Tag: The Courthouse Thirsk

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Jessa Liversidge to perform A Tapestry Of Life concert for Mental Health Awareness Week at The Courthouse, Thirsk, today

Easingwold singer and workshop leader Jessa Liversidge, left, with her poet sister Andrea Brown

EASINGWOLD singer, songwriter and community singing workshop champion Jessa Liversidge will perform A Tapestry Of Life today (16/5/2025) as part of Rural Arts’ Mental Health Awareness Week at The Courthouse, Thirsk, at 6.30pm.

Jessa’s 60-minute, one-woman musical performance, inspired by Carole King’s  album Tapestry, features such much-loved songs as You’ve Got A Friend, Will You Love Me  Tomorrow?, It’s Too Late, So Far Away, I Feel The Earth Move and Natural Woman, interspersed with original songs, rooted in the powerful poetry of Jessa’s sister, Andrea Brown, from her Life, Love, Loss collection.

“With titles such as Unrequited Love, The Girl Who Wasn’t Enough, If Only, Crazy, Sorry and Beautiful Day, these new pieces reflect on life’s big themes of love and friendship and loss, situations and journeys, that every human can identify with and all go through, just as Carole King’s timeless songs on Tapestry do,” says Jessa.

In addition to her debut Courthouse concert, she will be running a Friday Feelgood Singing Session earlier in the day, with a discount available if booking for both the workshop and performance at ruralarts.org. Tickets are on sale at ruralarts.org/whats-on/performances/jessa-liversidge/.

Further performances of A Tapestry Of Life will follow in Dundee-born Jessa’s Scottish homeland, at Leslie Town Hall, Fife, on May 31 at 7.30pm; Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, on June 15 at 6pm (tickets, tickets.41monkgate.co.uk), and her Husthwaite Village Hall debut on July 18 at 7.30pm (tickets, 07836 721775 or at sheila_mowatt@btinternet.com). She

Jessa and Andrea in 1970s’ childhood days in Dundee

In 1971 Carole King released her award-winning album, Tapestry, whose  themes of love and friendship are still so relevant more than 50 years later. Thousands of miles away, two sisters were born in Dundee that year.

Jessa moved to Yorkshire at 18, Andrea stayed in Dundee, and although they followed very different pathways, their bond grew stronger as they followed their dreams and went through difficult times, such as losing their parents.

In 2022, Andrea published a first book of poetry, Life, Love, Loss, inspired by her experiences.  “I wrote this show during 2024, sparked by my sister’s poetry book,” says Jessa. “As a family, we hadn’t realised she wrote poems until she said she wanted to read at our mother’s funeral, and and then at our father’s too.

“Andrea works as a medical practice manager and wrote the poem Three Sides To Every Story during Covid, written from the doctor’s side, the patient’s side and Reception’s side. She then came up with the idea of a self-challenge to write a poem a day, and a lot of them were quite personal and emotional.”

Jessa “thought it would be lovely to set them to music”. “Andrea wrote about struggles that people go through, and I, as a sister, felt bad that I hadn’t realised it. Her revelations drew us closer,” she says.

The cover artwork for Jessa’s album recording of A Tapestry Of Life

“I’d never really written my own music, so I started writing songs using my looping skills, layering up harmonies, and it felt very therapeutic to work on them.”

A photograph that Jessa found of Andrea and herself in their childhood days reminded her of the cover to Carole King’s Tapestry, and the seed for A Tapestry Of Life was sown. “I’d sung Carole King’s songs through the years but had never focused on the album,” says Jessa. “Almost any of them could have featured in the show, but I picked out nine in the end to go with nine of my compositions.

“Hopefully I’ve created a journey through the show that’s not seamless but certainly is a journey, and I talk a little between songs about the stories behind them. Like Ripples In The Water, which reflects on four of us going our different ways but having strong roots that hold us together, and not realising how lucky we were as children but appreciating how close we are as adults, having gone through so much separately.”

Jessa first pieced together A Tapestry Of Life for a performance at the Durham Fringe last year. “It was a chance to try out material, as well as play Carole King songs, and I got good feedback from that, so it was a really positive experience and a very emotional one too, because people remembered when they first heard Carole’s songs; the feelings that the songs triggered in them.

“It was the same with Andrea’s poems set to music, with people identifying with those experiences. The way I perform it, just me and the piano, and the style I perform the show in, a heartfelt style where I just tell the story with my voice, and just a little piano assistance underneath, means the audience can really feel the emotions.”

“People have said the music has helped them connect with Andrea’s poetry,” says Jessa Liversidge

Creating the song settings of Andrea’s poetry came naturally to Jessa. “I struggle to call some of them songs as it’s me singing the poems, but some have more layers of harmonies; on others, it’s me playing one or two chords, almost improvising as I go along.

“Hopefully the music complements the poems and it’s more than just me reciting them. People have said the music has helped them connect with the poetry.”

The choice of intimate performance spaces has a further benefit. “Performing in a small space makes people think more about the possible meaning behind Carole King’s lyrics too,” says Jessa.

She has made an album version of A Tapestry Of Life, recorded live over a day at Beck View Studios in Scarborough, where she was joined by Malcolm Maddock, who played the piano parts on Carole King’s songs. The album is available at Jessa’s concerts, as well as on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.

As well as performing, Jessa spends her week leading choirs, singing groups and workshops, as well as one-to-one singing teaching. Her regular groups include York Military Wives Choir, Easingwold Community Singers, children’s choir Wigginton Singstars  and her dementia-friendly group Singing For All.

Jessa Liversidge’s poster artwork for A Tapestry Of Life, her show combining Carole King songs from Tapestry with Jessa’s musical settings of her sister Andrea’s poetry

As a certified vocal health first aider, Jessa knows how to bring the best out of voices safely and will happily share plenty of healthy voice tips through her singing sessions.


Today’s workshop participants will take part in useful vocal warm-ups, then work with Jessa on songs linked to the A Tapestry Of Life show, both King and Liversidge compositions.

There is no need to be able to read music; all parts will be taught by ear and the songs will be tailored to whoever takes part. Jessa is known for her encouraging and positive leading style and is experienced at bringing diverse groups of people together to sing, so the workshop will be suitable for all abilities and levels of experience. Younger singers will be welcomed if accompanied by an adult, who would be responsible for them at all times.

Workshop singers will be able to take a break at teatime, then return in the evening to enjoy the show, with an opportunity for those who wish to perform the songs they have learned in the afternoon as part of the performance. 

More information on Jessa and her singing leadership can be found at jessaliversidge.com or JessaLiversidgeSinger on Facebook.

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Slam champ Hannah Davies launches debut poetry collection Dolls at York Literature Festival event at The Crescent on Saturday

Hannah Davies: York performance poet, playwright, theatre maker, polymath. Picture: Olivia Brabbs

YORK writer, actress, performance poet, slam champion, theatre maker, workshop leader and university lecturer Hannah Davies will launch her debut poetry collection, Dolls, at York Literature Festival on Saturday night (18/3/2023).

The event will be presented in collaboration with her high-energy York spoken-word compadres Say Owt at The Crescent community event, when Hannah’s readings will be complemented by poetry from team Say Owt, Sylvia Marie and Sally Jenkinson, coming all the way from Brighton, plus live music from Pascallion (Jack Woods) and Hull singer-songwriter Ysabelle Wombwell.

Say Owt artistic director Henry Raby says: “Hannah is Say Owt’s associate artist, running open mic nights and workshops and supporting poets across York. We’re delighted to launch Hannah’s first poetry book. Dolls is a fierce and tender collection about womanhood, motherhood, feminism and survival. Hannah is a spellbinding storyteller and her writing is warm, lyrical and bold.”

Hannah enthuses: “I’m thrilled to be launching my poetry collection as part of York Literature Festival. There are poems in here that I’ve been performing for years, and some that haven’t seen the light of day at all.”

Why is the collection entitled Dolls, Hannah? “Dolls was the first poem I ever performed in a slam: the Say Owt slam,” she says. “That poem talks about how a woman is made up of all the dolls she owned in her childhood.

“Each chapter has a different doll as its title. Baby Doll, Russian Doll, Barbie Doll. It’s a good time for me to take stock, creatively, and having all these pieces in one book feels like the end of an era in a way. I’m in a very different place to when I first dared myself to get on a stage and share my poems seven years ago. Who knows what creative writing adventures await next!”

Grand slam: Hannah Davies, slam champ, with Say Owt cohort Stu Freestone

Hannah has edited her “back catalogue” of poems from poetry evenings and slam nights into themes, rather than compiling “just a scattergun collection”.

“The poems are thematically arranged under each doll title,” she says. “There’s a real split between performance poetry and poetry on the page, and all these poems in the collection were written to be performed, with my background in performing and writing for the theatre.

“Part of the editing process has been about making sure they work on the page, seeing how they unfurl in print,  and I feel they work in both senses now, for performance and for reading in a book.

“Probably the book will be bought mostly at gigs when people have heard me perform, though I hope to shift a few copies online as well.”

Most of the poems were written between 2015 and 2022, complemented by a couple of newer pieces and two more that have not been performed but “felt right to fit in”.

“Because of my health, I’ve not been writing much poetry recently, but it was a good time to compile the book. It can be quite difficult to unify them under themes when you’re cutting your teeth with your first poems, spread over time, whereas later collections can be more tightly focused, when you can concentrate on a specific theme, such as ‘skin’,” she says in a reference to her skin condition, as charted in social media posts over the past year and more.

Oxford illustrator Katie Gabriel Allen’s cover artwork for Hannah Davies’s debut poetry collection, Dolls, featuring Hannah’s pink-haired childhood rag doll Polly Dolly. “I still have her, of course,” says Hannah

“There will always be that pressure for all artists to come up with something new, but it’s something I’ve learned in recent years, being ill, that you will have fallow periods where you have to take care of yourself or life takes over.

“I’ve never been a writer who writes every day but I do have periods of doing that. If you sit doing nothing or you say, ‘right, I’m going to write for six hours now’, it’s not going to happen. But if you sit down and write for ten minutes, maybe something will emerge.”

Why write poems, Hannah? “I like how they are short. That’s what drew me to them, having written plays [for Common Ground Theatre] and maybe being frustrated by how long it takes to write a play, whereas you can write a poem and perform it immediately.”

Being a mother (to Max) feeds into her work too. “Motherhood runs throughout the book. Being a mother, having a mother, not having a mother,” says Hannah, whose mother died in a car crash when she was 12. “It all absolutely informs my work.”

As she looks forward to tomorrow’s launch, Hannah admits: “I’m excited, if a little terrified too, but I’ve always wanted a book with my name on it since I was six.”

Say Owt and York Literature Festival present Hannah Davies: Dolls Book Launch, at The Crescent, York, on March 18. Doors open at 7pm for 7.30pm start. Tickets: £10 in advance at thecrescent.com; £15 on the door.

Hannah Davies joins Say Owt’s Henry Raby and North Yorkshire cross-country runner, coffee barista and poet Olivia Mulligan for a Poetry Evening at The Courthouse, Thirsk, presented by Rural Arts on May 26 at 7.30pm. Box office: ruralarts.org.

Hannah Davies

Hannah Davies: The back story

SAY Owt associate artist Hannah is a spoken-word slam winner at Great Northern Slam (2016) and Axis Slam (2017) and Word War 4 Champion, plus a finalist at BBC EdFringe Slam and the Hammer & Tongue Nationals.

She has performed at poetry nights across the country (Find The Right Words, Sonnet Youth, Tongue Fu, Evidently, Inua Ellams Rap Party, She Grrrowls and Women Of Words).

She is an experienced theatre-maker and facilitator (Royal Court, York Theatre Royal, Trestle Theatre Company, Guild Of Misrule, Company Of Angels, Pilot Theatre and Arcade).

She lectures in playwriting at the University of York in the School of Arts and Creative Technologies.

In York International Women’s Week 2023 , she gave a writing workshop at York Explore Library on March 12.

She runs the young women’s creative collective for Arcade, the Scarborough and Bridlington community producing company, working in Bridlington with women making their own performance projects. Last July they took part in Arcade and the Collaborative Touring Network’s project with Zimbabwean musician, actor and artist John Pfumojena at St John’s Burlington Methodist Church, Bridlington.