York Chamber Music Festival artistic director Tim Lowe
YORK Chamber Music Festival returns for its tenth anniversary season from September 15 to 17, once more under the artistic directorship of Tim Lowe.
Since its founding in 2013, the festival has gone from strength to strength and will celebrate its first decade by inviting six supreme string players in Europe and the British-based Russian pianist Katya Apekisheva to participate alongside cellist Lowe.
He will be joined by John Mills and Jonathan Stone, violins; Hélene Clément and Simone van der Giessen, violas; Jonathan Aasgaard, cello, and Billy Cole, double bass.
Described by York music critic Martin Dreyer as “a mouth-watering prospect”,the full programme can be found at www.ycmf.co.uk/2023-programme.
Picking out highlights: Mendelssohn’s joyous String Quartet Op. 13 was his first mature chamber music, written at the age of 18, and Dvořák’s String Sextet was his first great success in chamber music, a smash hit that was soon played all over Europe.
At the other end of their careers, Elgar’s response to the First World War included his late Piano Quintet, contemporary with his famous Cello Concerto, while the string septet version of Strauss’s Metamorphosen is a moving elegy for the cultural destruction caused by the Second World War.
In a concert of cello and piano music Lowe is joined by Katya Apekisheva in Brahms’s golden, glowing First Cello Sonata, and Apekisheva performs a solo concert to include Schubert’s great last Piano Sonata in B flat major.
Lowe says: “In our time, Europe is once again at war and as Strauss said when he re-read his Goethe, anger is never the last word. I hope that beauty and truth will shine through during the tenth anniversary of York Chamber Music Festival. We will certainly do our best. I look forward to greeting you all in September.”
Tickets are available from the National Centre for Early Music box office, in Walmgate, at ycmf.co.uk or on 01904 658338 in office hours. A Festival Saver ticket offers extra value to those wanting to attend multiple concerts. Young people aged 18 and under can attend all the events free of charge.
Pianist Katya Apekisheva
York Chamber Music Festival: the programme
Event 1: September 15, 1pm to 2pm, Cello Recital by Tim Lowe (cello) and Katya Apekisheva, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York.
Beethoven: 12 Variations on See The Conqu’ring Hero Comes from Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus; Brahms: Cello Sonata No.1 in E Minor, Op. 38; Tchaikovsky: Nocturne for Cello and Piano, No. 4 from 6 pieces Op. 19 and Valse Sentimentale No. 6 from Six Morceaux, Op. 51; Schumann: Adagio and AllegroOp. 70.
Event 2: September 15, 7.30pm, Festival Artists John Mills, Jonathan Stone, Hélene Clément,Simone van der Giessen, Tim Lowe, Jonathan Aasgaard and Billy Cole, National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York.
Haydn: String Quartet Op. 76 No. 3; Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A minor Op. 13; Richard Strauss: Metamorphosen, version for String Septet.
Event 3: September 16, 1pm to 2pm, Piano Recital, Katya Apekisheva, Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York.
Schubert: Three Piano Pieces, D946; Schubert: Piano Sonata in B flat major, D960.
Event 4: September 16, 7.30pm, Festival Artists John Mills, Jonathan Stone, Hélene Clément, Simone van der Giessen, Tim Lowe, Jonathan Aasgaard, Billy Cole and Katya Apekisheva,Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York.
Frank Bridge: Three Idylls H.67; Vaughan Williams: Piano Quintet in C Minor; Elgar: Piano Quintet in A Minor, Op. 84.
Event 5: September 17, 3pm, Festival Artists John Mills, Jonathan Stone, Hélene Clément, Simone van der Giessen, Tim Lowe and Jonathan Aasgaard, St Olave’s Church, Marygate, York.
Boccherini: String Sextet No.1 in E flat Major, Op. 23 G454; Dvořák: String Sextet in A Major, Op. 48.
Prima Vocal Ensemble artistic director, producer and conductor Ewa Salecka
PRIMA Vocal Ensemble will perform an intimate evening of choral diversity, Songs From The Heart, at the National Centre for Early Music, York, on September 30.
Artistic director and producer Ewa Salecka will lead the York choir in a 7.30pm programme of contemporary classical and popular choral music with Greg Birch at the piano.
“Leaving no stone unturned in terms of performance venues, we have brought musical excellence to theatres, churches, cathedrals and arts venues in this country, across Europe and the United States of America as we celebrate our 14th successful year,” says Ewa.
“In recent years, we have expanded our immediate locale to include venues in Tadcaster and Selby, so we are overjoyed to stage our second major event of the year ‘at home’ in York. Accustomed as we are to gracing the big stages, there is a special significance to this aptly titled event. Songs From The Heart will be exactly that.
“Based in the medieval, Grade I listed, converted church of St Margaret’s, in Walmgate, the NCEM is an international exemplar of the very best creative and artistic output. This is the ideal opportunity to experience the choir ‘up close and personal’ with a carefully designed programme.”
Ewa’s music selection itself keeps her choral output “beyond definition”, she says, having championed contemporary composers while discovering arrangements that breathe new life into popular, jazz and soul classics.
“As such, Prima remains a choir that cannot be classified. A cappella pieces can sit comfortably alongside sweeping choral and orchestral performances; accompaniment may stretch from piano to full gospel band, and full-size string orchestras have been a common feature of our concerts over the years,” says Ewa.
“I like to keep my ears finely tuned to the modern choral world. There is so much creativity aimed at choirs today, and I like to be just ahead of the next popular wave, regardless of genre. It delights me when I hear contemporary compositions Prima have performed for years suddenly gaining regular attention on the mainstream media. It’s reassuring to have your instincts proved correct!”
Prima Vocal Ensemble’s poster for Songs From The Heart at the NCEM
For Songs From The Heart, Ewa has chosen heartfelt music to showcase this richness. Contemporary composers Randall Thompson, René Clausen and Stephen Paulus are paired with celebrated female composers such as Elizabeth Alexander.
“Captivating and often unexpected pieces from recent decades are perfectly balanced by a second half performance that takes familiar artists to the next level with moving and energetic arrangements of songs from George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Freddie Mercury to current musical songs from the stage and big screen,” says Ewa.
Ahead of their 2024 New York City reunion, no Prima event would be complete without the uplifting music of Christopher Tin, the double Grammy-winning composer of Baba Yetu and Sogno di Volare.
“With two amazing concerts still to come this year, the number one emotion I feel for Prima is overwhelmingly clear,” says Ewa. “Pride! I’m so proud of how this choir keeps giving, its dedication to the music and desire forthe very best performance. This is what drives us all and what appeals to new members.
“We always welcome new voices, and with so much in the pipeline for the next 12 months, it’s the ideal time to join. Yes, we perform high-standard arrangements, but there are no auditions to join, so if you like a rewarding challenge, love meaningful music, want to sing in harmony, improve your voice, your mental and physical health and make new friends, get in touch. We’d love to hear from you, and new enquiries from tenors and basses will always be prioritised.”
Shakespeare’s Songs producer and composer Nick Jones with, front pew, Meg Ollerhead and Lowen Frampton, and, second pew, Emma Scott, left, and Tracey Rea. Picture: John Saunders
ST Mary Bishophill Junior, probably the oldest working church in York, will swap hymns for Shakespeare’s Songs on September 22 and 23.
Taking over the ancient building – dating in parts to before the Norman conquest – York Shakespeare Project (YSP) will perform acoustic songs and instrumental music written specially for productions of As You Like It (2008), Troilus And Cressida (2011), Twelfth Night (2014) and The Tempest (2022), complemented by new songs from The Winter’s Tale and Love’s Labours Lost.
St Mary’s churchwarden, Graeme Thomas, says: “We’re always delighted to welcome visitors to our historic church. We’ve had theatre here before, and it will be an atmospheric setting for Shakespeare’s Songs.”
The venerable church has a Roman arch and Anglo-Saxon stonework and would have been centuries old already in Shakespeare’s own time. In contrast, the music by Nick Jones, Fergus McGlynn and York International Shakespeare Festival director Philip Parr is more contemporary, with Jones’s cast singing and playing instruments from guitars, ukelele and mandolin to cello, oboe, recorders and cajon.
Among those performers will be Maurice Crichton, who played Sir William Maleverer in York Theatre Royal’s community play, Sovereign, and fisherman Hector in YSP’s Sonnets At The Bar this summer; Emma Scott, the lead actress from YSP’s Macbeth and Rape Of Lucrece, and musical theatre regular Tracey Rea. Cast members from YSP’s Twelfth Night and The Tempest will feature too, alongside familiar faces from York Mystery Plays productions.
Introducing his new compositions for the show, producer Nick Jones says: “From The Winter’s Tale we have two new settings of songs for Maurice Crichton’s Autolycus, the pedlar with a taste for cheating and petty theft, in which he sings about his roving life: When Daffodils Begin To Peer and Jog On.
“From Love’s Labours Lost, Emma Scott and Sally Maybridge will sing the final song, When Daisies Pied. The play ends with an anticipated marriage halted by a death. The suitors are told to wait a year and prove their seriousness. The year passes in the course of the song, as winter follows spring. I think it’s Shakespeare’s most lovely song.”
Nick, who has devised Shakespeare’s Songs, says: “The York Shakespeare Project was set up in 2001 with the aim of performing all the Bard’s plays in York and completed that initial mission last year with Philip Parr’s production of The Tempest that toured North Yorkshire before a final performance at York Theatre Royal.
Producer Nick Jones: At the helm of a light-hearted revue of Shakespeare’s Songs. Picture: John Saunders
“Original music by local composers has often been a highlight of YSP’s productions and we thought it deserved to be heard again, in a light-hearted revue.
“Staging a musical celebration of our 22-year history, we’re marking that achievement with Shakespeare’s Songs, revisiting the original music from several of those plays and introducing some new songs with a cast of YSP regulars. It should be fun – and we’re exploring a couple of new venues to us, separated by about 1,000 years of architectural history.”
After the St Mary’s performances (7.30pm, September 22; 3pm and 7.30pm, September 23), Shakespeare’s Songs will switch to the thoroughly modern Super Sustainable Centre, Derwenthorpe, Osbaldwick, on September 24 at 7.30pm.
YSP heads into the autumn on the back of Sonnets At The Bar taking over the Bar Convent Living Heritage Centre’s secret garden from August 11 to 19. “We were blessed with dry weather and delighted with the response, drawing a record 600+ audience,” says chair Tony Froud.
The next production will be the first of YSP’s expanded mission to embrace works by Shakespeare’s contemporaries in the project’s second cycle, namely Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II at Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, from October 17 to 21 at 7.30pm nightly plus a 2.30pm Saturday matinee.
Edward II is king at last. Determined to shower his loved ones with gifts, he summons his exiled lover, Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall. King, court and country are intoxicated by their passions, whereupon the Queen takes her own lover and the nation is torn apart in a merciless divorce.
Their child watches from the shadows, desperate to mend his broken family and nation, or bring them to heel, in Marlowe’s poetic play about power and love: who has it, who seeks it and who suffers for it.
Box office: Shakespeare’s Songs, yorkshakespeareproject.org/shakespeares-songs or, if available, on the door; Edward II, tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.
Maurice Crichton in his role as fisherman Hector in York Shakespeare Project’s Sonnets At The Bar in the Bar Convent ‘s secret garden last month. Picture: John Saunders
Shakespeare’s Songs: the cast in full
Maurice Crichton, York stage regular, fresh from a summer playing Sir William Maleverer in York Theatre Royal’s Sovereign and Hector the fisherman in YSP’s Sonnets At The Bar.
Emma Scott, from YSP’s Macbeth and The Rape Of Lucrece.
Tracey Rea, musical theatre stalwart ( such as York Stage’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, April 2023).
Meg Ollerhead, from YSP’s The Tempest and York Mystery Plays.
Lowen Frampton, from York company Baron Productions and YSP’s The Tempest .
Michael Maybridge, from YSP’s The Tempest and York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust’s A Nativity For York and The Baptism Play from the Mysteries.
Sally Maybridge, from YSP’s The Tempest and York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust’s A Nativity For York and The Baptism Play from the Mysteries.
Tim Olive-Besly, from YSP’s The Tempest.
Nick Jones. “Apparently I’ve been in more YSP plays than anyone else, most recently The Tempest,” he says.
Kevin Rowland, in his pink suit, leads the return of Dexys with The Feminine Divine. Picture: Sandra Vijandi
AT last! Dexys will play York for the first time in their 45-year career tomorrow on the opening night of this month’s The Feminine Divine Live! tour.
Kevin Rowland’s revived soul band had been booked to play York Barbican on last autumn’s 40th anniversary Too-Rye-Ay As It Should Have Sounded Tour. However, his need to recuperate from a leg injury in a motorbike accident and “some health issues that will take some time to recover from” forced the September 30 2022 gig’s cancellation as early as March last year.
July 28 saw the arrival of The Feminine Divine, Dexys’ fifth album of original material in five decades, 11 years since their last studio set, 2012’s One Day I’m Going To Soar.
Rowland, who turned 70 on August 17, will front Dexys as they “dramatically perform the new album from beginning to finale, followed by a selection of classics and hits” at York Barbican in the only Yorkshire show on their 13-date British and Irish tour.
“The first half is not a concert,” Kevin stresses. “It will be The Feminine Divine, completely acted out. It’s a theatrical performance, a drama, like we did for One Day I’m Going To Soar, but this is a completely different narrative. Last time we had Madeleine Hyland [from London folk group The Amazing Devil); this time Claudia Chopek will be the protagonist, playing the female in the songs.”
The second half will have a concert format. “We’ll probably change the set list each night, but we have a pretty good idea of what it will be, with a lot of the Too-Rye-Ay album, which we were due to tour last year, but had to cancel,” says Kevin, who will be touring with a six-piece band. “I think this show will be even better.”
Produced by Pete Schwier, along with session musician and producer Toby Chapman, The Feminine Divine is billed as “a personal, if not strictly autobiographical, record portraying a man whose views have evolved over time”.
The cover artwork for Dexys’ The Feminine Divine album
“I don’t think I could ever do the same thing twice. I can’t see the point of that. It’s not something I ever think about. It’s intrinsically important to me,” says Kevin on his Zoom call, explaining the album’s gestation.
“We weren’t looking for a theme. There was none of that. After the last album [2016’s Let The Record Show: Dexys Do Irish And Country Soul], I was drained and didn’t want to do music and didn’t feel I had the vitality.
“I needed to get away to work on myself, and actually I was almost violently against doing music, thinking ‘I want to do other things’. But in 2020-21 I had a surge of energy. I wanted to do music again.”
“What songs have we got?” pondered Dexys’ front man, suffused with a new-found positivity. Original Midnight Runners trombonist Big Jim Paterson, now a non-touring band member, sent him tunes he had written; Rowland reactivated a 1991 song, The One That Loves You, for the opening track, and a first side full of music-hall swagger duly took shape.
“Then I thought, ‘OK, let’s ask Mike [Timothy] and Sean [Read] to collaborate’,” Kevin recalls, leading to a second side “like nothing Dexys have done before” in the form of a saucy, synth-heavy cabaret.
Synths, Kevin? “I’ve always liked electronic music; I was into house music in the Eighties, so we were going to record some house tunes at the time, but we never got round to it, but I was well into it,” he says. “I thought about making the last album electronic too but went a different way with that one.”
The lyrics to title track The Feminine Divine became the driving force for Dexys’ new focus. “They came pouring out of me, and it told me what the theme should be. I started writing about my experience in recent years,” says Kevin. “Once I had a list of the titles, and put the songs in order, I thought, ‘there’s a narrative here’, so it was all serendipitous.”
“I think women are just incredibly powerful, but I didn’t realise that before,” says Dexys’ Kevin Rowland, second from left
The resulting track listing reads: The One That Loves You; It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023); I’m Going To Get Free; Coming Home; The Feminine Divine; My Goddess Is; Goddess Rules; My Submission and Dance With Me.
Those songs reflect on “not just on women, but the whole concept of masculinity Kevin had been raised with: an education and an un-learning traced across the arc of The Feminine Divine”.
“I think women are just incredibly powerful, but I didn’t realise that before,” says Kevin. Why not? “I have no idea. Perhaps my upbringing to some extent. I wasn’t given any sex education at school or at home, so any sexual feelings I had at 13/14 were secret and not talked about. I carried that with me.
“I had desires that sometimes were satisfied, sometimes weren’t, but I never understood women. I’m not saying I do now, but I started doing some courses, some tantra, some Dao, and all of this recognised the sexual energy and the power of women as goddesses,” says Kevin.
“The more I got it into my head, I realised that if anything women are superior to men. They’re more flexible than men, who are set in their ways.”
Rowland ruminates on femininity and masculinity from second track It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023) onwards. “It’s about recognising my own femininity,” he says, as he first did on the cover of his 1999 solo album of cover versions, My Beauty, the one with Rowland in lipstick and black dress, the hem exposed to reveal knickers and stockings.
He doubled down on that look in a white dress and pearls at Leeds Festival that year. “A lot of people were triggered by it,” he says. “But I believed in what I was doing. I don’t think I can do anything unless I believe in it. One hundred per cent that was the case at Leeds Festival.
The poster for Dexys’ 2023 tour, The Feminine Divine Live!, led off by tomorrow’s York Barbican debut
“There are women with feminine energy and women with masculine energy, and it’s the same with men. It’s big part of me, and men should acknowledge it: if you don’t acknowledge things, it’s not healthy.”
Working instinctively – “if something sounds good, and I think it will work, then I’ll do it; if I get a good melody, I know it” – Kevin “doesn’t ever think about the past” or a new record’s connection with Dexys’ history. “That’s something for you to consider, and whatever you come up with, that’s cool,” he says.
“I don’t think about continuity. There’s been no continuity with Dexys. Don’t Stand Me Down [1985] was totally different, like Too-Rye-Ay [1982] was from Searching for The Young Soul Rebels [1980] because they were like new bands, so to me it’s like I’m a new artist every time I make a record. This new album took 11 years to evolve.”
His past was framed in a childhood in Wolverhampton, then Ireland for two years and north west London from the age of 11, surely influencing his restless music-making since then? “Probably,” says Kevin, pointing to the Irish roots in the Celtic soul and fiddles of Too-Ry-Ay. “We expressed it at the time, in 1980, ’81, ’82, when people didn’t want to hear it. Like on BRMB [the Birmingham radio station]. When they played Come On Eileen, they apologised for it because there’d just been a bomb in London…but what had that got to do with us?” he asks.
Kevin has had his up and downs, not least when consumed by cocaine addiction and living in a squat after Dexys Midnight Runners’ split post-Don’t Stand Me Down at the end of the 1980s.
Now, however, he is “definitely in the best place I’ve ever been, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, which is OK, and that’s something I wasn’t aware of when I was younger,” he says, revelling is his latest rush of creativity.
“There are a lot of people who are close-minded who just want to talk about the past. Their lives are over. I don’t know why people do that. They get into that thing that things were better in their day. No, they weren’t.”
Dexys play The Feminine Divine Live! at York Barbican on September 5, 7.30pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk and dexysofficial.com. The Feminine Divine is available on the 100 Percent label.
The Dexys’ line-up for The Feminine Divine Live!: left to right, Tim Weller, Claudia Chopek, Mike Timothy, Kevin Rowland, Sean Read, and Alistair Whyte. Picture: Bruno Murari @DexysOfficial
Playwright and director Alan Ayckbourn and actress Naomi Petersen in the rehearsal room for the Stephen Joseph Theatre premiere of Constant Companions. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
AYCKBOURN and android love, traction engines and farming photography, comic fantasy and anecdotal Love stories keep Charles Hutchinson busy as summer exits stage left.
Premiere of the week: Alan Ayckbourn’s Constant Companions, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Thursday to October 7
IN Alan Ayckbourn’s 89th play, Lorraine is a fabulously successful lawyer of a certain age. Jan Sixty is the janitor of her building, an android of indeterminate age. In a not-too-distant future, where humans have turned to artificial friends for companionship without compromise, can Lorraine and Jan find true love?
“Reading so much about the inevitable arrival of AI into our society – some would say it’s already here! – I felt a cautious look forward might be in order,” says Alan. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
The skill of tractor pulling at the Yorkshire Traction Engine Rally at Scampston Hall. Picture: Outdoor Shows
Full steam ahead: Yorkshire Traction Engine Rally, Scampston Hall, Scampston, near Malton, today and tomorrow, 9am to 5pm
THE Yorkshire Traction Engine Rally, organised by Outdoor Shows, takes over Scampston Hall’s parkland this weekend. Among the steam fair attractions will be tractor pulling, steam engines, classic cars, vintage tractors, classic motorcycles, fairground organs, miniature steam engines, stationary engines and vintage commercials.
In the main arena, Flyin Ryan and his motorcycle stunt team deliver daredevil antics, comedy routines, fire stunts and arena entertainment, while the Scarborough Fair Collection stages two days of music and magic extravaganzas. Box office: scampston.co.uk or outdoorshows.co.uk.
The George Harrison Project: Here come the songs at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre tonight
Recalling the “quiet Beatle”: The George Harrison Project, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tonight, 7.30pm
MARKING the Beatles legend’s 80th anniversary, this tribute show to George Harrison embraces his Fab Four, solo and Traveling Wilburys supergroup years.
Here come Here Comes The Sun, Something, Taxman, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, My Sweet Lord, All Things Must Pass, Got My Mind Set On You, Handle With Care, Give Me Love, What Is Life, If I Needed Someone, Cheer Down and many more. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
The 2023 poster for York Unleashed Comic-Con
Geek of the week: York Unleashed Comic-Con, York Racecourse, Knavesmire, York, tomorrow, 11am to 5pm
YORK actor David Bradley, from the Harry Potter films, Game Of Thrones and Doctor Who, leads the guest appearances at this weekend’s “geekiest, nerdiest” gathering. Lee Boardman, Clive Russell, Richard Gibson and Kit Hardman will be there too, along with comic creators and authors Sasha Ray Art, Carolyn Craggs, Lindsey Greyling, KS Marsden, Kelvin VA Allison Paolo Debernardi, Victoria Bates and Ben Sawyer.
Look out too for Geeky Attractions on three sites, including a Back To The Future time machine, a retro gaming area, Star Wars display, children’s activities, art area, stage talks, cosplay masquerade and geeky market selling merchandise and collectables. Tickets update: available on the door from 11am.
The artwork for Don Pears and Singphonia’s concert The Great American Songbook – From A To Z
Fundraiser of the week:Don Pears and Singphonia presents The Great American Songbook – From A To Z Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tomorrow, 4pm
DON Pears and Singphonia explore the vast scope of the Great American Songbook from the 1900s to the present, from Al Jolson to Beyoncé, covering spirituals and jazz through rock’n’roll and Rat Pack standards to modern hits, not forgetting musical theatre too.
Musical director Pears and his group of York singers perform solos, duets, and group numbers, taking in Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, John Denver and The Carpenters in a fundraiser for the JoRo. Box office: 01904 501395 or josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.
Don’t Stop Believin’ in Eighties’ hits galore at the Grand Opera House, York
Tribute show of the show: Don’t Stop Believin’, Grand Opera House, York, tomorrow, 7.30pm
JUMP aboard the midnight train, heaven is a place on Earth called York, for this end-of-the-night anthems spectacular, a new feelgood tribute show that promises a crazy, crazy night of non-stop, singalong favourites.
Hits by Blondie, Bryan Adams, Cher, Rainbow, Bon Jovi, Kate Bush, Starship, Europe and Belinda Carlisle feature among the 30 songs in this high-energy theatre production with “a sizzling cast, fantastic costumes and amazing light show”. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
In the name of Love: Comedian and TV panellist Judi has plenty to say at York Theatre Royal
Anecdotes of the week: The One Like Judi Love, York Theatre Royal, Thursday, 8pm
EXPECT unrelenting, humorous anecdotes from “the one like Judi Love” on her first official talk tour, full of stories from the Hackney stand-up comedian and presenter’s life.
Regular Loose Women panellist Love, 43, has appeared on Taskmaster, The Jonathan Ross Show, The Graham Norton Show, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown and the Royal Variety Performance too. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.
Alligator Gumbo: foot-stomping rhythms, tap-away tunes and raucous singalongs at Stillington Mill
Getting the swing of things:Alligator Gumbo, At The Mill, Stillington, near York, Friday, 7.30pm
SUMMER At The Mill welcomes Alligator Gumbo for a night of swing/jazz from the New Orleans heyday. In particular, the Leeds seven-piece focuses on the raw music of the roaring 1920s, largely improvised with melodies and solos happening simultaneously.
Performing extensively for more than ten years, Alligator Gumbo have played international jazz festivals and clubs throughout the country with their good-natured mix of foot-stomping rhythms, tap-away tunes and raucous singalongs. Bar At The Mill will be running from 6.30pm, alongside the wood-fired pizzas. Box office: tickettailor.com/events/atthemill/942447.
Ryan Gosling’s Ken and Margot Robbie’s Barbie in the summer’s biggest hit as Barbie heads outdoors into the Museum Gardens for a Movies In The Moonlight screening
Outdoor cinema: City Screen Picturehouse presents Movies In The Moonlight, Museum Gardens, York, Mamma Mia!, September 8, 7.30pm, and Barbie (12A), September 9, 7.30pm
PICTUREHOUSE Outdoor Cinema returns to the York Museum Gardens for open-air screenings of Phyllida Lloyd’s 2008 Abba hit-laden musical rom-com Mamma Mia! (PG) and this summer’s splash-of-pink box-office smash, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (12A). Free samples of Mochi Balls from ice cream makers Little Moons can be enjoyed on both nights.
Whether on a girls’ night out or a family & friends evening, audience members are encouraged to dress up – and sing along too on the Mamma Mia! Night. Box office: picturehouses.com/outdoor-cinema/venue/york-museum-gardens.
The yearning and the yawning when showing sheep: One of Valerie Mather’s photographs from her Fields, Folds and Farming Life exhibition at Nunnington Hall, opening next Saturday. Picture: Valerie Mather
Exhibition launch of the week: Fields, Folds and Farming Life, Nunnington Hall, Nunnington, near York, September 9 to December 17; 10.30am to 5pm, last entry at 4.15pm, with reduced winter hours from November 24
FIELDS, Folds and Farming Life, an exhibition by Yorkshire documentary, travel and portrait photographer Valerie Mather, captures candid moments from a year in the lives of upland farmers in Bransdale, a valley and surrounding moorland in North Yorkshire.
The combination of Mather’s work and specially produced films and artwork reveals the hard work and determination of the farming community in navigating the ever-changing agricultural world to achieve a better farming future for people, the environment and wildlife. No booking is required; exhibition included in admission price at this National Trust property.More details at nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/yorkshire/nunnington-hall.
Suits you, ‘”sir”: Grace Petrie in Butch Ado About Nothing, her debut stand-up comedy show
FOLK singer, lesbian and checked-shirt collector Grace Petrie has been incorrectly called “Sir” every day of her adult life, she says.
Now, after finally running out of subject matter for her “whiny songs”, she is putting down the guitar at the age of 36 to work out why in her debut stand-up show, Butch Ado About Nothing, as she returns to The Crescent in York on September 17.
Before then, her tour brings Grace to Old Woollen, in Farsley, Leeds, tonight (31/8/2023) and The Leadmill, Sheffield, on September 10.
“I’m definitely out of my comfort zone. Check in with me before the first show for how my nerves are!” she said on the eve of the tour kicking off. “The great thing with songs is that whether they’re good or not, people will clap, but if they don’t find a joke funny, they won’t laugh.
“I have to be honest and say that I’m bricking it much more than with my folk gigs, but it’s good to challenge myself.”
What’s more, Grace has “had a front-row seat for a masterclass in comedy”, from supporting comedians on tour. “I’ve learnt to develop that between-song patter, which I came to enjoy, and as those introductions got longer and longer, I thought, ‘well, I better put my money where my mouth is’ [by doing stand-up].
“Billy Bragg is a huge inspiration, and so was Billy Connolly, who set out to be a folk musician. Victoria Wood too.”
Finding herself mired in an age of incessantly and increasingly fraught gender politics, the Norwich-based Leicester native set about exploring what butch identity means in a world moving beyond labels, pondering where both that identity and she belong in the new frontline of queer liberation.
“I first did the show at the Edinburgh Fringe last year and was really passionate that I wanted to do it in a different way, with no music, over a month of shows,” says Grace.
“I’ve been writing in the months since then because of the need to update it, though it’s basically an autobiographical show, so I guess the bare bones don’t change as it’s about my experiences as a butch woman moving in a patriarchal world and how it treats women who don’t fit into that world.”
In her suits, her hair cropped with a neat side parting, the daily occurrence of being called “Sir” troubled Grace when she was younger, but “I have got used to it,” she says. “It made a change being greeted with ‘monsieur’ at the airport when I was in Canada recently!” she says.
That put a smile on her face, and her show has been doing likewise for her audiences. “I would hope it’s a show for anybody. All kinds of people came to see it in Edinburgh, though there is the draw for queer audiences and especially butch audiences, but I’ve also had messages from straight blokes saying, ‘you gave me something to think about’,” says Grace,
“The best comedy is the comedy that stays with you and makes you think. That’s always what I want to do, whether in concerts or comedy, when you’re trying to put across ideas, you could lecture someone with facts, but if you move someone emotionally, that’s far more powerful.”
Freed from her guitar, reliant on the spoken word, Grace has found her performing style changing too after 15 years on the folk circuit in her transition to comedy. “It’s not only the voice, but also the body, and how you use it on stage, when you’re not playing the guitar,” she says.
“It’s funny how there are a million things that affect how a show will be before you’ve even set foot on stage – and it’s also been amazing how different comedy audiences are, just in terms of expectations, in terms of calling out.
“At a music show, you’re encouraging them to sing along, but at a comedy gig, noise can be derailing, so I have to think about how I use my body, how I use the microphone, and I’ve learned a huge amount being in front of audiences about to control the show.”
For the tour, Grace has chosen to play smaller rooms than she would for her concerts. “That’s deliberate, because comedy is a more intimate artform, where you need people to see your face and your mannerisms,” she reasons.
“Performing the Edinburgh shows last year, the biggest benefit was in facing my fear of doing stand-up. At the end of the day, the worst thing people can do is not laugh. That can happen and it can feel brutal, but you just have to get up and do it again. You just have to go back to the same room, the same stage, and do it again.”
John-Luke Roberts, Grace’s comedian friend, gave her a piece of advice. ” He said that making people laugh is an emotion and it’s no different to any other emotion in that way,” she says.
How Grace triggers that emotion, in a show directed by her partner, fellow performer and writer Molly Naylor, is through a combination of long-form stories and gag-heavy sections.
Over 15 years, she has enjoyed “many wonderful gigs in York”, from the smallest room at the Black Swan Inn to The Crescent and York Barbican. “I would say my favourite visit was when I did a tour of Labour marginal seats in 2019 and we did one for York Outer with York spoken-word performer Henry Raby at the Crescent,” says Grace. “That was was a really barnstorming, fist-pumping night!”
Butch Ado About Nothing presents her in a different guise on her return there, but looking ahead, she will not be putting her guitar to bed for good. Far from it. “I’ll be recording a new album in October,” she reveals.
Her transition to stand-up is not the only move that Grace has been making. “I’ve bought a house in Sheffield,” she says. “I love Sheffield! I managed one term of studying a course to do with youth work and counselling but it was a bit of Mickey Mouse degree, so I sacked it off, but got a job and stayed there for three years. Now I’m back.”
Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Grace Petrie: Butch Ado About Nothing, The Crescent, York, September 17, 7.30pm, SOLD OUT. Also plays Old Woollen, Farsley, Leeds, August 31, 8pm, and The Leadmill, Sheffield, September 10 7.30pm. Box office: gracepetrie.com; York, thecrescentyork.com; Leeds, oldwoollen.co.uk; Sheffield, leadmill.co.uk.
Grace Petrie’s trinity of checked shirt, guitar and sea
Did you know?
GRACE Petrie is a swimming enthusiast, swimming each day during last year’s Edinburgh Fringe run, for example. Her sea water publicity photos were shot at Happisburgh, on the Norfolk coast.
Did you know too?
GRACE appeared on The Guilty Feminist bill, a live offshoot from the irreverent podcast series, hosted by Deborah Frances-White at York Barbican in May 2022. Part comedy, part deep-dive discussion and part activism, the show “examined our noble goals as 21st-century feminists and our hypocrisies and insecurities that undermine those goals”.
Mike Skinner: Debut film and The Streets’ new album in tandem
THE Streets’ Mike Skinner will present his visionary debut feature film, The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light, in an exclusive Q&A tour to Everyman cinemas this autumn.
The “neo-noir” clubland thriller will be shown at Everyman Leeds on September 21 (Screen 2, capacity 230, 8pm) and Everyman York on September 25 (Screen 1, capacity 200, 7pm).
Birmingham multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Skinner, 44, funded, wrote, directed, filmed, edited and scored his cinematic account of the seemingly mundane life of a DJ whose journey through London’s nightclubs turns into a tripped-out modern-day murder mystery. He designed the special effects too.
Each screening at 13 Everyman cinemas nationwide will be followed by a live question-and-answer session with Skinner, who will provide an insight into the music and story behind the film.
Noted for turning the mundane into the extraordinary in examining life’s nuances, Skinner’s musical project, The Streets, will release an accompanying 15-track album – his first under that moniker since 2011’s Computers And Blues – that bears the same name as the film and is intrinsic to its development by providing the soundtrack to the story. While neither the album nor the film could exist without each other, both can be enjoyed separately, advises Skinner.
“Ultimately, it’s all the fruits of a decade on the DJ circuit,” says The Streets’ Mike Skinner of his film and album project. Picture: Ben Cannon
“It has been seven long years working on this film and album,” he says. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and after dipping my toe in with some shorts and music videos, I felt I was ready.
“I tried to go the traditional route for a bit, but it’s always served me better to follow my instincts and just get on with it myself, so I’ve directed it, acted in it, edited, sound mixed, funded, produced it all, as well as written it. The album doesn’t exist without it.
“Ultimately, it’s all the fruits of a decade on the DJ circuit, watching people in clubs and back rooms, testing out beats and basslines to see what connected – and putting it all together into The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light.”
Tickets for the film tour are available via The Streets’ website, thestreets.co.uk, where The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light can be pre-ordered ahead of its October 20 release on 679 Records/Warner Music UK.
The track listing will be: Too Much Yayo; Money Isn’t Everything; Walk Of Shame; Something To Hide; Shake Hands With Shadows; Not A Good Idea; Bright Sunny Day; The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light; Funny Dream; Gonna Hurt When This Is Over; Kick The Can; Each Day Gives; Someone Else’s Tune; Troubled Waters and Good Old Daze.
The Streets’ 11-date autumn tour will take in two Yorkshire gigs: Shefield O2 Academy on October 28 and Leeds O2 Academy on November 4. Box office: ticketmaster.co.uk/the-streets-ticket/.
The poster for Mike Skinner’s Q&A tour to accompany Everyman’s exclusive screenings of his debut film The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light
Nina Nastasia: “Going eye to eye with some very difficult issues”. All pictures: Paul Rhodes
NINA NASTASIA is enjoying an overdue creative rebirth. Falling off the music map in 2010, in 2020 she left her controlling partner, who then committed suicide. Her grief drove the creation of 2022’s Riderless Horse, a striking album that goes eye to eye with some very difficult issues. It will likely prove a very hard act to follow.
Yet, in person, the music never felt depressing. Nastasia was jetlagged from her flight and delayed by the annual end-of-school-holiday air traffic system meltdown that nearly did its worst.
As she walked onto the stage alone, she asked for a whisky. Despite the claggy head, she has an unerring ability to connect. “Keep yourself wide awake”, she sang rhetorically. Between songs she talked self-deprecatingly about catastrophising and brain fogs. Such is her way that mistakes add to the set.
Nastasia’s songs don’t seem to be anatomically correct: there are sometimes parts missing, or in unexpected places, they go round and about and often repeat themselves. Musically they are often simple. It adds to their uniqueness.
Before Nina: Support act Before Breakfast, alias Gina Walters, playing solo to The Crescent’s seated audience on Tuesday night
By contrast, opening act Before Breakfast’s material reveals a more traditional musical education, albeit not from the Brill Building. Also performing alone, Gina Walters met her (absent) musical foil in the music department of Sheffield University, and her songs are literate and full of interesting moments, beautifully sung and confidently performed (somehow making the act of setting glasses back on her nose seem part of the choreography).
Without going into their back story, Nastasia played many of Riderless Horse’s songs that tell you enough. There were a number of highlights from that record. Is This Love? had the startling line “Drawing blood until we both see black”, while In The Graveyard tells you how that story ended.
Hard Long Life tunefully stuck two fingers up to tribulation. A tune about a fire and violence in the grasslands was on a par with Nick Cave – a dark ballad that left you breathless. If only the best song of the night has a name!
Leaving to well-deserved cheers, let’s hope it’s not long before we hear Nastasia’s unique voice in York again.
Review by Paul Rhodes
Nina Nastasia: “Tunefully sticking two fingers up to tribulation”
Velma Celli: Celebrating British pop icons past and present in God Save The Queens at York Theatre Royal. Picture: Sophie Eleanor Photography
YORK vocal drag diva Velma Celli is to return to York Theatre Royal for one night only, introducing her latest cabaret concoction of music, risqué comedy and generally fabulous entertainment on September 15.
God Save The Queens will be a celebration of British music icons, from “the obvious ones”, Adele and Amy Winehouse, to Florence Welch, Leona Lewis and the Spice Girls. Dua Lipa too.
“Since I first announced the show, I’ve added more favourites: Cilla Black, Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, Bonnie Tyler, Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, so I now have some older pop royalty to go with my modern regulars,” says Velma, the flamboyant creation of West End musical actor and cruise ship star turn Ian Stroughair. “I’ll be doing a tribute to Sinead O’Connor too. Poor Sinead. Bless her.”
God Save The Queens: that’s a great show title, Ian. “Thank you so much! I came up with it on the latest sea cruise, going around the Caribbean and South America in March, because you have to keep finding new ones, but it’s still just a gig with a theme!” he says.
Velma Celli will be completing a hattrick of Theatre Royal shows after Me And My Divas last September and A Brief History Of Drag in May 2021.
Ian Stroughair: The face behind Velma Celli’s powder, paint and pop bangers
“This time I’ll have a band led by musical director Scott Phillips on keyboards, with bass, drums and two guitars, and my special guests will be York singer Jessica Steel and guitarist extraordinaire Stuart Allan, doing an acoustic set together. It will be lovely to be back at the Theatre Royal, which I love playing,” says Ian.
After 14 years of shows taking her to Australia, New York, the Edinburgh Fringe and London’s Hippodrome, Velma’s diary looks busy, busy, busy for the months ahead.
“I’ll be back at Yorktoberfest [York’s traditional Bavarian beer festival] at York Racecourse on two weekends in October; I’ll be performing on a cruise ship to Singapore, Bangkok and Thailand in November and touring Australia for four to five weeks, starting in January, playing the Karnidale Circus Festival, in Karridale, near Margaret River, in Western Australia, about three hours from Perth,” says Ian.
“Then the Perth Fringe World festival for ten dates, maybe Melbourne and finally Sydney for a couple of dates. There’s loads of ex-pats over there who love drag!”
Every other month too, Velma has been performing at Crazy Coqs, an intimate Art Deco cabaret and jazz space at Brasserie Zedel, Piccadilly, London, staging Me And My Divas and Velma Celli Goes Gaga, her tribute to Lady Gaga and her influences, such as David Bowie, Prince and Whitney Houston. “Next up will be a little preview of God Save The Queens on September 7,” says Ian.
Drag diva Velma Celli serves up song, comedy and sartorial fabulousness in regal style on September 15. Picture: Sophie Eleanor Photography
In York, meanwhile Velma Celli’s Drag Brunch shows are ongoing upstairs at Impossible York, St Helen’s Square, with upcoming dates on the first Saturday in September, October and November at 1pm and 4pm.
“I’ll be hosting Velma’s Christmas Roast there too on December 2, 3, 16 and 17 with sittings at 1pm and 4pm,” says Ian. “It’s ‘Christmas Roast’ with a double meaning of roast, allowing me to be ‘mean’ with what I say!”
Another December show will feature Velma Celli too: Castellana, the Cardiff Castle Christmas Festival, promising “sensuous, smooth and seductive” fun in a spiegeltent in Sophia Gardens from December 6 to 24.
“I’ll be the master of ceremonies for half the shows, and I’m casting and directing it as well, with contortionists, aerialists, jugglers and hula-hoopists – if there’s such a word – on the bill,” says Ian.
Castellana and South Wales can wait. For now, the focus is on York’s drag diva deluxe and her parade of pop royalty at the Theatre Royal.
Velma Celli’s God Save The Queens, York Theatre Royal, September 15, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Age guidance: 14 plus.
Living Backwards, North York Moors Chamber Music Festival, St Michael’s Church, Coxwold, August 16
IF you are scratching your head over the title above, you deserve an explanation. It comes from Lewis Carroll, whose looking-glass themes are being explored in this year’s festival, which remains North Yorkshire’s best-kept musical secret. This was the fourth of the 14 programmes that could be heard daily until August 26.
Such titles are needed since no named group is performing. We know the musical menu in advance but must wait until the start of each event to discover which of the 27 resident players are involved.
This title? You may well not have encountered Ravel rubbing shoulders with Telemann, not to mention Dvořák with Biber. Throw in an intro by Saariaho, and put everything in reverse chronological order, and you have the outline of this wonderfully eclectic afternoon programme.
Benjamin Baker, who with fellow-violinist Charlotte Scott bore the brunt of the playing, opened with a tender account of Kaija Saariaho’s solo Nocturne, which she wrote in 1994, the same year as her violin concerto. Although intended as an in memoriam for Lutoslawski, it also commemorated the composer’s own death two months ago.
As Baker walked slowly away another memorial piece began, Ravel’s violin and cello sonata to honour Debussy. All but one of its four movements reflects Debussy’s joie de vivre, as did Alena Baeva and Jamie Walton’s playing.
Their warm, weaving dialogue in the opening and skittish scherzo, rapidly alternating bowing with pizzicato, were picked up again in the zestful finale, which bubbled with bonhomie. The slow movement, however, was properly elegiac: deliberate, bleak, and hushed at the close.
Dvorak’s Terzetto in C, for two violins and viola, brought back Baker and Scott, joined by Sascha Bota on the lowest part. They revelled in its unexpected demands. The scherzo’s emphatic return after a gentler trio was but a prelude to a theme and variations that were delivered with ever-increasing panache. Here were three superb virtuosos sharing their unbridled delight in unfamiliar repertoire – almost a trademark of this festival.
Gulliver’s Travels was Telemann’s response to Swift’s widely popular satire, a five-part suite for two violins. Once again it involved Baker and Scott: their palpable rapport was essential to the success of its quick-fire conversation, especially in the teasing ‘Brobdingnagian gigue’ and the busy dance of the ‘untamed Yahoos’.
Scott remained on stage to deliver a stylish, spellbinding account of the 16th and last of Biber’s Rosary sonatas, a chaconne that is the ultimate test of the Baroque violinist. A visit to Wonderland? Definitely.
