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More Things To Do in York and beyond as some things wickedly good this way come. Here’s Hutch’s List No. 4, from The Press

Something wicked this way comes: Rob Wolfe’s Macbeth and Oriana Charles’s Lady Macbeth in Dickens Theatre Company’s Macbeth, on tour at Grand Opera House, York

FROM textbook theatre for GCSE studies to an original pantomime,  a finally finished symphony to orchestral ABC,  a silent cinema season to a night of Nashville honky-tonk country, Charles Hutchinson has all manner of recommendations. 

York debut of the week: Dickens Theatre Company: Revision On Tour, Grand Opera House, York, Macbeth, Monday, 7.30pm, and Tuesday, 1pm, 7.30pm; Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Wednesday, 1pm, 7.30pm; Romeo & Juliet, Thursday, 1pm, 7.30pm

DICKENS Theatre Company, purveyors of exciting, educational and entertaining stage adaptations of literary classics and GCSE texts since 2015, make their York debut with three productions scripted and directed by Ryan Philpott.

A cast of seven presents Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy, Macbeth, narrated by the Porter, as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth make their perilous descent towards Hell; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic horror story Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, set in the foggy, dimly lit streets of Victorian London, where an evil predator lurks, and Romeo & Juliet, breathing new life and wit into Shakespeare’s tragic tale of star-crossed lovers. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Rob Wolfe, as Dr Jekyll, and Felix Grainger, as Inspector Newcomen, in Dickens Theatre Company’s Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde at Grand Opera House, York

Pantomime of the week: Blue Light Theatre Company in Nithered!, Acomb Working Men’s Club, York, today, 1pm; Wednesday to Friday, 7.30pm

FORMED by York Ambulance Service staff, Blue Light Theatre Company’s family-friendly tenth anniversary production features an original pantomime script by Perri Ann Barley, with additional material by the dame, Steven Clark, directed by Craig Barley and choreographed by Devon Wells.

They are joined in the cast by Glen Gears, Brenda Riley, Simon Moore, Kevin Bowes, Kristian Barley and new members Aileen Stables and Audra Bryan, among others. Proceeds go to the Motor Neurone Disease Association (York) and York Against Cancer. Box office: 07933 329654 or bluelight-theatre.co.uk.

The (Riding) Hoods in Blue Light Theatre Company’s Nithered!: Kathryn Donley, left, Chelsea Hutchinson and Kalayna Barley

Classical concert of the week: Academy of St Olave’s, St Olave’s Church, Marygate, York, tonight, 8pm

THE “main event” of the Academy of St Olave’s second concert of their 2023-24 season will be Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony No. 8 in B minor, but in a finished version! Schubert famously completed only the first two movements, before setting the symphony aside (six years before his death in 1828).

The York chamber orchestra will be adding third and fourth movements compiled and composed by Schubert scholar Professor Brian Newbould, based on material left behind by the Austrian composer. Further works in a programme of late-Classical and early Romantic music will be Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 and Luigi Cherubini’s operatic overture Anacréon. Box office: academyofstolaves.org.uk or on the door.

Miles Kane: One Man Band at Leeds O2 Academy

Miles down the road: Miles Kane, Leeds O2 Academy, Thursday, 7pm

BIRKENHEAD guitarist and singer Miles Kane, former frontman of The Rascals and Alex Turner’s cohort in The Last Shadow Puppets, opens his January and February 2024 solo tour in Leeds. Expect the focus to fall on last August’s album, One Man Band, released on Modern Sky Records.

A deeply personal record, it found Kane reflecting on his journey as he returned to Liverpool, hooking up with Blossoms’ Tom Ogden, Circa Waves’ Keiran Shudall, Andy Burrow and regular writing partner Jamie Biles to record songs with longtime collaborator James Skelly, of The Coral, on production duties. Box office: mileskane.com.

Buster Keaton in Sherlock, Jr: Showing in the ReDiscover programme at City Screen Picturehouse

Time to rediscover: Buster Keaton season, City Screen Picturehouse, York, until February 9

CITY Screen Picturehouse is celebrating the silent cinema of Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton, the American actor, comedian and director whose graceful physical feats of stoical comedy were marked by a deadpan expression that brought him the nickname “The Great Stone Face”.

Friday’s screening of Steamboat Bill, Jr (U), wherein the effete son of a cantankerous riverboat captain joins his father’s crew, will be followed on February 2 by Sherlock, Jr (U), in which Keaton’s hapless film projectionist longs to be a detective. The season concludes on February 9 with The General (U), with its peerless chase scenes as Keaton’s plucky railway engineer pursues Union spies doggedly across enemy lines when they steal his locomotive. Box office: picturehouses.com.

Dominic Halpin And The Hurricanes: Revelling in A Country Night In Nashville

Country shindig of the week: A Country Night In Nashville, Grand Opera House, York, Friday, 7.30pm

DOMINIC Halpin And The Hurricanes take a journey down country roads, visiting the songs of American stars both past and present as they recreate the atmosphere of a buzzing honky-tonk in downtown Nashville. The music of Johnny Cash, Alan Jackson, Dolly Parton, The Chicks, Willie Nelson and Kacey Musgraves, among others, will be showcased. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Martin Fry: Fronting the ABC Lexicon Of Love Orchestral Tour show at York Barbican

Gig of the week: ABC, Lexicon Of Love Orchestral Tour, York Barbican, January 27, doors, 7pm

MARTIN Fry leads ABC in an orchestral performance of their June 1982 chart-topping debut album The Lexicon Of Love, here coupled with further hits and favourites.

Fusing Motown soul with a steely Sheffield post-punk attitude, the album spawned the hits Tears Are Not Enough, Poison Arrow, The Look Of Love and All of My Heart,   

now performed with the Southbank Sinfonia, conducted by longtime collaborator Anne Dudley, who orchestrated the original album sessions. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk or ticketmaster.co.uk.

Miles And The Chain Gang: New single and first gig of 2024

Miles on the doorstep: Miles And The Chain Gang, The Terrace, New Street, York, February 10, 8pm onwards, free entry

YORK band Miles And The Chain Gang precede their first gig of 2014 with the January 26 release of new single Raining Cats And Dogs, an Americana-tinged track that dates back 30 years.

“Everything takes time,” says songwriter and frontman Miles Salter. “The song started out at a jam session with my friends Dom Jukes and Syd Egan in the summer of 1994. It just came to me, as song ideas do.” Hearing the subsequent recording for the first time in years, Salter has decided to revisit the “very playful and tongue-in-cheek” country number with Egan on harmonica.

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Why Imelda’s chomping at the bit to play 11 Past The Hour’s songs at York Barbican

“It’s a magical feeling we can only get from live music. Let’s go! ” says Imelda May as she returns to York Barbican

IRISH singer-songwriter and poet Imelda May plays York Barbican tomorrow in the only Yorkshire show of her first major UK tour in more than five years.

“I cannot wait to see you all again, to dance and sing together, to connect and feel the sparkle in a room where music makes us feel alive and elevated for a while,” said the Dubliner when announcing the Made To Love itinerary last April. “It’s a magical feeling we can only get from live music. Let’s go!”

Imagine how she feels, a year on from that “Let’s go!” invocation, as Imelda at last has the chance to promote her sixth studio album, last April’s 11 Past The Hour.

“I’m absolutely chomping at the bit to perform these songs live because normally you put out the album, go out on tour at that time, and see the songs grow as you play them,” says Imelda, 47.

“But until now, I’ve not really played any of them live, apart from Made To Love at a couple of things. When you start playing them, it can change suddenly what you might release as the next single, as you see what people enjoyed, but with this album I had to release them blindly as there couldn’t be any comeback from audiences. So, it’ll be interesting to see which ones they most react to, now I’m touring again.”

The cover artwork for Imelda May’s 2021 album, 11 Past The Hour

On a record that “brims with sensuality, emotional intelligence, spirituality and intuition”, Imelda collaborated with Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, Noel Gallagher, Miles Kane and Niall McNamee.

“Niall is a wonderful Irish musician and actor and it was Ronnie [Wood] who introduced him to me because he was acting in a play by Ronnie’s wife, and we got on so well, we started writing together,” says Imelda.

The duet Don’t Let Me Stand On My Own resulted, with its theme of mental health, sticking together and holding on together. Lo and behold, Imelda and Niall are indeed not standing alone. “We fell in love over the kitchen table and we’re still together,” she says.

Imelda is grateful to Ronnie Wood for that post-show introduction but more besides. “It’s great to have Ronnie on the record, playing on Just One Kiss and Made To Love. I’ve known him since I was 16,” she says. “I’d never gone to music college or state schools; I just jammed at clubs, and I’d just started playing at this little club when Ronnie turned up and we ended up playing Rollin’ & Tumblin’ together.

“Later, I toured with Jeff Beck, who introduced me to Ronnie, saying ‘I don’t if you remember Imelda’, but he did!”

Artwork for Imelda May’s 2017 top five album, Life. Love. Flesh. Blood

Noel Gallagher co-wrote and sings on Just One Kiss while Miles Kane features on What We Did In The Dark. “Miles has been a friend for a long time and Noel is a good friend too,” says Imelda.

Feminist thinkers and activists Gina Martin and Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu contribute to Made To Love. “Gina does incredible work and it’s the same with Dr Shola, who is so eloquent and elegant and makes so much sense,” says Imelda.

“I was writing this song about how we’re made to love, because if we don’t look for love, what are we aiming for, especially now? I’m a living thing! Love is a living thing!

“I was looking for backing vocalists and decided I’d get in touch with Gina and Shola after they really captured our attention and hearts at this beautiful event for International Women’s Day.

“I said, ‘do you sing because I need your heart and passion on this song?’, and they agreed to do it with. We had to be [socially] distanced for the recording with all the doors open. Absolutely freezing, but it was worth it.”

Imelda’s record company, Decca Records, were favouring Diamonds for a single, but Graham Norton asked specifically for Made To Love for Imelda’s performance on his BBC One chat show, and it duly became the single.

Imelda loves being creative. “The writing process is like giving birth. Suddenly something exists that didn’t exist this morning,” she says. “I love it when my brain fires up and a song flows out.

“Then you start working on the artwork and the videos, the songs get to live and that’s another chapter starting. Then you work on how the songs will sound live, which is a very different creative process from studio recordings, especially when we were recording remotely in lockdown.”

Imelda’s creativity has expanded to poetry, as heard on her 2020 EP, Slip Of The Tongue, and printed in last October’s A Lick And A Promise. “Absolutely 100 per cent, poetry will feature in the show,” she says. “When the book came out, the reaction was unprecedented, I was told. The print runs sold out three times. They flew out the door!

“Working on poems for the EP with beautiful string arrangements behind them, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, I can tell you.”

Now is the time for May in April, songs, poems and all, at York Barbican tomorrow.

Imelda May: Singer, songwriter, poet and multi-instrumentalist

Imelda May fact file

Full name: Imelda Mary Higham.

Born: July 10 1974, in The Liberties area of Dublin.

Occupation: Singer, songwriter, poet and multi-instrumentalist who plays bodhrán, guitar, bass guitar and tambourine.

Breakthrough: Discovered by boogie-woogie pianist Jools Holland, who asked her to tour with him.

Performed duets with: U2, Lou Reed, Sinead O’Connor, Robert Plant, Van Morrison, Jack Savoretti, Noel Gallagher and Elvis Costello.

Featured on albums and live tours with: Jeff Beck, Jeff Goldblum and Ronnie Wood.

Studio albums: No Turning Back, 2003; Love Tattoo, 2008; Mayhem, 2010; Tribal, 2014; Life. Love. Flesh. Blood, 2017; 11 Past The Hour, 2021.

Branching out: In the cauldron of 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, she released her poem You Don’t Get To Be Racist And Irish. Sentiment adopted by Irish government’s ReThink Ireland campaign on billboard displays.

What Imelda did next: Released reflective nine-poem Slip Of The Tongue EP, set to uplifting soundscape. May addressed themes of home and love, feminism, harsh realities of life, defiance, lovelorn longing and escapism.

Book: A Lick And A Promise, debut collection of 104 poems, including two each by her father and young daughter, published in October 2021.

York gigs: February 2009, at The Duchess, in bequiffed retro-rockabilly days; November 2011, York Barbican debut; May 2017, York Barbican, promoting post break-up album Life. Love. Flesh. Blood.

Imelda May plays York Barbican tomorrow (6/4/2022) at 7.30pm on her Made To Love Tour. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk, gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk or on 0203 356 5441.

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Imelda May to follow up Friday’s 11 Past The Hour album with York Barbican gig in 2022

“I cannot wait to see you all again, to dance and sing together, to connect and feel the sparkle in a room where music makes us feel alive,” says Imelda May. Roll on next April

IRISH singer-songwriter and poet Imelda May will play York Barbican on April 6 2022 in the only Yorkshire show of her first major UK tour in more than five years.

Meanwhile, May and April will unite on Friday (16/4/2021) when the 46-year-old Dubliner releases her sixth studio album, 11 Past The Hour, on Decca Records.

Tickets for May’s 12-date Made To Love Tour next spring will go on general sale on April 23 at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk, gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk and on 0203 356 5441.

“I cannot wait to see you all again, to dance and sing together, to connect and feel the sparkle in a room where music makes us feel alive and elevated for a while,” says Imelda. “A magical feeling we can only get from live music. Let’s go!”

Imelda May’s new album, 11 Past The Hour, is out on Friday

On a record that “brims with sensuality, emotional intelligence, spirituality and intuition, marking a new chapter for Imelda and showcasing her at her most authentic”, May collaborates with Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, Noel Gallagher, Miles Kane and Niall McNamee.

Feminist thinkers and activists Gina Martin and Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu make inspired contributions too to an album that adds up to “an invigorating blast of rock’n’roll with a purpose”.

Born and raised in The Liberties area of Dublin, May – real name Imelda Mary Higham – was discovered by boogie-woogie pianist Jools Holland, who asked her to tour with him.

She has since performed duets with U2, Lou Reed, Sinead O’Connor, Robert Plant, Van Morrison, Jack Savoretti and Elvis Costello and has featured on albums and live tours with Jeff Beck, Jeff Goldblum and Ronnie Wood.

Branching out into poetry: Imelda May’s 2020 EP, Slip Of The Tongue

May last played York Barbican in May 2017 in support of her T-Bone Burnett-produced Top Five album, the post break-up record Life. Love. Flesh. Blood, and previously performed there in November 2011, two years on from a show at The Duchess in her bequiffed retro-rockabilly Love Tattoo days.

Not only a singer and songwriter but also a multi-instrumentalist, equally adept on  bodhrán, guitar, bass guitar and tambourine, last year she added another string to her bow: poetry.

Last June, in the cauldron of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, she released You Don’t Get To Be Racist And Irish, a sentiment adopted subsequently by the Irish government’s ReThink Ireland campaign on billboard display.

This was followed in October by the reflective nine-poem Slip Of The Tongue EP, set to an uplifting soundscape as May addressed such themes as home and love, feminism, the harsh realities of life, defiance, lovelorn longing and escapism.

Now comes 11 Past The Hour, to be followed by next April’s tour, for which VIP packages, including access to soundcheck and a Q&A with May, are available.  Eager fans can secure exclusive access to a presale for the tour when they pre-order the new album from May’s store at imeldamay.tmstor.es.

What was Charles Hutchinson’s verdict when Imelda May played York Barbican on May 16 2017?

Imelda May: “The blues, rock, soul and gospel-singing, mature May is a cut above the more derivative, bouncier, boom-boom past”

WHEN else would Imelda May tour but in May, when every day is a May day, 17 dates in all this month on the Irish pocket dynamo’s first British travels in three years.

“It’s been a while,” said the 42-year-old Dubliner, reintroducing herself to a pleasingly full York Barbican crowd for the first time since November 2011. “Thank you very much for sticking with me and turning up tonight.”

Much has changed in that time. Imelda ditched the rockabilly look and sound last sported on 2014’s Tribal album; her 18-year marriage to guitarist Darrel Higham ended; she turned 40; she gave herself permission to find new love; she allowed her spectacular voice full range in her song-writing for the first time since hit single Johnny Got A Boom Boom steered her down Retro Avenue.

The artwork for Imelda May’s 2017 album Life. Love. Flesh. Blood

All this is reflected in her post break-up March album, Life. Love. Flesh. Blood, whose every song – even from the deluxe edition – was in Tuesday’s setlist, bolstered by a couple of Sixties covers (The Animals, The Shangri-Las) and a smattering of May oldies. That’s confidence for you, and one met approvingly by an audience of Imelda’s age and upwards who had in turn experienced Life. Love. Flesh. Blood.

Dressed in black, down to her ankle boots, with hair designed to a Chrissie Hynde template, Imelda began seated as if in a scene from the musical Chicago, she and guitarist Oliver Darling picked out by spotlights for Call Me: the album opener that announces the blues, rock, soul and gospel-singing, mature May is a cut above the more derivative, bouncier, boom-boom past.

Stage lit warmly by nine copper-toned lamps, May fronted a wonderfully responsive band, the guitars and Al Gare’s double bass complemented by saxophone and trumpet, as she sang from and to the heart, with Black Tears, The Longing and The Girl I Used To Be particular highs. The girl she used to be is still there, but the 2017 Imelda May is flowering in fullest bloom.

Review copyright of The Press, York