Denys Baptiste: Teaming up with Tomorrow’s Warriors band leader and double bass player Gary Crosby in an all-star quartet for A Love Supreme on November 25
THE National Centre for Early Music’s autumn season presents a host of artists from across the world at St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, York.
Opening the season on September 27 will be Irish singer and bouzouki and mandola player Andy Irvine, “ a tradition in himself” after 60 years of telling tales and making music. Joining him on the 6.30pm bill will be the award-winning Swedish folk band Quilty, celebrating their 30th anniversary.
Described by the late Jeff Beck as “the best guitarist in the world” and by Pat Metheny as “one of the most awesome solo guitar players in history”, fingerstyle player Martin Taylor returns to the NCEM on October 4 at 6.30pm.
Six decades into his career, his new solo show, Standards, celebrates the golden age of jazz through evocative arrangements of tunes from the Great American Songbook.
Polish-Belarusian band Hajda Banda: Rural music performed on acoustic village instruments on October 9. Picture: Michal Kalita
On October 9, the NCEM teams up with Songlines to present Polish-Belarusian band Hajda Banda, who specialise in traditional dances from eastern Poland’s Podlaise region, the western provinces of Belarus and the wetlands of Polesye, a cultural crossroads on the Poland-Ukraine- Belarus border. Audience members will be encouraged to dance, if they wish, to rural music performed on acoustic village instruments.
City Of Poets’ concert on October 10 reunites musicians across the Soviet-Chinese divide through an exploration of the maqam-based classical repertoire of the Central Asian Uzbek and Uyghur peoples. A group of players from different sides of the border, led by Abror Zufarov and Saniyem Ismail, focus on the works of 17th century mystic poet and wandering dervish Baba Rahim Mashrab, whose poetry continues to inspire musicians on both sides of the divide.
Grammy Award winners Tim Garland, mezzo-soprano saxophone, and Geoffrey Keezer, piano, return to the NCEM on October 12 with their new duet album Mezzo, recorded in a single, five-hour session in New York, capturing the intensity, fearless creativity and breathtaking interplay of their 25-year musical partnership.
The concert will begin at 7.20pm with a performance by York Music Forum young jazz players after they worked with Garland and Keezer earlier in the day.
Fiddlers at the double: Grace Smith and Sam Sweeney, playing the NCEM on October 25. Picture: Kate Griffin
Revered English folk acoustic and slide guitar player Martin Simpson plays solo on October 20, combining passion, sorrow, love, beauty, tragedy and majesty in his performance after 32 nominations over the 18 years of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. His new album, Some Kind Of Jubilee, arrives on September 25 on Topic Records, marking 50 years since the release of his debut, Golden Vanity.
Bellowhead alumnus Sam Sweeney joins fellow fiddler Grace Smith at the NCEM for the first time on October 25 at 6.30pm. Rooted in tradition, yet constantly pushing boundaries, they bring a shared passion for reimagining archive material, championing new compositions and creating music both authentic and forward-looking.
Northern Silents presents Curtis Bernhardt’s 1929 German silent film The Woman Men Yearn For with a live music score performed by pianist Jonny Best on October 28. Marlene Dietrich ignites the screen in a tale of danger and desire, wherein Henri marries a wealthy heiress to save the family business , but on the eve of his honeymoon, he glimpses a mysterious woman through a frosted train window. Once their eyes meet, a chain of passion and betrayal hurtles towards disaster.
Based in London, She’Koyokh arrive at the NCEM on November 1 at 6.30pm with a line-up as diverse as their music-making. Their members hail from Turkey, Serbia, Spain and the UK: three are graduates from London’s Royal Academy of Music; two are esteemed jazz players; accordionist Zivorad Nikolic is among Serbia’s finest exponents of traditional folklore; singer Cigdem Aslan is a celebrity in the world of rembetiko music and Susi Evans is a queen of the klezmer clarinet. Together they perform the folk music traditions of Jewish Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Balkans.
She’Koyokh: Performing folk music traditions of Jewish Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Balkans on November 1
Led by composer, musician and visionary James Lascelles, now returned to the Harewood estate, Talking Spirits play a blend of world-jazz, folk and Caribbean grooves on November 11. Between them, the band members have performed, recorded and collaborated with avant-garde luminary Frank Zappa, pioneering violinist L Shankar, the rock theatricality of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel and the soulful Joan Armatrading.
Presented by Nava Arts, on November 14, the soulful voice of Samin Ghorbani, the enchanting shurangiz of composer Vahid Taremi and the electronics, clarinet and modern arrangements of Rouzbeh Esfand bring to York what the Persian trio calls “the sound of their shadows from a Trembling Land”, drawn together from three separate cities across Europe.
The Instituto Cervantes, in Manchester, and Iberian and Latin American Music Society link up with the NCEM to present a 7.30pm concert on November 17 and workshop from 1.30pm to 5.30pm on November 22. First up, Spanish soprano Lorena Paz Nieto and British-Hispanic pianist Helen Glaisher-Hernandez present The Secret Art, featuring Spanish and Latin American art song as conceived by beguiling women composers.
Then, as part of The Secret Art: Mujeres Presentes project, the inimitable Odaline de la Martinez leads a half-day Sunday workshop focusing on the sounds of 17th-century Mexican convents, Afro-Cuban beats and the rhythms of the Rio Carnival. The workshop will finish with a short run-through for family and friends at 5pm. Places must be booked by November 8.
Odaline de la Martin: Hosting workshop on November 22. Picture: Malcolm Crowther
King Kong directors Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack’s epic 1925 silent film Grass, a documentary about the heroic annual migration of the nomadic Bakhtiari tribes of Iran, will be accompanied by a live performance by Iranian pianist and composer Peyman Yazdanivan, joined by Adib Rostami on kamancheh and tonbak, on November 24.
Mercury Prize-nominated saxophonist Denys Baptiste and Tomorrow’s Warriors band leader and co-founder, double bass player Gary Crosby, lead an all-star quartet for A Love Supreme, a 60th anniversary celebration of John Coltrane’s jazz masterpiece, on November 25.
The 7.20pm concert will begin with a 20-minute performance by York Music Forum young players after a workshop with band members earlier in the day.
Each December since a one-off pilot in 2015, “festive folk supergroup” A Winter Union reconvene to share their joyous Christmas party around the country, complementing reimagined winter classics from both sides of the Atlantic with little-known Yuletide gems and songs direct from the pens of the songwriting quintet of Jade Rhiannon (from The Willows), Katriona Gilmore and Jamie Roberts (from Gilmore & Roberts) and Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage. On December 12, they make their NCEM debut.
National Centre for Early Music director Delma Tomlin
By way of contrast, Awake Arise make their fourth visit on December 18 to present A Christmas Show For Our Times. Lady Maisery members Hannah James, Rowan Rheingans and Hazel Askew will be joined by Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith to celebrate winter traditions and reflect on how the hope and resilience in music and song can bring joy in the darkest season.
Looking forward to the autumn season, NCEM director Delma Tomlin says: “It’s partly serendipitous that so many are on tour, but I’m extremely pleased at the quality of the names and also by the mix of world music artists drawn from all over the globe.
“It means so much to us to continue to share this cultural world with York at this introspective time, whether from Persia or Spain, with our relationship with the Spanish Embassy bringing in acts.
“The Polish-Belarusian band Hajda Banda are a bit of a wild-card that came through a recommendation from my friends at Songlines, and so we decided to book them for the first time. They’re a dancing band, so we’ll need room at the edges because you’ll be encouraged to dance to this Polish high-energy music. Off you go!”
Tickets for the autumn season are on sale on 01904 658338 or at ncem.co.uk. Events start at 7.30pm unless stated otherwise.