Tag: York Barbican

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More Things To Do in and around York and at home in 2021, whatever barriers may yet lie ahead. List No 23, courtesy of The Press

Grayson Perry: Two shows in York in 2021; one an exhibition of “Lost Pots” at York Art Gallery, the other, his existentialist gig, A Show For Normal People, at York Barbican

AFTER a year where killjoy Covid-19 re-wrote the arts and events diary over and over again, here comes 2021, when the pandemic will still have a Red Pen influence.

Armed with a pantomime fairy’s magic wand rather than Madame Arcati’s crystal ball from Blithe Spirit, when what we need is a jab in the arm pronto, Charles Hutchinson picks out potential highlights from the New Year ahead that York will start in Tier 3.

Velma Celli: Had planned to present A Brief History Of Drag at Theatre @41 Monkgate in January; now heading online at home instead

Back on screen: Velma Celli, Large & Lit In Lockdown Again, streaming on January 8

AFTER his “Fleshius Creepius” panto villain in York Stage’s Jack And The Beanstalk, Ian Stroughair was planning to pull on his drag rags for a live Velma Celli show in January, and maybe more shows to follow, at his adopted winter home of Theatre @41 Monkgate.

Instead, he writes: “Darlings, as we head back into a lockdown in York, I am back on the streaming! My first show is next Friday at 8pm. I would love you to join me for an hour of camp cabaret fun! Get those requests and shout-outs in!” Tickets for Virtual Velma start at £10 via http://bit.ly/3nVaa4N; expect an online show every Friday from Ian’s new riverside abode.

Shed Seven: Headlining all-Yorkshire bill at The Piece Hall, Halifax, in the summer

Open-air one-off event of the summer: Shed Seven, The Piece Hall, Halifax, June 26

FRESH from releasing live album Another Night, Another Town as a reminder of what everyone has had to miss in 2020, Shed Seven have confirmed their Piece Hall headliner in Halifax has been rearranged for next summer.

The Sheds have picked an all-Yorkshire support bill of Leeds bands The Wedding Present and The Pigeon Detectives and fast-rising fellow York act Skylights. For tickets, go to lunatickets.co.uk or seetickets.com.

Cocktail Party 1989, copyright of Grayson Perry/Victoria Miro, from the Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years exhibition, opening at CoCA, York Art Gallery, in May

Most anticipated York exhibition of 2021: Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years, York Art Gallery, May 28 to September 5

CHANNEL 4’s  champion of people’s art in lockdown, Grayson Perry, will present his Covid-crocked 2020 exhibition of “lost pots” at the Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA) next spring and summer instead.

The Pre-Therapy Years reassembles Perry’s earliest forays into ceramics; 70 “explosive and creative works” he made between 1982 and 1994. Look out too for the potter, painter, TV presenter and social commentator’s existentialist September 6 gig at York Barbican: Grayson Perry: A Show For Normal People, wherein he will “distract you from the very meaninglessness of life in the way only a man in a dress can”.

Chris Moreno: No festive cheer at Christmas, but now he looks forward to presenting The Great Yorkshire Easter Pantomime, Aladdin, on Knavesmire, York, in spring 2021

A pantomime in the spring? Yes, The Great Yorkshire Easter Pantomime in a tent on Knavesmire, York, March 19 to April 11

CHRIS Moreno, director of Three Bears’ Productions four pantomimes at the Grand Opera House from 2016 to 2019, will direct York’s first ever “tentomime”, Aladdin, this spring with a cast of “21 colourful characters”.

The Great Yorkshire Easter Pantomime will be presented in the luxurious, heated Tented Palace, Knavesmire, in a socially distanced configuration compliant with Covid-19 guidance.

The big top will have a capacity of 976 in tiered, cushioned seating, while the stage will span 50 metres, comprising a palace façade, projected scenery and magical special effects. Look out for the flying carpets.

Going solo: Julie Hesmondhalgh in The Greatest Play In The History Of The World at York Theatre Royal from February 16

Falling in love again with theatre: The Love Season at York Theatre Royal, February 14 to April 21

ON December 15, York Theatre Royal announced plans to reopen on St Valentine’s Day for The Love Season, with the audience capacity reduced from 750 to a socially distanced 345.

Full details will be confirmed in the New Year with tickets going on sale on January 8, and that remains the case, says chief executive Tom Bird, after hearing yesterday afternoon’s statement to the House of Commons by Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

“We’re carrying on with our plans, including presenting Coronation Street and Broadchurch actor Julie Hesmondhalgh in husband Ian Kershaw’s one-woman play, The Greatest Play In The History Of The World, from February 16 to 20,” he confirmed.

Van Morrison: A brace of bracing nights at York Barbican in May

Six of the best at York Barbican in 2021

YORK Barbican has remained closed since the March lockdown, foregoing even the UK Snooker Championships in November and December.

A reopening date is yet to be announced but mark these shows in your diary, if only in pencil: Rob Brydon, A Night Of Songs & Laughter, April 14; Jimmy Carr, Terribly Funny, May 2; country duo The Shires, May 23; Van Morrison, May 25 and 26; Paul Weller, June 29, and Rufus Wainwright, Unfollow The Rules Tour, October 13.

Ceramicist Beccy Ridsdel: Looking forward to the 20th anniversary of York Open Studios

Anniversary celebration of the year: York Open Studios, April 17 and 18; 24 and 25, 10am to 5pm

2020 turned into a virtual Open Studios with displays online and in windows, but already 140 artists and makers are confirmed for the 20th anniversary event in the spring when they will show and sell their work within their homes and workspaces.

Many of 2020’s selected artists have deferred their space to 2021, but new additions will be announced soon, the website teases. “We’re channelling the optimism and enthusiasm from all our artists to ensure this year’s 20th show is one of the best,” says event co-founder and ceramicist Beccy Ridsdel.

Dr Delma Tomlin: Administrative director of the 2021 York Early Music Festival, running from July 9 to 17

And what about?

Festivals galore, as always, in the self-anointed “City of Festivals”. Coming up are the Jorvik Viking Festival; York Fashion Week; York Literature Festival; York Early Music Festival; York Festival of Ideas, the Aesthetica Short Film Festival and more besides. 

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Los Angeles singer Beth Hart will reveal dark secrets at York Barbican next October

GRAMMY nominee Beth Hart and her American band will play York Barbican on October 31 next year.

The Los Angeles singer-songwriter, 48, likes to throw down her cards and share her darkest secrets as she invites audiences to join her for the ride. Witness the DVD or Blu-ray of her sold-out Royal Albert Hall concert in London.

Hart last released an album, War In My Mind, in 2019. “More than any record I’ve ever made, I’m more open to being myself on these songs,” she said at the time. “I’ve come a long way with healing, and I’m comfortable with my darknesses, weirdnesses and things that I’m ashamed of, as well as all the things that make me feel good.”

From the extremes of her life come the heart, soul and blues of Hart’s songs. “A lot of subjects are covered on War In My Mind,” she reflected.

A year earlier, Hart teamed up with New York blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter Joe Bonamassa for the album Black Coffee.

Tickets are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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Kate Rusby invites you to stay home for online Christmas concert Happy Holly Day

Kate Rusby At Christmas…now Kate Rusby At Christmas At Home for Saturday’s streamed concert, Happy Holly Day. Picture: David LIndsay

KATE Rusby At Christmas, her annual folk-spun South Yorkshire carol-singing service with fairy lights, Ruby the Reindeer, guest Brass Boys and a fancy-dress finale, will not be celebrated at York Barbican on December 20, ruled out by the Covid Grinch.

This rotten year, however, the Barnsley voice of Christmas past, present and yet to come is still determined to bring the joy of her usual Christmas tour to the comfort of tree-lit homes with the special delivery of a full-length concert, streamed worldwide on Saturday (12/12/2020) at 7.30pm GMT.

“Everyone will have a front row seat for Kate Rusby’s Happy Holly Day,” promises Kate, who has been counting down to her festive stream with a Who’s Behind The Window Today? teaser on a daily virtual Advent Calendar video with musician-husband Damien O’Kane since December 1. In a roasted chesnutshell, tickets are available now at katerusby.com.  

In August, Kate achieved her highest-charting album to date with Hand Me Down, her Lockdown 1-recorded recorded collection of cover versions, from Manic Monday and Friday I’m In Love to Shake It Off and Three Little Birds, all newly embossed with the Rusby folk alchemy.

Debuting in the Official Album Charts at number 12 – number three in the CD album chart and number four in the Independent release chart – Hand Me Down will have a second life on vinyl from January 15 2021. Pre-orders can be made at:  https://purerecords.net/collections/kate-rusby-vinyls

The suitably festive poster for Kate Rusby’s Happy Holly Day

Come Saturday night, this incurable Christmas reveller, Kate the Holly Head, will cherry pick from her five Yuletide albums, Sweet Bells, While Mortals Sleep, The Frost Is All Over, Angels And Men and last year’s Holly Head, with their double act of Victorian tut-tutted South Yorkshire carols and Rusby winter originals. 

For more than 200 years, from late-November to New Year’s Day, South Yorkshire and North Debyshire communities would congregate on Sunday lunchtimes, in their local public house, to belt out their own versions of familiar carols, an act of appropriation frowned upon by the church in Victorian times for being “too happy”.

Such happiness, nevertheless, will be encouraged to the brim this weekend on Kate’s night of virtual wassailing. For a video trailer of Kate Rusby’s Happy Holly Day, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myM2ieabVlU

Looking ahead, Kate’s cancelled 2020 York carol concert must now do Covid-enforced cold turkey for a year, re-scheduled for Sunday, December 19 2021. Tickets already bought will transfer to the new date.

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No Irish legends at York Barbican for months and months, then along come two…

Van Morrison: York Barbican

IRISH luminaries Van Morrison and Chris De Burgh are heading to York Barbican in 2021.

Northern Irishman Morrison, 75, will play two nights, May 25 and 26, and Southern Irishman De Burgh, 72, is booked in for October 15.

Tickets for both concerts will go on sale at 9am on Friday (11/12/2020) at yorkbarbican.co.uk, as well as at ticketline.co.uk and on 0844 888 9991 for De Burgh.

Born in Pottinger, Belfast, in 1945, Van Morrison – or Sir George Ivan Morrison OBE, as a formal envelope would now read – was inspired early in life by his shipyard worker father’s collection of blues, country and gospel records.

Feeding off Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers and Muddy Waters in particular, Morrison became a travelling musician at 13, performing in several bands before forming Them in 1964.

Making their name at Belfast’s Maritime Club, Them soon established Morrison as a major force in the British R&B scene, initially with Here Comes The Night and Gloria, still his staple concert-closing number.

Brown Eyed Girl and the November 1968 album Astral Weeks announced a solo song-writing spirit still going strong, as testified latterly by a burst of five albums in three years. In 2017, he released Roll With The Punches and Versatile; in 2018, You’re Driving Me Crazy, with Joey DeFrancesco, and The Prophet Speaks; last year, Three Chords & The Truth, his 41st studio set, no less.

Over the years, Morrison has accumulated a knighthood; a BRIT; an OBE; an Ivor Novello award; six Grammys; honorary doctorates from Queen’s University, Belfast, and the University of Ulster; entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the French Ordres Des Artes Et Des Lettres…and a number 20 hit duet with Cliff Richard in 1989, Whenever God Shines His Light.

This year, Morrison has said – and sung – his two penneth on Coronavirus, “crooked facts” and “pseudo-science”. In August, he called for “fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up”.

Ironically, a quick-thinking company promptly launched a set of face masks of iconic Morrison album covers.

Chris De Burgh: New album, new musical, new tour, all on a Robin Hood theme, in 2021

From September 25, Morrison launched a series of three protest songs, one every two weeks, railing against safety measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19: Born To Be Free, As I Walked Out and No More Lockdown.

“No more lockdown / No more government overreach / No more fascist bullies / Disturbing our peace …,” he urged on the latter.

“No more taking of our freedom / And our God-given rights / Pretending it’s for our safety / When it’s really to enslave …”

Not without irony, that song condemned “celebrities telling us what we’re supposed to feel”. Issuing an explanatory statement amid condemnation from voices in Irish authority, he said: “I’m not telling people what to do or think. The government is doing a great job of that already. It’s about freedom of choice. I believe people should have the right to think for themselves.”

In September, he announced a series of socially distanced concerts, again with a covering note: “This is not a sign of compliance or acceptance of the current state of affairs,” it read. “This is to get my band up and running and out of the doldrums.”

Plenty of “re-scheduled” shows are in the diary, in London this Friday and Saturday, Belfast over the New Year celebrations, followed by four nights at the London Palladium in mid-April.

Not long afterwards comes the brace of York Barbican gig : an umpteenth return to a venue where he has performed in his predictably unpredictable, sometimes gruff, sometimes prickly, yet oft-times sublimely soulful manner on myriad mystical nights.  

Chris De Burgh – born Christopher John Davison in Venado Tuerto, Argentina and raised in County Wexford, southern Ireland – last visited York Barbican on his Classics Albums Tour in October 2019.

That night, the focus fell on 1986’s Into The Light and 2010’s Moonfleet & Other Stories. Next autumn, Chris De Burgh & Band will be undertaking the eight-date UK tour, The Legend Of Robin Hood & Other Hits, in support of the upcoming album, The Legend Of Robin Hood, whose release date is yet to be affirmed.

De Burgh has co-written a musical too, Robin Hood, to be premiered in Fulda, Germany, in 2021. Expect both new material and greatest hits, Lady In Red et al from a 45-year recording career stretching back to Spanish Train And Other Stories, when he plays the only Yorkshire concert of next October’s itinerary.

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The road may be longer than planned, but The Hollies’ bus will stop at York Barbican

All roads lead The Hollies to York Barbican…eventually

THE road will be even longer for The Hollies, who should have been playing York Barbican on April 26 in this Covid-crocked year but must now wait until September 23 2021.

The Manchester veterans will be playing 18 dates on their rearranged The Road Is Long tour from September 19 to October 19, including a second Yorkshire show at Sheffield City Hall.

Two original members from the 1960s’ British Invasion days, drummer Bobby Elliott and singer, songwriter and lead guitarist Tony Hicks, will be joined by lead singer Peter Howarth, bass player Ray Stiles, keyboardist Ian Parker and rhythm guitarist Steve Lauri.

Formed in 1962, The Hollies topped the charts on both sides of the Big Pond, notching up such hits as He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, I’m Alive, Stop, Stop, Stop, Here I Go Again, Bus Stop,On A Carousel, Just One Look, Carrie-Anne, Jennifer Eccles, I Can’t Let Go, Sorry Suzanne, Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress and The Air That I Breathe. 

In 1995, The Hollies were bestowed the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution To British Music, followed in 2010 by their induction into the American Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for their “impact on the evolution, development and perpetuation of rock & roll”.

Tickets for The Hollies’ York gig will go on sale on Friday (11/12/2020) at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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Scouting For Girls take cover for new album and confirm York Barbican gig for 2021

Scouting for gigs: Scouting For Girls have lined up their longest-ever tour for 2021, taking in York Barbican next autumn

SCOUTING For Girls will play York Barbican on October 10 on their 42-date 2021 tour, showcasing next spring’s Easy Cover album alongside all the hits.

Tickets will go on sale at 9am on December 4 at yorkbarbican.co.uk for the London indie-pop trio’s first appearance in York since the York Racecourse Music Showcase Weekend in July 2015.

Roy Stride, piano and lead guitar, Greg Churchouse, bass guitar, and Dr Peter Ellard, percussion, first performed at the Knavesmire course in July 2011 and had been booked by promoters Cuffe and Taylor for the inaugural York Festival, at York Sports Club, Clifton Park, on June 20 this summer until Covid changed everything.

Scouting For Girls initially responded to this strangest of years by “surrounding themselves with sources of comfort and escapism, things from what felt like a simpler time”.

Going back to the 1980s’ music of their childhood days, the trio regrouped during what should have been a summer of festival appearances, and the result is a joyous album of cover versions and new compositions, buoyed by an optimism that “2021 can be everything that 2020 was not”.

For Easy Cover, Scouting For Girls revisited Eighties’ pop masterpieces and indie alt. band favourites alike, taking in Cyndi Lauper, Whitney Houston, Phil Collins (presumably Easy Lover?), Tears For Fears, The Waterboys and more besides.

Scouting For Girls’ artwork for their 2021 tour

Not only covers motivated the band to write original material inspired by the decade for next year’s March 26 album. So did their abiding love of those halcyon days, leading Stride to write I Wish It Was 1989 and festive new single Xmas In The 80s.

Looking forward to the Londoners’ longest tour of their 15-year career, Stride says: “Touring is our very favourite aspect of being in this band and to go out longer and harder than ever is a dream come true.

“We’re going to put 2020 behind us and put two years of pent-up energy into every night of this tour. We can’t wait to give people the most fun night out of 2021”

Since forming in 2005, Scouting For Girls have chalked up two million album sales and a similar figure for their singles, such as Top Ten hits She’s So Lovely, Elvis Ain’t Dead and Heartbeat and 2009 chart topper This Ain’t A Love Song.

BRIT Award and Ivor Novello nominations have come their way, as have sold-out concerts at Wembley Arena, the London Palladium and the Royal Albert Hall.

Oh, and apparently Scouting For Girls are the most played band on Spotify in York.

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Bobby Dazzler of a new show brings Sarah Millican to York Barbican next November

“You’ll learn about what happens when your mouth seals shut,” says Sarah Millican, who will have to do exactly the opposite in her Bobby Dazzler show in 2021 and 2022

NORTH Eastern comedian Sarah Millican will pop down to York Barbican for the first time since November 2018 for two nights of her 2021/2022 Bobby Dazzler tour next autumn.

Millican, 45, will play York on November 12 and 13 on her sixth international tour where “you’ll learn about what happens when your mouth seals shut, how to throw poo over a wall, trying to lose weight but only losing the tip of your finger, a surprisingly funny smear test, and how truly awful a floatation tank can be”. 

Sarah says she has spent the past year writing jokes and growing her backside. “She can’t wait to get back on the road and make you laugh in her first return to York Barbican since her previous sell-out tour, Control Enthusiast,” her tour patter proclaims.

Last year, the South Shields comic began hosting the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show Elephant In The Room, featuring panellists sharing their life experiences and testing who is closest and farthest from the national average.

Tickets for Sarah Millican: Bobby Dazzler go on sale tomorrow (27/11/2020) at 10am online only at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Sarah Millican’s tour poster for Bobby Dazzler, booked into York Barbican for a brace of November 2021 gigs
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Forget 2020’s ‘new normal’. Here’s man-in-a-dress normal person Grayson Perry’s 2021 show for Normal People in York

Grayson Perry, dressed as his transvestite alter ego, Claire, announces A Show For Normal People, his 2021 tour

AFTER an anything but normal year, otherwise known as the year of the new normal – alas destined to stretch into 2021 – here comes outré artist, potter and social commentator Grayson Perry’s York-bound live show.

In his own words: Despite being an award-winning artist, Bafta-winning TV presenter, Reith lecturer and best-selling author, Grayson Perry is a normal person – and just like other normal people, he is “marginally aware that we’re all going to die”.

Cue Grayson Perry: A Show For Normal People, booked into York Barbican for September 6 on night number five of next year’s 23-date tour. Sheffield City Hall awaits on September 10; Harrogate Convention Centre on November 27.

What will be on the 2003 Turner Prize winner’s mind? “Let Grayson take you through an enlightening and eye-watering evening in which this kind of existentialism descends from worthiness to silliness. You’ll leave safe and warm in the knowledge that nothing really matters anyway,” his show patter promises.

“Join Grayson as he asks, and possibly answers, these big questions in an evening sure to distract you from the very meaninglessness of life in the way only a man in a dress can.”

Grayson Perry’s tour poster for next autumn’s travels

Born in Chelmsford, Essex, in 1960, Perry has had an artistic career spanning 40 years, revealing a diverse expertise in “making lemonade out of the mundanity of life”.

Such as? In 2015, he designed A House For Essex, a permanent building constructed in the North Essex countryside. In the early weeks of Lockdown 1 2020, his Channel 4 show, Grayson’s Art Club, brought the nation together through art as he exhorted and celebrated the making of new works, vowing to “battle the boredom of isolation” with a weekly theme from his London studio.

This autumn, Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip, his three-part documentary travelogue on Channel 4, explored the meaning of the American Dream in today’s disunited USA.

Tickets for Grayson Perry: A Show For Normal People go on sale tomorrow morning (27/11/2020) at 10am online only at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

This will not be the only Grayson Perry show in York in 2021. His Covid-crocked 2020 exhibition of “lost pots” at York Art Gallery will now run from May 28 to September 5 next year.

“It’s as near as I will ever get to meeting myself as a young man, an angrier, priapic me with huge energy but a much smaller wardrobe,” says Grayson Perry of his Pre-Therapy Years exhibition, re-scheduled for 2021 in York

This major new display of Perry’s earliest works, Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years, will be showcased in the Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA).

Developed by the Holburne Museum in Bath, the touring exhibition is the first to celebrate Perry’s earliest forays into the art world, reintroducing the “explosive and creative works” he made between 1982 and 1994.

The 70 works have been crowd-sourced through a national public appeal, resulting in these “lost pots” being assembled for display together for the first time since they were made.

“This show has been such a joy to put together,” said Perry, when the show was first announced. “I’m really looking forward to seeing these early works again, many of which I have not seen since the Eighties.

“It’s as near as I will ever get to meeting myself as a young man, an angrier, priapic me with huge energy but a much smaller wardrobe.”

Cocktail Party, 1989, one of Grayson Perry’ s “lost pots” from The Pre-Therapy Years show

The Pre-Therapy Years show should have been the centre of attention at CoCA from June 12 to September 20 this year, but the Coronavirus pandemic intervened.

Now, Perry devotees can look to the horizon, awaiting the arrival of his pots in York next May.The exhibition will shine a light on Perry’s experimentation and exploration of the potential of pottery to address radical issues and human stories.

The 70 works will provide an opportunity to enjoy his clever, playful and politically engaged perspective on the world as these often challenging and explicit pieces reveal his early steps towards becoming a compelling commentator on contemporary society.

From his first plate, Kinky Sex (1983), to his early vases made in the mid-80s, Perry riffed on British vernacular traditions to create a language of his own. The themes of his later work – fetishism, gender, class, his home county of Essex and the vagaries of the art world – appear in these early works, marked by their urgent energy.

CoCA first exhibited a Grayson Perry ceramic, Melanie, in July 2015 as its centrepiece talking point after York Art Gallery’s £8 million transformation. Melanie later featured in York Art Gallery’s re-opening exhibition, Your Art Gallery – Paintings Chosen By You, this summer into autumn.

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Ground control to Major Tim, take your debut tour to York Barbican next November

Peake performance: Astronaut Tim Peake will re-live his journey into space at York Barbican next November

BRITISH astronaut Tim Peake’s debut tour show, My Journey To Space, will touch down at York Barbican on November 2 2021. Ticket sales will be launched on Friday at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

In December 2015, the European Space Agency spaceman became the first Brit to visit the International Space Station to conduct a spacewalk – and run a marathon! – while orbiting Planet Earth almost 3,000 times.

Major Peake, 48, will be “your personal guide through life in space, with unprecedented access, breath-taking photographs, and never-before-seen incredible footage”, as the former barman re-lives his epic and thrilling journey to the International Space Station.

He will give an insight into an astronaut’s pathway to space and back: from training to launch, spacewalk to re-entry as he reveals the secrets, the science and the everyday wonders of how and why humans journey into space.

Sharing his passion for aviation, exploration and adventure, he will recall the sights, the smells, the fear, the exhilaration, of his six-month mission, together with the deep and abiding wonderment of the view from space of the place we call home. “It’s impossible to look down on Earth from space and not be mesmerised by the fragile beauty of our planet,” he says.

Major Peake had been booked to bring his show Limitless to York Theatre Royal on October 11 until the Coronavirus pandemic intervened. That night he would have reflected on the surprising journey that made him the first Briton in space for nearly 20 years and the first ever to complete a spacewalk, when he repaired the space station’s power supply with NASA astronaut Tim Kopra.

Make space in your diary for Major Tim Peake’s York Barbican show on his debut tour

Those tales would have covered his time training in the British Army and as an Apache helicopter pilot and flight instructor deployed to Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Afghanistan.  

Major Peake was to have discussed how it felt to be selected for the European Space Agency from more than 8,000 candidates and the six years of training that followed; learning Russian on the icy plains of Siberia, and coping with darkness and claustrophobia in the caves of Sardinia and under the oceans of the United States. 

The Limitless: In Conversation with Astronaut Tim Peake event took its title from his autobiography, Limitless, whose publication by Century still went ahead on October 15.

Every ticket for this Penguin Live show – one of only five on the autumn tour – was to have included a signed copy of his £20 memoir.

Major Peake attended the UK Schools Space Conference at the University of York’s department of physics in November 2016 and gave a public lecture there on the highs and lows of life aboard the International Space Station in September 2017.

The Soyuz TMA-19M descent module, the capsule that transported Major Peake safely back to Earth, went on display at the National Railway Museum, York, in January 2018, complemented by a space-age virtual reality experience narrated by the astronaut himself.

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Kate Rusby goes online for Happy Holly Day concert in place of Christmas tour

Kate Rusby at Christmas: Not wassailing at York Barbican but online instead

THE 2020 Kate Rusby At Christmas tour will not be happening, ruling out her South Yorkshire pub carol concert at York Barbican on December 20.

However, in response to the Covid restrictions, the Barnsley folk nightingale has decided to go online instead, presenting Kate Rusby’s Happy Holly Day on December 12 at 7.30pm (GMT).

At this special concert, streamed worldwide, expect all the usual Rusby Christmas ingredients: familiar Carols but set to unfamiliar tunes; wintry Rusby songs; sparkly dress, twinkling lights; her regular folk band and brass quintet; Ruby Reindeer and a fancy-dress finale.

Kate tweeted: “Well the inevitable…had to postpone Dec tour to 2021 due to Coronavirus. But don’t worry. We’re going to to stream a full-length gig 12th December complete with sparkle, Sweet Bells, brass lads, daftness, dressing up, Ruby Reindeer…even an actual interval.”

Tickets go on sale today (6/11/2020) via https://katerusby.com/happy-holly-day/, available in two types:

A Single Watch ticket, valid for the duration of the 7.30pm broadcast, priced at £12.50;

A Yuletide Pass, allowing repeat viewings until midnight on January 6, costing £20.

You can watch the concert in your web browser on your mobile device, tablet, computer, directly on a Smart TV, or you can cast it to your Smart TV via a compatible device.

Full details will be sent with your ticket purchase confirmation.

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