Her To The Earth (Audio Vertigo); 9. Balu (Audio Vertigo); 10. Good Blood Mexico City (Audio Vertigo); 11. The Seldom Seen Kid (Flying Dream 1); 12. Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years (Audio Vertigo); 13. The Birds (Build A Rocket Boys!); 14. Lippy Kids (Build A Rocket Boys!); 15. Mirrorball (The Seldom Seen Kid); 16. Magnificent (She Says) (Little Fictions); 17. Sober (new, Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP); 18. Grounds For Divorce (The Seldom Seen Kid). Encores: 19. My Sad Captains (The Take Off And Landing Of Everything); 20. One Day like This (The Seldom Seen Kid).

No songs from 2001’s Asleep In The Dark, 2003’s Cast Of Thousands or 2019 chart topper Giants Of All Sizes.

Night and Day: One Day Like This turns into ‘one night like this a year would see me right’ in the finale to Elbow’s concert at York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes 

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Catherine Bott to receive York Early Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award and perform readings at Le Consort concert

Catherine Bott: Soprano, broadcaster, presenter, festival artistic advisor and now recipient of the York Early Musical Festival Lifetime Achievement Award

SOPRANO singer, broadcaster and presenter Catherine Bott will be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2025 York Early Music Festival.

The award will be presented by broadcaster, writer and artistic advisor Lindsay Kemp at the National Centre for Early Music, St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, on Sunday immediately before the 4.45pm live edition of BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show.

Catherine, 72, will then return as a guest to the Early Music Show alongside mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston and instrumentalists Ensemble Hesperi. Free tickets to attend the show’s recording have sold out.

Throughout her career, Catherine has been involved with the annual festival, as a performer, jury member, presenter and artistic advisor. “I’m honoured to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the pioneering York Early Music Festival, following in the footsteps of so many distinguished friends and colleagues from whom I’ve learnt so much,” she says. “And I’m looking forward to returning to York for a lively weekend of music and conversation.”

She joins the esteemed list of past recipients of an award that honours major figures who have made a significant difference to the world of early music: Belgian flautist Barthold Kuijken; soprano Dame Emma Kirkby; countertenor James Bowman; Spanish conductor and composer Jordi Savall; conductor Andrew Parrott; lutenist Anthony Rooley; harpsichordist and conductor Trevor Pinnock; violinist Catherine Mackintosh and trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins.

This year Catherine  will be appearing at the festival with the French instrumental ensemble Le Consort, reading poems that accompany Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concertos at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, on Sunday at 7.30pm.

In this celebration of the 300th anniversary of the first publication of Vivaldi’s concertos,  directed by  baroque violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte, the four vividly pictorial and virtuosic violin concertos will be interlaid with other works by Vivaldi, and preceded by Catherine’s readings of the sonnets (perhaps written by the composer himself) that set out the scenes he evoked in music with flair, brilliance and humour.

Catherine recalls first singing in North Yorkshire at Beningbrough Hall in 1981. “Don’t ask me exactly what I did, but I can remember signing some medieval songs,” she says. “I think it was outdoors and I don’t think it was raining!”

Through the years, she has performed with the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists under conductor Peter Seymour and the Royal Northern Sinfonia at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall.

She is full of praise for York Early Music Festival,  the National Centre of Early Music and, in particular, director Delma Tomlin. “Delma is a force of nature and a force for good. She and the festival have always championed early music and repertoire that’s lesser known than it should be,” says Catherine. “Thanks to Delma, the York Early Music Festival continues to go from strength to strength.”

From 2003, her role as presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show brought her to the festival each year for a live show. “So I’m really tickled to be a guest on the show I used to present straight after receiving the award on Sunday, when I’ll be meeting presenter Hannah French for the first time,” says Catherine.

Le Consort: French ensemble’s performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on Sunday will be accompanied by Catherine Bott’s readings

“It’s a lovely award to receive. I do remember in my broadcasting past presenting the award to Jamie Bowman, who said, ‘I’m not sure I want to receive this as it’s suggests it’s all over!’, but I’m happy that I’ve been able to sing with just about every musician I wanted to work with or talk to the musicians I wanted to interview.

“Now I’m joining some very esteemed company, all of whom I’ve performed with except Jordi Savall, who I interviewed!”

Catherine continues: “This award is a wonderful excuse to go back and spend time in this beautiful city crammed with characterful, beautiful concert venues. York is the natural home for this kind of festival because it’s such an historic place.

“I’ve always tried to maximise any visit to York, walking the City Walls, going to the National Railway Museum, making sure I go to Evensong at the Minster. Thi time I shall be arriving Saturday lunchtime and then going to see the evening concert by the Tallis at York Minster.”

Catherine studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, then spent two years from the age of 22 singing everything from Bach to Berio with Swingle II, successors to the baroque-jazz crossover group The Swingle Singers, before beginning a distinguished solo career specialising in baroque music.

Among her many recordings are Bach’s St John Passion and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and she has premiered and recorded works by contemporary composers Craig Armstrong, Jonathan Dove and Michael Nyman.

She is a Fellow of the Guildhall School and an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. For ten years from 2003, she combined singing with regular presenting for BBC Radio, scripting and introducing more than 300 editions of The Early Music Show on BBC Radio 3, as well as hosting live evening concerts and the BBC Proms.

She has worked with BBC Radio 4 and has made documentaries on subjects ranging from Auto-Tune to Mantovani and has presented numerous editions of Pick Of The Week.

In 2013, Classic FM invited Catherine to make the move to a more informal style of music broadcasting. She stayed for a decade, with her series Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Classical Music running for seven years. She also co-hosted The Full Works Concert and presented a live Sunday lunchtime show.

New ways of sharing her love of music continue to evolve and since 2020 Catherine has introduced live-streamed recitals from London’s Wigmore Hall and digital concerts with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, viewed by many thousands worldwide.

York Early Music Festival runs from today (4/7/2025) to July 11. For full details and tickets, head to: ncem.co.uk/whats-on/yemf/.

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York Early Music Festival 2025 is ready to go to Heaven or Hell from tomorrow

Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston: Going to Heaven or Hell at York Early Music Festival. Picture: Julien Gazeau

HEAVEN & Hell will be the theme of the 2025 York Early Music Festival, a summer fiesta of 19 concerts in eight days featuring international artists from tomorrow.

The Sixteen, the Tallis Scholars and Academy of Ancient Music will be taking part, as will French orchestral ensemble Le Consort, led by rising-star violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte, in their York debut with an “exceptional rendition of exceptional of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – but not quite as you know it”.

The festival will intertwine three very different themes: firstly, the music of Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons, opening with viol consort Fretwork and mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston’s My Days: Songs and Fantasias programme tomorrow at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, at 7.30pm.

Secondly, the genius of the Baroque, focusing on Bach and Vivaldi, not least the aforementioned Le Consort performance of The Four Seasons on Sunday at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall at 7.30pm, when Lifetime Achievement Award 2025 recipient Catherine Bott will be the reader.

Thirdly, the strand that lends itself to the 2025 title: a reflection on Man’s fall from grace – from Heaven to Hell – in biblical times with YEMF artistic advisor and BBC New Generation artist Helen Charlston and her fellow Gramophone Award-winner, lutenist and theorbo player Toby Carr, who team up in the medieval Guildhall of the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall on July 9 from 6.30pm to 9.45pm.

“I feel very lucky to have such a bond with the York Early Music Festival,” says Helen, who was a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, studying music there from 2011 to 2014. “It’s a special festival and it feels like a special connection as I’ve been coming up for many years.

“My early memories of the festival are of doing a few years’ concerts with David Skinner’s vocal consort Alamire. I’ve also sung with the Yorkshire Bach Choir, after Peter Seymour was given my name  and I helped him out for a concert at short notice, and as so often that led to a fruitful partnership.”

Fretwork: Performing My Days: Songs and Fantasiaswith Helen Charlston at Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York tomorrow

Helen is in the third year of her role as festival artistic advisor. “I was very honoured to be asked and it’s a lovely way to connect with music-making around the country. I don’t run the festival but I do really love music and thinking about what audiences might like to hear that they haven’t,” she says.

“I can flex my festival muscle thinking about that and it gives me the chance to suggest who could be invited to take part in the festival. For example, this year Le Consort are coming over from France. I know their work from a group called Les Arts Florissants, a French baroque ensemble who I’ve done a young artists’ projects with in Paris. I’ve got to know a few of their players and a few of them will be appearing with Le Consort.”

Festivals are the “perfect launch-pad for collaborations”, says Helen, whose July 9 programme is a case in point. In an open call for the York Early Music Festival Special Commission, NCEM Young Composers Award alumni were invited to respond to the Heaven & Hell theme by writing a piece to be performed by Charlston and Carr as part of their In Heaven & Hell…Yours To Choose programme featuring Purcell, Strozzi, Monteverdi, Charpentier and Humfrey works.

Anna Disley-Simpson has been awarded the commission from a competitive field of 24 applications for her piece Heaven Or Hell, for which she collaborated with librettist Olivia Bell, drawing inspiration from Kurt Weill for a composition that Anna promises will be  “deliberately subversive and unexpected in several ways”.

Supported by the Hinrichsen Foundation and an anonymous donor, Dorset-born, London-based Anna has received a commission fee of £2,000, plus travel and accommodation expenses within the United Kingdom to attend a workshop with the musicians in London and the York premiere.

“Toby and I are doing a programme about heaven and hell after Delma [festival director Delma Tomlin] and I were having a conversation about the York Mystery Plays and it sparked my interest in the idea of York being a place for the retelling of very graphic stories,” says Helen.

“Delma is the governor of the Merchant Adventurers, who sponsor the Last Judgement  in Mystery Play productions, and my initial idea began to spiral into thinking about  how a lot of 17th century music is about heaven and hell. Toby and I decided we wanted to look at performing religious music by composers whose secular works we’ve shared with the festival audience.”

Composer Anna Disley-Simpson

Those works will be complemented by Disley-Simpson’s commission. “We had a whole heap of wonderful ideas put to us by applicants from the Young Composers scheme and had  a lovely day chatting with eight composers before we selected Anna,” says Helen.

“Anna’s piece is wonderful:  a monologue with a second character welcoming you to purgatory, where you have to decide which route you will take, to heaven or hell. I think it’s got something about it that the audience will not quite expect!

“I hope other people will take her work up as a song as I always want to encourage others to perform works to see how they develop when I’ve commissioned a piece.”

In further highlights, The Tallis Scholars present Glorious Creatures at York Minster on Saturday, 7.30pm; The Sixteen perform Angel Of Peace  at York Minster, July 7, 7.30pm, and the Spanish ensemble Cantoria present A La Fiesta!, a sizzling array of ensaladas and villancicos, at St Lawrence Church on July 8, 7pm (sold out).

Swiss-based medievalists Sollazzo return to York for the first time since winning a prestigious Diapason d’Or award to present The Angels Are Singing at the NCEM on July 10, 7pm.

The festival will finish with a flourish in the company of the Academy of Ancient Music and their leader, violinist Bojan Čičić in a celebration of Bach’s violin concertos at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall on July 11, 7pm.

The full programme and booking details can be found at ncem.co.uk/whats-on/yemf/. Bookings also can be made on 01904 658338, via boxoffice@ncem.co.uk and in person at the NCEM, Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, York.  

Violinist Bojan Čičić: Leading the Academy of Ancient Music in a celebration of Bach’s violin concertos at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall on July 11

Copyright of The York Press

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Ripon singer Billie Marten plays at Elbow’s Live At York Museum Gardens concert tomorrow ahead of Dog Eared release

Billie Marten: Releasing fifth album Dog Eared on July 18

RIPON folk singer-songwriter Billie Marten will showcase her fifth album in her support slot at Elbow’s sold-out Live At York Museum Gardens concert tomorrow evening.

Released on Fiction Records on July 18, Dog Eared has been trailed by five singles, Swing, Crown, Feeling, Leap Year and now Clover, a song built out of contradictions and oxymorons.

“Clover is a song about feeling small but needing to appear big,” says Billie, 26, who now lives in London. “It’s a note on power and inequality. Most of this record talks about age and experience and relevance, something that’s clogged my mind since I began music.

“I carry a lot of premature worry with me, and that’s something that comes from starting an adult life as a teenager I suppose. I gained the human affliction of inventing things before they happen. I’m a multitude of anxieties.”  

The cover artwork for Billie Marten’s new album, Dog Eared

Billie released her debut album, Writing Of Blues And Yellows, at the age of 17 in 2016, since followed Feeding Seahorses By Hand in 2019, Flora Fauna in 2021 and Drop Cherries in 2023.

She headed to New York last summer to record with producer Phil Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Laura Veirs) at his Sugar Mountain studio, alongside an all-star cast of musicians.

Catalan singer-songwriter/guitarist Núria Graham, bassist Josh Crumbly, virtuosic guitarist Mike Haldeman, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, indie-rock musician Sam Evian, former Dirty Projectors vocalist/folk musician Maia Friedman, Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Vishal Nayak, keys/synth player Michael Coleman and Vermont folk musician Sam Amidon all sprinkle their gold dust over Dog Eared.

Together they add up to a band with credits across records by Cassandra Jenkins, Kamasi Washington, Moses Sumney, Robert Glasper, Tune-Yards, Empress Of, Nick Hakim, David Byrne, Atoms For Peace, Feist, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and now Billie Marten.

Billie Marten’s Record Store Tour: Visiting Sheffield and Huddersfield
 
Since 2023’s Drop Cherries, Billie has spent her time largely on the road, honing her craft as a deeply instinctual artist and songwriter. Living and learning. Playing and writing. Collaborating with gifted strangers. Exploring questions of identity and self. All the while, sending demos and voice-notes across the Atlantic to Weinrobe and watching those embryonic songs come to life and flourish fully realised in the studio.

The resulting Dog Eared track listing comprises Feeling; Crown; Clover; No Sudden Changes; The Glass; Leap Year; Goodnight Noon; Planets; You And I Both and Swing.

Producer Weinrobe enthuses: “Dog Eared is a miracle. This record feels like what music is supposed to be: a creative dialogue between wide-open musicians, all pushing in the exact same direction. And that direction is clear – the controls are set for the heart of Billie’s incredible songs. 

“Yes, the record was recorded live. Yes, Billie sang the lead vocals as it was going down. Yes, we were huddled up in a circle – no headphones, no walls, no playback, nothing separating each person from the next, and nothing separating the performers from their performances.

“I’ve discovered that I have a really particular long-term memory,” says Billie Marten

“But that’s not why this record is a monument. It’s a monument because Billie walked into the studio every morning and opened her mouth and sang these incredible melodies and gorgeous lyrics without any worries or fears or desires to control the art. She was the art. And everyone surrounded her, and lifted her up, and in turn she lifted the music to heights that we are all lucky to get to listen to, on repeat, forever.”

Billie highlights the opening track, Feeling. “I’ve discovered that I have a really particular long-term memory: I have specific sensory recollections from when I was two onwards, that I can recall easily now,” she says.

“One of these is marking out roads in my grandmother’s patterned carpet, for my Dad’s old 1950/60s’ toy cars to drive on. I used to trace patterns in everything: fabric seats at the dentist, carpets, wallpaper and walls, raindrops on car windows. Everything had a pattern to be noticed.”

Billie Marten’s Dog Eared Tour 2025 itinerary

Billie adds: “Another strong memory is the feeling of big, warm hands when you’re a child and how comforting and safe that feels. The notion of age being so far away from you, but you know it’s a future inevitability, and that you’re on your way there. The inarticulateness of that ‘feeling’ you can’t describe yet, but you’re aware of a push in the world that you don’t yet understand.”

“Feeling is really set alight by Núria Graham’s guitar part, the one you hear from the outset. It sparks the album info life and really sets a benchmark in terms of rhythm. This is an album of rhythmic focus.”

Billie will be supporting Elbow tomorrow fresh from performing on the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury last Friday. She will play Yorkshire acoustic sets at Beartree, Sheffield (afternoon show), and Vinyl Tap, Huddersfield (evening show), on her solo Record Store Tour itinerary, followed by Leeds Irish Centre on November 14 on her eight-date Dog Eared headline tour, when Le Ren supports. Tickets are on sale at billiemarten.com.

Futuresound Group presents Elbow, Billie Marten and Eliza Carthy & The Restitution at Live At York Museum Gardens, York, tomorrow. Gates open at 5pm. SOLD OUT.

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A Night To Remember will return to York Barbican on November 12. Who will play at Big Ian Donaghy’s big charity show?

Jessica Steel: Soul and blues at A Night To Remember at York Barbican

TEN decades will sing together in an unforgettable night at York Barbican on November 12.

This year, Big Ian Donaghy’s big charity concert, A Night To Remember, will celebrate its 12th anniversary after selling out Leeds City Varieties Music Hall in 2013, York Theatre Royal in 2014 and Grand Opera House in 2015, en route to finding its home at York Barbican nine years ago.

“Over the years, these nights have taken community charity concerts to another level as every detail is focused on giving the York audience a night they truly deserve where no corner is cut for this unique event,” says Big Ian.

“The level of production surpasses most touring shows, from outstanding sound from Craig Rothery to thought-provoking films on vast video walls and a 30-piece band’s level of musicianship.”

Big Ian Donaghy working the crowd at A Night To Remember. Picture: Karen Boyes

Host Big Ian will seek to make the audience laugh, cry, sing, dance and part with money as he shows why he is so in demand as an event speaker and host, filling venues such as London Excel and Birmingham NEC regularly.

“No other show has musicians from ten decades on stage,” he says. “The format is unlike other shows too as everyone guests on everyone else’s songs with a wall of rich, lush harmonies.”

As ever, George Hall will lead the 30-piece house band, containing members of York party band Huge, to accompany contributions by Jessica Steel, Heather Findlay, Simon Snaize, Graham Hodge, The Y Street Band, Las Vegas Ken, Annie Donaghy, fiddle dynamo Kieran O’Malley and soprano Samantha Holden.

“After eight years of shows together, this unlikely bunch has now become more like family,” says Big Ian.

Heather Findlay performing at A Night To Remember. Picture: David Kessel

York Music Forum Big Band will be performing under conductor Ian Chalk, celebrating a year of success when these young York musicians were crowned Big Band of the Year at the Northern Jazz Awards, as well as winning numerous individual plaudits for solo musicianship.

Look out too for a bespoke choir created for the Barbican show by Easingwold singer and choir workshop leader Jessa Liversidge. “Featuring singers from ten decades, it will show the magic that happens when generations come together,” says Big Ian.

As always, A Night To Remember is priced affordably with all ticket money going to good causes in York as the community sings with one voice.

“The concert raises much-needed funds for St Leonard’s Hospice, Bereaved Children Support York and Accessible Arts and Media to get people with learning difficulties into performing,” says Big Ian.

Beth McCarthy on stage at A Night To Remember. Picture: Duncan Lomax, Ravage Productions

Beth McCarthy, the York singer now based in London with 481,000 Instagram followers, will be joining the show  before her European tour takes her to theatres in Amsterdam, Paris, Rome and Barcelona.

“We are so lucky to still have Beth as part of the team,” says Big Ian, her former school teacher at The Mount. “She’s come a long way since she played our first school concert when she was 12 and I was brought in as Jack Black for their summer School Of Rock-style festival Mountstock.

Beth, who competed on BBC One’s The Voice  at the age of 16, has played the main stage at BBC Big Weekend and recorded live sets for BBC Radio 1 at Maida Vale Studio. 

“Beth owned the stage the last time we did A Night To Remember,” says Big Ian. “Her level of performance has reached a whole new level. She’s a fully formed performer with so much talent and energy.” 

Kieran O’Malley: On the fiddle at A Night To Remember at York Barbican. Picture: David Kessel

Looking forward to November 12’s set list of favourite anthems, Jo Cole, of Bereaved Children Support York, says: “A Night To Remember was our biggest contributor when we started out and has been invaluable in allowing us to provide one-to-one counselling for families. They have helped us for nine years.

“But it’s not just the money that’s raised at these nights, it’s how it raises the profile of the charities and brings everyone together.”

A Night To Remember has become the UK’s biggest concert to raise dementia awareness, drawing people  from all over the country.

“The night also funds some bespoke dementia projects in the city, including art classes with Sue Clayton, singing, gardening groups and Xmas Presence to combat loneliness in our older community,” says Big Ian.

Graham Hodge: Regular participant in A Night To Remember. Picture: David Kessel

“This is a unique evening of York helping York. Already I’ve filmed some surprise films from very well-known names from TV to surprise the crowd.”

Fewer than 100 tickets are still available for the stalls.  “Be quick,” advises Big Ian. “We also ask everyone to bring a raffle prize and some money for raffle tickets for York’s biggest raffle on the night.

“Who knows how much we can add to the £200,000 raised since we started A Night To Remember?”

Tickets cost £20 from yorkbarbican.co.uk. “Don’t just save the date. Get a group of friends out and book your tickets for Wednesday, November 12 2025 to avoid disappointment,” says Big Ian.

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What’s On in Ryedale, York & beyond. Hutch’s List No. 28, from Gazette & Herald

Richard Hawley: Playing Coles Corner with strings attached at Futuresound Group’s Live At York Museum Gardens concert on Saturday. Picture: Dean Chalkley

AS the outdoor concert season awakens, a festival goes to heaven and hell and Jane Austen has unfinished business in Charles Hutchinson’s list for the upcoming week.

Open-air concerts of the week: Futuresound Group  presents Live At York Museum Gardens, Elbow, tomorrow; Nile Rodgers & CHIC, Friday; Richard Hawley, Saturday; gates open at 5pm

LEEDS promoters Futuresound Group’s second summer of outdoor concerts in York begins with Bury band Elbow’s sold-out show tomorrow, when Ripon singer-songwriter Billie Marten and Robin Hood’s Bay folk luminary Eliza Carthy & The Restitution support.

New York guitarist, songwriter and producer Nile Rodgers and CHIC revel in Good Times, Le Freak, Everybody Dance and I Want Your Love on Friday, supported by Maryland soul singer Jalen Ngonda and Durand Bernarr. Sheffield guitarist and crooner Richard Hawley revisits his 1995 album Coles Corner with a string section on its 20th anniversary on Saturday, preceded by Leeds band English Teacher and Manchester-based American songwriter BC Camplight, introducing his new album, A Sober Conversation. Box office: seetickets.com.

Bridget Christie: Late replacement for Maisie Adam at York Comedy Festival on Sunday. Picture: Natasha Pszenicki

Comedy bill of the week: Futuresound Group presents Live At York Museum Gardens, York Comedy Festival, Sunday, 2.30pm to 7.30pm

HARROGATE comedian Maisie Adam will not be playing the inaugural York Comedy Festival this weekend after all. The reason: “Unforeseen circumstances”. Into her slot steps trailblazing Bridget Christie, Gloucester-born subversive stand-up, Taskmaster participant and writer and star of Channel 4 comedy-drama The Change.

More than 90 per cent of tickets have sold for the Sunday fun-day bill topped by Dara Ó Briain and Katherine Ryan. Angelos Epithemiou, Joel Dommett, Vittorio Angelone, Clinton Baptiste and Scott Bennett feature too, hosted by “the fabulous” Stephen Bailey. Tickets are on sale at york-comedy-festival.com.

The Sixteen: Performing Angel Of Peace programme at York Minster on July 7 at York Early Music Festival

Festival of the week:  York Early Music Festival, Heaven & Hell, Friday to July 11

EIGHT days of classical music add up to 19 concerts featuring international artists such as The Sixteen, The Tallis Scholars, Academy of Ancient Music, viol consort Fretwork & Helen Charlston and the York debut of Le Consort, performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons “but not quite as you know it”.

Directed by Delma Tomlin, the festival weaves together three main strands: the 400th anniversary of Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons, the Baroque music of Vivaldi and Bach and reflections on Man’s fall from grace, from Heaven to Hell. Full programme and tickets at ncem.co.uk/whats-on/yemf/. Box office: 01904 658338.

Belle Voix Trio: Nostalgic night of Motown and Northern Soul at Kirk Theatre, Pickering, on Friday

Tribute show of the week: Belle Voix Trio, A Night Of Motown & Northern Soul, Kirk Theatre, Pickering, Friday, 7.30pm

BELLE Voix Trio bring 30 Motown and Northern Soul hits to the Pickering dancefloor, from Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) to Tainted Love, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough to The Night. Sandy Smith, Sophie Mairi and Briony Gunn’s singing credits include London’s West End, cruise liners and luxury hotels. Box office: 01751 474833 or kirktheatre.co.uk.

The Script: Making third appearance at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Saturday

Coastal gig of the week: The Script and Tom Walker, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, Saturday; gates open at 6pm

THE Script head to the Yorkshire coast this weekend as part of the Irish rock-pop act’s Satellites UK tour, completing their hat-trick of Scarborough Open Air Theatre visits after appearances in 2018 and 2022.

Danny O’Donoghue (vocals), Glen Power (drums), Ben Sargeant (bass) and Ben Weaver (guitar) have six number one albums to their name. Special guest Tom Walker, the Scottish singer-songwriter, performs songs from 2019 chart topper What A Time To Be Alive and 2024’s I Am. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

Dianne Buswell and Vito Coppola: Red Hot and Ready to dance at York Barbican with the Burn The Floor dancers

Dance show of the week: Burn The Floor presents Dianne & Vito, Red Hot & Ready!, York Barbican, Sunday, 7.30pm

STRICTLY Come Dancing’s stellar professional dancers, 2024 winner Dianne Buswell and 2024 runner-up Vito Coppola are Red Hot and Ready to perform a dance show with a difference, choreographed by BAFTA award winner Jason Gilkison.

The dream team will be joined by a cast of multi-disciplined Burn The Floor dancers from around the world. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Ione Harrison: Mounting Season Songs exhibition at Helmsley Arts Centre

Exhibition launch of the week: Ione Harrison, Season Songs, Helmsley Arts Centre, July 8 to September 5; private view, July 6, 2pm to 4pm

WELBURN landscape painter and watercolour workshop leader Ione Harrison’s Season Songs exhibition depicts the rhythm of the year in serene, dynamic and joyful paintings that explore seasonal changes in mood, colour and light in the natural world.

Ione, whose teaching career has taken her to France, the Middle East, Turkey and Nepal, creates vibrant, atmospheric paintings, working primarily in watercolour and ink.  She is influenced in particular by the heat-soaked colours of Asia and the Middle East.

Vicki Mason’s Margaret Watson, Beaj Johnson’s Tom Musgrave and Becca Magson’s Emma Watson in 1812 Theatre Company’s production of The Watsons

Play of the week: 1812 Theatre Company in The Watsons, Helmsley Arts Centre, July 9 to 12, 7.30pm

WHAT happens when the writer loses the plot? Emma Watson is 19 and new in town. She has been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast.

If not, they face poverty, spinsterhood, or worse: an eternity with their boorish brother and his awful wife. Luckily there are plenty of potential suitors, from flirtatious Tom Musgrave to castle-owning, awkward Lord Osborne.

One problem: Jane Austen did not finish the story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now? Step forward Laura Wade, who takes her incomplete novel to fashion a sparklingly witty play that looks under the bonnet of Jane Austen to ask: what can characters do when their author abandons them? Pauline Noakes directs resident company 1812 Theatre Company’s production. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.  

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Nicholas Carter to conclude 25 years of conducting Micklegate Singers. New musical director sought; apply by July 18

Nicholas Carter: Leaving his post as Micklegate Singers’ musical director after November’s concert

LONG-STANDING York conductor Nicholas Carter is to hang up his baton after 25 years as musical director of the Micklegate Singers.

Applications for the post are welcomed until Friday, July 18, with full details available at www.micklegatesingers.co.uk. Interviews and auditions will be held on September 25 and/or October 2.

The choir began in 1964, becoming a key part of the York music scene. Since 2000, its characteristic programming of exciting new choral music, alongside masterpieces from the 16th century, has been curated carefully by Mr Carter.

On reaching his silver jubilee with the choir, however, he has decided to bow out after November’s winter concert, hence the search for a new director to start in January 2026.

Applications are encouraged from enthusiastic musicians of all backgrounds with experience of directing adult choirs.

Nicholas Carter, centre, with the Micklegate Singers choir members

The Micklegate Singers are an auditioned, mixed-voice chamber choir, whose 30 to 36 members rehearse weekly on Thursday evenings during school terms and perform three or four times per year in York.

The choir sings an ambitious repertoire of mostly 16th century and 20th/21st century works, usually unaccompanied, ranging from Tallis, Byrd and Guerrero, via Stanford and Parry, to Eric Whitacre, Cecilia McDowell, Paweł Łukaszewski and Laura Mvula, complemented by works commissioned from new composers.

“We’ve been so lucky to have a musician of Nick’s calibre leading us for such a long time,” says Micklegate Singers’ chair, Sarah Sketchley. “He will be a hard act to follow, but we are excited to see who might come along and take us on the next part of our journey.

“We are a friendly bunch, and we love getting our teeth into really rewarding choral repertoire, so this is a great opportunity for the right person.”

The choir has been in the public eye with a set of commissions by young composers from the University of York, leading to a performance and panel discussion chaired by Nicola LeFanu at the 2024 York Festival of Ideas.

The poster artwork for Micklegate Singers’ July 5 concert, The Eye Of The Beholder, at All Saints’ Church, North Street, York

Mr Carter, formerly director of music at Queen Mary’s School, Topcliffe, near Thirsk, has cherished his time with the choir: “I am always impressed by the sheer variety of music that I can face the choir with and the standard that they reach in performance despite being amateurs,” he says.

“The composer William Byrd was a keen advocate of the health benefits of singing, and I always find that I leave the rehearsal feeling younger than I did at the beginning!”

The choir’s next concert, The Eye Of The Beholder, takes place at All Saints’ Church, North Street, York, on Saturday, when the 7.30pm programme comprises works by Britten, Roth, Shaw, Whitacre, Dove, Maw, Ravel and the world premiere of David McGregor’s Clown In The Moon. Admission is £7.50 on the door; free for those in full-time education or children.

Former Micklegate Singers members are invited to join Mr Carter’s silver anniversary celebrations after the choir’s winter concert on November 29.

For more information, applicants should visit www.micklegatesingers.org.uk. For any questions or to arrange an informal conversation, please email choir.chair@micklegatesingers.co.uk.

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Top Ten Reasons why Ripon Theatre Festival is well worth a visit this week

Illyria in Oliver Grey’s adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In The Willows at Ripon Racecourse on July 5 at 5.30pm

RIPON Theatre Festival returns from July 1 to 6 with a line-up of shows, stories and community spirit that promises to light up the North Yorkshire city.

Drama, storytelling, puppetry, street theatre, circus and dance feature in more than 100 performances of 60 different events, backed by the festival’s first Arts Council funding, with a developing outreach programme too.

Festival director Katie Scott says: “Ripon Theatre Festival continues to grow, and we’re so excited to bring our biggest and boldest programme yet to the city. With the support of Arts Council funding, we can reach even more people and create a festival full of joy, creativity and unforgettable performances.

“Whether you’re a theatre enthusiast, a family looking for free entertainment, or someone who loves great stories, there’s something for everyone. We can’t wait to welcome audiences old and new to experience the magic of live theatre in Ripon.”

The best of British touring theatre 
Performances from top-quality touring companies, such as festival favourites Illyria bringing The Wind In The Willows to life in the leafy setting of Ripon Racecourse on July 5 at 5.30pm. 

Unforgettable outdoor theatre experiences 
From Breadcrumbs, Hansel & Gretel with a difference from Leeds company  Wrongsemble, on the Family Day on July 6 (10am to 4pm), to open-air Shakespeare in Three Inch Fools’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Old Deanery gardens on July 6 at 7pm, Ripon becomes the stage for magical performances under the summer sky.

Buzzing city vibe 
Ripon will be alive with street performers from across the UK, pop-up stages and 25 local groups showcasing their talents. The festival creates a vibrant, welcoming atmosphere across the city, using the streets and historic buildings as a unique backdrop.

Opportunities to be involved 
From storytelling workshops and community art installations to the chance to try out Flamenco or join in circus skills, there are plenty of ways for all ages to participate.

Something for everyone 
From classic theatre and cutting-edge new writing to comedy, and family-friendly fun,  the packed programme is for all ages and tastes. 

World-class storytelling 
International storyteller-in-residence Peter Chand will bring tales of love, loss and separation inspired by his British Punjabi heritage to the atmospheric Leper Chapel, St Mary Magdalen’s, in Mangoes On The Beach, on July 2 at 3pm.

Free family entertainment 
Two days packed with free performances and activities make Ripon a destination for families looking for affordable fun. The Spa Gardens are turned into a Family Theatre zone for Festival Sunday with a rolling programme of theatre, puppetry, music, dance and walkabout acts.

City-wide offers for festival-goers 
Ripon’s independent businesses will be participating too. The city’s cafés, restaurants, and shops are joining the celebration with offers for ticket holders.

Bringing theatre to every corner 
The festival’s outreach programme ensures that care homes and community spaces are part of the action, spreading the joy of theatre across the city.

Spoilt for choice on opening night
The festival kicks off on Tuesday (1/7/2025) with two very different shows. Audiences can choose from stand-up with rising comedy favourite Larry Dean and Lou Conran in the Hilarity Bites Festival Special at Ripon Arts Hub at 8pm or visit Ripon Cathedral for the gripping one-man theatre of Murray Watts’s The Beloved Son at 7.30pm.

For tickets, the full programme and festival details, visit www.ripontheatrefestival.org

Look out for: Third Class: A Titanic Story, Ripon Arts Hub, July 2, 8pm

Russell Lucas in Third Class, his one-man show about Titanic survivor Edward Dorking. Picture: Steve Ullathorne

THIRD Class – A Titanic Story is the latest project by writer, director and performer Russell Lucas, who specialises in staging new works.

Past projects include creating his one-man show The Bobby Kennedy Experience and Sarah Louise Young’s hit cabaret An Evening Without Kate Bush.

Now he presents Third Class, a well-known story, but one with an unknown hero, Titanic survivor Edward Dorking: one of the estimated 172 of the roughly 709 passengers who travelled in Steerage on the stricken luxury liner lucky enough to emerge unscathed. To do so, he swam for 30 minutes towards an already full collapsible lifeboat.

“Edward was gay. Openly gay, and on Wednesday April 10th, 1912, he set sail on a ticket bought for him by his parents in the hope his American family could put him ‘right’,” says Russell.

Using music, projection and movement, interwoven with historical fact, Third Class charts Edward’s journey of survival and how, on arriving in New York, he toured the vaudeville circuit, re-creating the stories for a fact-hungry public.

“Edward Dorking was a poverty-stricken gay man, travelling to the US to be ‘fixed’, who became a vaudeville curiosity and an angry campaigner against the injustices of the shipping disaster,” says Russell, who promises a “thrilling new perspective on what feels a familiar tale”.

“Edward didn’t want fame; he wanted revenge. When everyone was talking about the deaths of millionaires and society figures, few were discussing the people who took the lion’s share of the losses that night: the third class. Edward was coming for the upper classes.”

Wednesday’s 70-minute performance will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Russell. Third  Class also plays Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, on July 12 at 3pm (box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk).

Further Ripon Theatre Festival theatre highlights

Louise Geller in Almost Austen at Ripon Arts Hub on July 5

ANDREW Harrison, stalwart of York’s Riding Lights Theatre Company, performs fellow Riding Lights luminary Murray Watts’s The Beloved Son at Ripon Cathedral on July 1 at 7.30pm.

Dutch Catholic priest and psychologist Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) abandoned academia for a new calling, caring for people with intellectual disabilities in a challenge to church and society. Hope and longing, family dynamics, sexual and emotional crisis and the profound insights of a spiritual writer inform Harrison’s solo performance, peppered with multiple characters played with dizzying speed.

LIZ Grand, who portrayed crime writer Agatha Christie at the 2023 Ripon Theatre Festival, returns with Mrs Churchill – My Life With Winston at Ripon Arts Hub on July 3 at 7.30pm.

Churchill once said: “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” Here Grand offers a sensitive, informative portrayal of Clementine, Winston’s wife for 56 years.

IN Norwich Theatre and Albert Cabbage’s Edinburgh Fringe hit Spy Movie: The Play!, at Ripon Arts Hub on July 4 at 8pm, Agent Blonde has 24 hours to save the world. The only thing standing in her way are dastardly villains, an outrageous plot and a lack of funding.

When Hollywood rejects her script, a frustrated screenwriter invites you, an audience of producers, to a one-night-only presentation of The Greatest Spy Movie (n)Ever Made, in an homage to Bond films and Fringe theatre from the stars of The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong.

SINGER Louise Geller brings her delightful musical theatre show Almost Austen to Ripon Arts Hub on July 5 at 8pm with its 60-minute story of Catherine, a modern girl in love with Jane Austen’s world who cannot believe her luck when she meets her very own Mr Tilney.

Through passages from Northanger Abbey, songs from musicals and operatic classics, Geller relates Catherine’s romantic ups and downs as real life and fantasy collide in a meeting of Bridget Jones and Northanger Abbey.

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Richard Hawley revisits Coles Corner at York Museum Gardens with strings attached on Saturday night

Richard Hawley: Going back to Coles Corner in his York Museum Gardens concert On Saturday. Picture: Dean Chalkley

SHEFFIELD singer-songwriter Richard Hawley’s visit to York could not be better timed.

His appearance in Futuresound Group’s second summer of Live At York Museum Gardens concerts on July 5 coincides with the 20th anniversary reissue of his fourth album, Coles Corner, a day earlier on Parlophone/Rhino.

Hawley, 58, will perform his Mercury Music Prize-nominated 2005 album in full for the first time with a string section, alongside a selection of favourites from his 11 albums, from  2001’s Late Night Final to 2024’s In This City They Call You Love.

“I’ve been going to York on and off since childhood,” says Richard. “I’m from Yorkshire, so you don’t have to join the dots. In fact I used to busk in York, anywhere by the Shambles, but it was tricky [to find a pitch], so you’d have to get on the 5.30/6.30 train from Sheffield.

“Going back 35-40 years ago, I remember a time I got there for 7 o’clock, got my stuff out, but found I was competing with this big Scottish guy with bagpipes – and you can’t compete with a jet pilot!”

That said, Hawley prefers the tuneful playing of bagpipes to the irritating sounds emerging from headphones on trains. “That’s becoming more and more common in public, as sounds around us become louder and louder but more and more irrelevant,” he says.

By way of contrast, “let’s hope we can communicate some good vibes in the Museum Gardens. I know it’s built on the site of Eboracum and was added to by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society,” says the cultural history enthusiast .

“Maybe Coles Corner [in Sheffield] is like one of those ruins in the gardens. Obsolete, but from a distance quite beautiful. It’s weird, because of the nature of what I do, I try to preserve things that are lost or are being lost, and at one time Coles Corner was a meeting place for friends, lovers, whatever.

“John Lewis ended up taking over the family-run haberdashers there. The original building was knocked down, and there’s a picture of these guys taking the lead off in 1969. That was two years after I was born, but the ripples of its very existence carry on – though the irony of it is that I tried to preserve something that now people think more about the record than the place.” 

The romance of the title track is captured in sweeping strings and swooning chorus on a universal paean to the loneliness of the city at night. “The council wanted to out the lyrics to Coles Corner on the street corner but I said ‘No’ because Coles Corner doesn’t belong to me, but to the people of Sheffield. I think there’s a vape shop there now.”

Coles Corner was former Longpigs and Pulp guitarist Hawley’s fourth album and first for Mute Records. Recorded in Sheffield’s Yellow Arch Studios and co-produced with his long-time bassist Colin Elliot and Mike Timm, it featured Shez Sheridan (guitars), Jon Trier (keyboards), Jonny Wood (upright bass) and Andy Cook (drums).

Richard Hawley’s sleeve artwork for his 1995 album Coles Corner, featuring the Stephen Joseph Theatre vintage frontage in Scarborough

Inspired by Hawley’s love of vintage 1940s and 1950s’ chamber pop, country, blues and rock’n’roll, they conjured a set of intimate love songs full of nostalgia, regret, sadness and a bittersweet atmosphere that bore witness to Hawley’s abiding love and passion for his home city of Sheffield.

From next Friday, the expanded  edition will be available on Half-Speed master black vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve, 2CD deluxe edition, featuring B-sides and previously unreleased acoustic tracks, and limited-edition bundles.

Describing the experience of revisiting his original recordings, Richard says: “It’s a weird place, but occasionally you’re allowed to glance over your shoulder. Going back to figure out how to play half of those songs is difficult  because we’re different human beings now, even from a year ago.

“I like to move forward all the time, to seek new experiences, but by the very nature of what I do, as an older person, a 58-year-old musician, I create music that has the vibe of something lost.”

The album sleeve does not feature Coles Corner, but the art deco frontage of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, the former Odeon cinema building in Scarborough. “It fitted more with what I had in mind with that album, and like most cities and towns, inch by inch, day by day, we are losing those values of what we were.

“Now it’s vape shops and Poundland, and that’s more to do with being in the north. There’s not a lot of sharing going on in this country.”

Hawley sums up his songwriting in the words of a former girlfriend. “She once said ‘you’re one of the few men that deals with male grief’. (My nan would have called me ‘a moany ****’!) I hadn’t thought of it that way; it was quite a shock.

“I don’t think it’s a curious thing, though, because the best kind of music opens us up to our very core. Gender is kind of irrelevant to that”

Looking ahead to July 5, Richard says: “My wife’s going to turn up at the gig, but she says it’ll ruin the day because York’s a nice place to visit without you playing!”

Futuresound Group presents Richard Hawley at Live at York Museum Gardens, York, July 5; gates open at 5pm. Tickets update: still available at futuresound.seetickets.com/event/richard-hawley/york-museum-gardens/3237716.

Hawley’s 9pm to 10.30pm set will be preceded by 2024 Mercury Music Prize-winning Leeds band English Teacher from 7.45pm to 8.30pm; Manchester-based New Jersey songwriter and multi-instrumentalist BC Camplight, promoting his new album, A Sober Conversation (Bella Union, June 27), 6.30pm to 7.15pm, and Scottish musician Hamish Hawk, 5.40pm to 6.10pm.

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