The Christmas Collection Archives

Goose by the Ouse: Dame Berwick Kaler, centre, with Martin Barrass, left, AJ Powell, Suzy Cooper and David Leonard, gathering again at the Grand Opera House, York, for The Adventures Of Old Mother Goose. Picture: David Harrison

KALER on the loose, Christmas music, art and crafts and a stellar trio on the horizon have Charles Hutchinson hopping between diaries

Berwick’s back: The Adventures Of Old Granny Goose, Grand Opera House, York, December 10 to January 8

THE script is complete, as of 6am on Thursday morning, for writer, director and perennial York dame Berwick Kaler’s second year at his adopted panto home, presented in tandem with the Grand Opera House’s new partners in pantomime, UK Productions.

At 76, expect a greater emphasis on the verbal jousting from Dame Berwick, but still with slapstick aplenty in the familiar company of sidekick Martin Barrass, villain David Leonard, principal gal Suzy Cooper, luverly Brummie AJ Powell and ever-game dancer Jake Lindsay in his tenth Kaler panto, me babbies, me bairns. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or atgtickets.com/York.

*Angel With Gift, linocut print by Anita Klein, part of The Christmas Collection at Pyramid Gallery, York*

Exhibition launch of the week: The Christmas Collection at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, today until January 12, open daily

YORK ceramicist Ben Arnup opens The Christmas Collection, the last exhibition of Pyramid Gallery’s 40th anniversary celebrations, at midday today. He will be exhibiting 12 new trompe l’oeil ceramic sculptures too.

Gallery curator Terry Brett has invited London printmaker Anita Kelin to fill the walls with 15 large linocut original prints and two paintings in her 28th year of showing her depictions of family life at Pyramid. Exhibiting too will be printmaker Mychael Barratt, sculptors Christine Pike and Jennie McCall, ceramicist Katie Braida and glassmakers Rachel Elliott, Alison Vincent, Keith Cummings and David Reekie, plus 50 jewellery makers.

*Sara Davies: Crafty ideas for Christmas at York Barbican*

Return to York of the week: Craft Your Christmas with Sara Davies, York Barbican, tonight, 7.30pm

DRAGONS’ Den entrepreneur Sara Davies, who founded her Crafter’s Companion company in 2005 while studying at the University of York, offers practical demonstrations, creative ideas and a healthy slice of down-to-earth know-how.

Taking you from gifts to garlands, cards to crackers, via a peek into the Den and a sprinkling of Strictly Come Dancing sparkle, Sara will help you to create your own unique handmade Christmas. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

*The Ebor Singers: Christmas music from America and Britain at St Lawrence Parish Church*

Christmas concert of the week: The Ebor Singers, A Christmas Celebration By Candlelight, St Lawrence Parish Church, Lawrence Street, York, tonight, 7.30pm

PAUL Gameson directs The Ebor Singers in an evening of beautiful choral arrangements for Christmastide that also marks the launch of the York choir’s CD recording of Christmas music by contemporary American composers, Wishes And Candles.

Pieces from the disc, featuring works by Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, Dan Forrest, Abbie Bettinis and Matthew Culloton, will be complemented by festive compositions by John Rutter and Bob Chilcott. Expect audience participation in carol singing too. Tickets: eventbrite.co.uk and on the door.

Festive musical duo of the week: Aled Jones and Russell Watson, Christmas With Aled & Russell York Barbican, Tuesday, 8pm

ALED Jones and Russell Watson are reuniting for Christmas 2022, combining a new album and tour. Performing together again after a three-year hiatus, the classical singers will be promoting their November 4 release of Christmas With Aled And Russell.

The album features new recordings of traditional carols such as O Holy Night, O Little Town Of Bethlehem and In The Bleak Midwinter, alongside festive favourites White Christmas, It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, Little Drummer Boy and Mistletoe And Wine, complemented by a duet rendition of Walking In The Air. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk

*York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust cast members in rehearsal for A Nativity for York. Picture: John Saunders*

Nativity play of the week: York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust in A Nativity for York, Spurriergate Centre, Spurriergate, York, Thursday, Friday, 7.30pm; Saturday, Sunday, 3pm, 5pm and 7.30pm

A NATIVITY for York returns to the Spurriergate Centre following a two-year enforced break, staged by York Mystery Plays Supporters Trust (YMPST). After directing the Last Judgement plays on the city streets in 2018 and 2022, Alan Heaven has created a fresh, vibrant and magical retelling of the Nativity, combining “music, dance, sorrows and joys and some audience participation”.

Heaven’s company of actors, dancers and musicians is drawn from a wide range of community volunteers, in keeping with the YMPST productions of A Nativity for York in 2019 and A Resurrection for York in 2021. Tickets: 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.

*Solomon’s Knot: Christmas Cantatas at Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, in York Early Music Christmas Festival 2022’s concluding concert*

Festival of the week: York Early Music Christmas Festival, mainly at NCEM, Walmgate, December 8 to 16; online box set, December 19 to January 31

MUSIC, minstrels, merriment, mulled wine and mince pies combine in York Early Music Christmas Festival 2022, to be complemented by an online box set of festival highlights post-festival.

Taking part will be La Palatine (Fiesta Galante); Ensemble Augelletti (Pick A Card!); Solomon’s Knot (Johann Kuhnau’s Christmas Cantatas); Spiritato and The Marion Consort (Inspiring Bach); Ensemble Moliere (Good Soup); Bojan Čičić (Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas); The Orlando Consort (Adieu) and Yorkshire Bach Choir & Yorkshire Baroque Soloists (Handel’s Brockes Passion). Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.

*Guitarist Tom Bennett and baritone Sam Hird, outside their training ground, the Royal College of Music. On Friday, they perform a Christmas recital in York*

Homecoming of the week: Sam Hird and Tom Bennett, A Winter Night’s Recital, All Saints’ Church, North Street, York, Friday, 7pm to 9pm

YORK baritone Sam Hird and his fellow Royal College of Music graduate, guitarist Tom Bennett, perfrom classical songs from around the world, by Schubert, Faure and Britten, complemented by festive favourites such as Adeste Fideles, O Holy Night and A Cradle In Bethlehem to stir the Christmas spirit.

The 15^th century All Saints’ Church will be the “perfect backdrop” to this candlelit concert, Hird’s professional solo debut. A glass of mulled wine and a mince pie is included in the ticket price of £10 plus booking fee, available from samhirdmusic.co.uk and on the door.

Big jumpers, big songs: Alistair Griffin presents The Big Christmas Concert, St Michael le Belfrey Church, York, December 9, 10 and 17, 8pm; doors, 7.30pm

BILLED as “the biggest Christmas concert in York”, singer-songwriter Alistair Griffin’s winter warmer returns with classic Christmas tunes, carols and bags of festive cheer, heralded by a brass band.

The Big Christmas Concert takes a festive musical journey from acoustic versions of traditional carols to Wizzard, Slade and The Pogues, as audiences sing along and sip mulled wine while enjoying the fairytale of old York. Christmas jumpers and Christmas attire are encouraged; a prize will be given for the best costume. Box office: www.alistairgriffin.com.

*One way or another, you’re gonna get ya ticket for Blondie at Scarborough Open Air Theatre next summer*

Booking ahead: Blondie, Scarborough Open Air Theatre, June 22 2023

LOWER East Side New York trailblazers Blondie are off to the East Coast next summer to play Britain’s largest outdoor concert arena.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame icons will be led as ever by pioneering frontwoman/songwriter Debbie Harry, 77, guitarist/conceptual mastermind Chris Stein and powerhouse drummer Clem Burke, joined by former Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, guitarist Tommy Kessler and keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen.

Blondie join Sting, Pulp, rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires, N-Dubz, Olly Murs and Mamma Mia! among Scarborough OAT’s 2023 headliners, with plenty more to be added. Box office: scarboroughopenairtheatre.com.

*The Waterboys: 40th anniversary celebrations in 2023, taking in York Barbican*

Booking ahead too: The Waterboys, York Barbican, October 12 2023, 7.30pm

GREAT, Scott will be back for yet another evening with The Waterboys at York Barbican, this time to mark the Scottish-founded folk, rock, soul and blues band’s 40th anniversary.

Mike Scott, 63, has made a habit of playing the Barbican, laying on the “Big Music” in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018 and October 2021, since when The Waterboys have released 15th studio album All Souls Hill in May. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

*Grayson Perry: A Show All About You…and surely about him too at Harrogate Convention Centre?*

A brush with an artist: Grayson Perry: A Show All About You, Harrogate Convention Centre, October 1 2023, 7.30pm

ARTIST, iconoclast and TV presenter Grayson Perry follows up A Show For Normal People with A Show All About You, wherein he asks, “What makes you, you?”. Is there a part deep inside that no-one understands? Have you found your tribe or are you a unique human being? Or is it more complicated than that?

Perry, “white, male, heterosexual, able bodied, English, southerner, baby boomer and member of the establishment”, takes a mischievous look at the nature of identity, promising to make you laugh, shudder, and reassess who you really are. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk.

Also recommended but sold out: The Cure, The Lost World Tour 2022, Leeds First Direct Arena, Tuesday, doors, 6pm

ROBERT Smith’s ever-changing band play Leeds for the first time since September 21 1985 at the whatever-happened-to-the Queens Hall. Expect a long, long set of all the heavenly, hippy pop hits, the gloomier goth stalwarts and more than a glimpse of the long-promised 14th studio album, Songs Of A Lost World, pencilled in for 2023.

*The Christmas collection: York ceramicist Ben Arnup, left, and Pyramid Gallery owner Terry Brett with an Anita Klein linocut print behind them*

YORK ceramicist Ben Arnup will open Pyramid Gallery’s concluding 40^th anniversary exhibition, The Christmas Collection, in Stonegate, York, on Saturday at 12 noon.

Ben will be exhibiting 12 new pieces, having supplied gallery curator and owner Terry Brett with his distinctive trompe l’oeil’ ceramic sculptures for 28 years.

At the heart of The Christmas Collection will be new work by another Pyramid regular, London artist and printmaker Anita Klein. “I’ve invited Anita to fill the walls of this show with 15 large linocut original prints and two paintings,” says Terry.

“The gallery has enjoyed a long, unbroken relationship with Anita as a supplier of her extensive catalogue of prints that form a diary of her family life.

*Angel With Gift, linocut print, by Anita Klein*

“Over the 28 years in which she has shown more than 800 different pictures at Pyramid Gallery, we’ve watched her career progress to the point where she has become one of the most collectable printmakers in the UK. It seems very fitting that she is the main focus of this year’s final anniversary exhibition.”

As well as showing new linocut prints, Anita will be selling copies of her book Out Of The Ordinary – 40 years Of Print Making, published by Eames Fine Art in October.

For more than 40 years, this artist of the everyday and the personal has produced thousands of paintings, prints and drawings depicting her immediate family – husband, daughters, grandchildren and herself – going about the very ordinary activities of daily life.

From watching television, cooking, reading, driving to school, soaking in the bath and getting dressed, to cleaning the house, choosing a pet, going on holiday, or just cuddling up and sharing tender moments with loved ones, Anita captures these seemingly unremarkable domestic scenes with humour, sensitivity and beauty, creating an intimate visual journal with which everyone can identify.

*The book cover for Anita Klein’s Out Of The Ordinary, published in October and on sale at Pyramid Gallery*

The book contains 550 of Anita’s best-loved prints, presented as a charming chronological record of the family’s day-to-day life through the decades, seen from the artist-mother’s perspective, as they grow and change in their respective roles within the household.

Out Of The Ordinary also charts her development as a printmaker, from the simple monochrome drypoints of the 1980s, a consequence of the practical and financial demands of being a young stay-at-home mum, through to the more colourful and elaborate prints of recent years.

A personal appreciation of Anita Klein’s work by poet Hollie McNish opens the volume, while texts by publishers Rebecca and Vincent Eames, who have collaborated with the artist for more than two decades, and critic Mel Gooding give an introduction to her practice.

Anita herself provides recollections and further detail with short commentaries on the images and the occasions that they depict, complemented by poetry contributions from Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Hollie McNish and Wendy Cope.

*Pangolin, sculpture, by Jennie McCall, from The Christmas Collection at Pyramid Gallery*

Taking part in the exhibition too will be sculptors Jennie McCall and Christine Pike; printmaker Mychael Barratt; slipware potter Dylan Bowen; ceramicists Katie Braida, Ilona Sulikova and Drew Caines (from Leeds); glass installation artist and sculptor Monette Larsen and glassmakers Rachel Elliott, Alison Vincent, Keith Cummings, Bruce Marks and David Reekie.

To complement with festive sparkle, the Christmas Collection jewellery displays will feature studio work by more than 50 British makers, including Jane Macintosh.

Saturday’s launch will run from 12 noon to 3pm; the exhibition will continue until January 12, open 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday; 11am to 4pm on Sundays.

Tag: The Christmas Collection

More Things To Do in York and beyond, from an Old Granny Goose to Grayson. Hutch’s List No. 108, courtesy of The Press

New works by ceramicist Ben Arnup and Anita Klein are the headline acts in Pyramid Gallery’s Christmas Collection exhibition