York Barbican Archives - Page 39 of 40

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020

Here come the boys as Weller, Manford, Dommett, Sloss and Aljaz’s dance crew head for York Barbican

Looking ecstatic to be back at York Barbican: Paul Weller , booked in for November 3

YORK Barbican has a fistful of new shows going on sale on Friday: Modfather Paul Weller, comedians Jason Manford, Joel Dommett and Daniel Sloss and the dance extravaganza Here Come The Boys.

Weller, 61, has sold out his May tour and will go back out on the road for 19 British and Irish dates in October and November, playing York on November 3.

Jason Manford: seeking approval at York Barbican next February

Weller will play an acoustic set for the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on March 25 as a special guest of The Stereophonics and his new album, On Sunset, will be released on June 12 on Polydor, his new label.

He performed previously at York Barbican in March 2015 and August 2018 and his last North Yorkshire gig was at Dalby Forest, near Pickering, last June.

His autumn travels also will take in further Yorkshire dates at Hull Bonus Arena on November 2 and Bradford St George’s Hall on November 17.

Jason Manford, who reached the final of ITV’s The Masked Singer this winter, will return to York Barbican in almost a year’s time, on February 17 2021, with his new stand-up show, Like Me.

Expect “observational comedy mixed with comic gold” from the Salford comedian, presenter and actor who chalked up three Barbican performances of his Muddle Class show in October 2018 and March 2019.

Smoke alarm: Daniel Sloss will be full of Hubris on October 3

Rockhampton comedian, actor and presenter Joel Dommett, host of The Masked Singer, will play York on December 11, delivering a new show after this 2016 I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here runner-up brought his Live 2018 tour to the Barbican in February that year.

Scottish comic Daniel Sloss will follow up his X show – taken to 40 countries, including Russia – with his new solo outing, Hubris, booked in for his Barbican bow on October 3.

*Here come Michael, Aljaz, Pasha and Sam on June 24*

Strictly Come Dancing’s Aljaž Škorjanec sold out his last appearance at York Barbican and will return on June 24, joined in the Here Come The Boys line-up by former Strictly favourite Pasha Kovalev, West End ballet star Sam Salter and NBC World Of Dance champion and Broadway star Michael Dameski, from Australia.

Ballroom, Latin, commercial, contemporary, ballet, acro and tap all will feature in a show where the Boys will perform alongside dancers, gymnasts, tap dancers and more.

Tickets can be booked from 10am on Friday (February 28) at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from Barbican box office.

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020

REVIEW: Anything’s possible in a one-liner when Milton Jones spies a gag

Hair-raising: Milton Jones on a spying mission at York Barbican

REVIEW: Milton Jones: Milton Impossible, York Barbican, February 22

THE whole point of camouflage is not to be spotted, but in his new guise as an ex-MI5 spy, Milton Jones’s gaudy military fatigues looked like they hadn’t slept for days.

As for his fuchsia, frilly dress shirt, it would have guaranteed he had absolutely no fuchsia in spying, if blending into the background were a requirement. Definitely a case of Milton Impossible.

Mind you, Jones’s attire was not the only sartorial talking point of Saturday’s triple bill. Support act Tom Houghton was gently settling into revelations of being the Honourable Tom – now that his ex-Army chief father, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, was a Lord and the Constable of the Tower of London – when he was distracted by a Technicolor nightmare of a shirt making an even louder exit down the stairs.

“You’ve missed nothing,” said Houghton, lobbing a comedy bomb after the escapee. “Except fashion”. Boom, off went the bomb, as if he were sentencing him to the Tower for a fashion crime.

Cheeky, charming, posh-boy fledgling comic Houghton went on to define the rules of rugby – a game of backs and forwards and going backwards and forwards – with a wit that outwitted the well-worn tea towel trying to explain the laws of cricket.

Tom, a hawk: Tom Houghton was quick to spot fashion crimes in the York Barbican audience

“I always love to help underprivileged children,” said Jones drily later, but Houghton, one quarter of the improv comedy troupe The Noise Next Door, needs no leg-up through entitlement. Check out his upcoming tour at The Basement, City Screen, York, on June 12 or The Carriageworks, Leeds, the next night.

Before Hon Tom, Milton’s waspish “grandfather” had opened the show, entering with a trampoline as his mobility aide, and combining a flat cap with a dressing gown for a dressing down on the real meaning of assorted familiar road signs.

If you could imagine a hopelessly ill-prepared learner driver trying to wing his written test with wild guesswork, Milton’s grandad goes even further. Rather than being merely daft or surrealist, however, the new meanings actually make weird sense, and the world would be a happier place if they were true.

Although, in this city of cycling, cyclists might not have enjoyed his dig at them not recognising the meaning of a red light.

Post-interval, Jones returned, his shock of hair madder than ever at 55, to go with the aforementioned psychedelic dress code. Seventy-five minutes of the matador of piercing one-liners ensued, ostensibly on his spying past, but ranging far and wide, his timing deadly, his manner deadpan. (Ideal qualities for a spy, you might say).

From his last tour, the Kew comedian revived his droll Brexit commentary through the novel format of national flags engaging in sparring conversations, each seeking the last word, and no Jones show would be complete without a run of “my other grandfather” gags.

Before the tour, Jones joked: “At a difficult time for our country, I believe there’s a chance this show could unite the nation. Admittedly quite a small chance.” True, but Milton is comedy paradise found, and you wish more could see the world through his eyes. It is a lovely place to be, warmly knowing but not devoid of a child’s sense of wonder, playful, not cynical, absurd yet spot on.

If you missed Milton Impossible in York, your next mission, and you really should accept it, is to make it to Hull City Hall on March 18 or Leeds Town Hall the next night, 19.30 on the dot. Box office: hulltheatres.co.uk; leedstownhall.co.uk.

Charles Hutchinson

February 18, 2020

George Thorogood’s Good To Be Bad tour is looking good for York Barbican in July

George Thorogood: Good To Be Bad tour date at York Barbican

GEORGE Thorogood & The Destroyers will play York Barbican on July 22 on their Good To Be Bad: 45 Years Of Rock tour, their first in more than seven years.

“Ever since our first shows there in 1978, the UK has been one of our favourite places to play,” says boogie-blues guitarist Thorogood, from Wilmington, Delaware, who will turn 70 on February 24.

“We’re talking great venues, great energy and truly great audiences, and we’re looking forward to coming back for it all. Expect our best, because that’s what you’re gonna get.”

Since 1975, Thorogood & The Destroyers have sold more than 15 million albums and played more than 8,000 ferocious live shows, built around Who Do You Love, I Drink Alone, One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer, Move It On Over and his definitive badass anthem, Bad To The Bone.

“To hear George Thorogood flail his slide up and down his guitar,” wrote Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone magazine, “you might have thought he was Ben Franklin – that he’d discovered not the blues, but electricity.”

In the Destroyers’ line-up alongside Thorogood will be Jeff Simon on percussion, Bill Blough on bass, Jim Suhler on guitar and Buddy Leach on saxophone.”

Tickets can be booked from Friday (February 21) at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.

February 16, 2020

REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on York Guildhall Orchestra’s 40th Anniversary

Cellist Jamie Walton: “skill of a practised magician”. Picture: Wolf Marloh

REVIEW: York Guildhall Orchestra, 40^th Anniversary Concert, York Barbican, February 15 *****

HAD I not been there myself, I would have hardly believed that the Guildhall Orchestra (as it was then known and is still popularly described) first saw the light of day 40 years ago.

It has been a marvellous four decades. And still there is a sense of excited anticipation before its every performance. We know we are in for something special.

Saturday’s celebration, conducted by Simon Wright, was no exception. A Ravel suite, an Elgar concerto and a Brahms symphony were leavened by a birthday cake of Celebratory Fantasy Variations baked by the founder himself, John Hastie.

His tasty pastiche wove myriad musical allusions – including Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Ravel, Vaughan Williams, Britten, even a samba – into variations on Happy Birthda’. As the piece finished, the audience even got to join in with the song’s last line (wisely, after a rehearsal). Good fun.

Ravel’s Mother Goose featured on the opening night in 1980. Here it was again in all its gentle finery, giving us a chance to admire again the nicely controlled talents of the woodwinds: sinuous oboe for Tom Thumb’s walk, for example, and clarinet and contrabassoon representing Beauty and the Beast, not forgetting nifty xylophone (Janet Fulton) and rippling harp (Georgina Wells).

We are fortunate indeed to have a cellist of international standing living right on the edge of the North York Moors. Jamie Walton must have played Elgar’s concerto countless times, but surely never as spellbindingly as this.

He achieved his intensity, paradoxically, through subtle understatement, drawing in his audience with the skill of a practised magician. The opening was steeped in a very English melancholy. The jagged figure at the start of the Allegro spoke volumes about the scherzo to come and Walton’s clarity at the top of his range was startling.

The slow movement was beautifully, mouth-wateringly, spacious. Every rest was made to count, delicately caressed. This kind of playing is risky: it can easily backfire. Not here. Walton was exactly on Elgar’s wavelength, finding solace in an elegant cantilena.

Fireworks, such as they were, came in the finale, but nostalgia was never far from the surface, not least when the work’s opening motto was rekindled just before the close. All the while, the orchestra kept in very crisp attendance, typified by the brass interjections in the finale. I have heard this work dozens of times, but was never quite persuaded of its logic. Until now. The conjunction of two such intelligent musicians as Simon Wright and Jamie Walton delivered an intricate precision that is extremely rare. It will live in the memory.

Inevitably, perhaps, Brahms’s Second Symphony was not going to reach quite this level. But it brought catharsis of a kind, while showcasing the orchestra’s three choirs: strings, winds and brass. Violin ensemble in the first movement had a wonderful sweep, conjuring pastoral moods; they were enhanced by Jonny Hunter’s solo horn. The cumulative effect of this huge movement was majestic. Not to be outdone the cellos, who are in equally fine fettle, took centre stage in an introspective Adagio.

The paint-box of the orchestra, the woodwinds, enjoyed their moment in the spotlight in the Allegretto, sparkling into a sunlit momentum and recapturing it again at the finish after several distractions. Showing admirable stamina, the whole orchestra combined for a finale of exuberant brilliance, reaching a peak when the trombones returned in the coda.

This orchestra is one of the treasures that makes living in York such a delight. Roll on its half century!

Review by Martin Dreyer

February 13, 2020March 22, 2021

Ronan Keating’s Twenty Twenty vision is to release album and play York Barbican

The album artwork for Ronan Keating’s new album, released this spring

TWENTY years since releasing his chart-topping debut solo album, Boyzone’s Ronan Keating will mark the anniversary with a new record and tour, taking in York Barbican on June 19.

That night, the Irish boy band graduate will be promoting an album perfectly entitled for this year, Twenty Twenty, out on May 1 on the Decca Records label.

Tickets go on sale on February 21 at 10am at yorkbarbican.co.uk, on 0203 356 5441 or in person from the Barbican box office.

Dubliner Keating, who will turn 43 on March 3, describes Twenty Twenty as “a greatest hits of brand new music”. To help him celebrate the 20^th anniversary of his self-titled debut, he made two inspired choices: to dive into his back catalogue torevisit three of his biggest hits and, for some new numbers, call in some friends.

*Ronan Keating’s 20th anniversary solo album will be “a greatest hits of brand new music”*

First single One Of A Kind, despite its title, is a duet, wherein the Irishman is joined by Emeli Sandé. “I guess I’ve been known for those first dance songs at weddings and this has me written all over it,” says Keating. “It’s all about the night before the wedding, the day of the wedding and spending the rest of your life together.”

He decided the song demanded a duet partner, and for Ronan there was only one choice: the Sunderland-born, Scottish-raised Sandé.“I was completely honoured when Emeli said she’d love to do it,” he says. “I was just blown away by her vocal. She’s obviously got a brilliant voice, and she’s a lovely, warm person, so the personality she’s brought to the song is just incredible.”

Two of a kind: the single cover for One Of A Kind replicates Twenty Twenty except for the addition of Emeli Sande

For Twenty Twenty, Keating had production assistance from his longstanding wingman, Steve Lipson, who has worked with such big hitters as Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Annie Lennox, Simple Minds, and Whitney Houston. Names of further collaborators and track titles will be revealed in due course, but Keating teases by revealing those collaborators comprise some of his closest musical and chart-topping friends.

Over the past 20 years, Keating has chalked up 30 consecutive Top Ten solo singles, ten studio albums, multiple tours and 20 million records sales on top of 25 million sold with Boyzone, as well as judging on The X Factor and The Voice in Australia; acting in television drama and film; playing Guy in the romantic Irish hit, Once The Musical, in the West End and co-hosting Magic FM’s breakfast show.

Over the past 12 months, he has worked tirelessly on an album that celebrates a longevity he does not take for granted. “There’s not a lot of artists that have been lucky enough to do 20 years and still be here,” he says, appreciative too of sustaining solo and band careers. “I’m very honoured to have had that, so I wanted to mark it with an album like this.”

*Ronan Keating last played a York concert in July 2018 with Boyzone at the York Racecourse Music Showcase Weekend*

In York, Keating last performed with Boyzone at a York Racecourse Music Showcase post-racing show on July 28 2018 on their 25^th anniversary tour. His last solo appearance in the city was at York Barbican on September 21 2016. Last summer, the dangers posed by a massive thunderstorm led to his open-air solo concert at Castle Howard, near York, on August 4 being cut short.

February 5, 2020

Phoenix rising anew in Joker as you have never seen it before…with an orchestra at York Barbican

Out of step with all around him: Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck in Joker

JOKER – Live In Concert will bring Todd Phillips’s award-laden film to York Barbican with live orchestral accompaniment of Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score on May 17 at 7.30pm.

Preceded by the world premiere at the Eventim Apollo, London, on April 30, the international tour has further Yorkshire shows at Hull Bonus Arena on May 16 and Sheffield City Hall on June 24.

Central to the emotional journey Joaquin Phoenix’s character Arthur Fleck takes through Phillips’s film is Guðnadóttir’s beautifully haunting, BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning and Academy Award- nominated score.

The fusion of looming industrial soundscapes with raw, emotive string-led melodies – led by a lone cello – creates a melancholic shroud marked with moments of hope, unfolding gradually to become a fever pitch of disquieting tension.

Phillips’s music will be brought to life by a full orchestra to build a “vivid, visceral and entirely new Joker viewing experience”.

The London premiere will be conducted by Jeff Atmajian, the conductor and orchestrator of the original soundtrack; Senbla’s Dave Mahoney will take over for the UK tour dates, including York Barbican.

The poster artwork for Joker – Live In Concert

Hildur Guðnadóttir, the first-ever solo female winner of the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, also won a Grammy for her score for HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl. “I’m thrilled to get to see and hear Joker in the cinema with a live orchestra,” she says.

“When we recorded the music, the orchestra brought such depth and detailed attention to the performances that we were all literally holding our breaths during most of the recording sessions. It was a beautiful trip. I’m so happy to get to go there again and for an audience to experience that too.”

Director Todd Phillips says: “I speak for the entire Joker team when I say how thrilled we are to be working with Senbla and Ollie Rosenblatt on Joker – Live In Concert. I think it’s a wonderful way for audiences to experience Hildur Guðnadóttir‘s haunting and immersive score, while bearing witness to Joaquin Phoenix’s descent into madness as Arthur.”

Joker already has won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critics’ Choice awards for Best Actor and Best Original Score and is nominated for 11 Academy Awards, more than any other film. Those nominations for the Oscars awards ceremony include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Music/Score.

Tickets for Joker – Live In Concert at York Barbican go on sale at Friday at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office; Hull, 0844 858 5025 or bonusarenahull.com; Sheffield, 0114 278 9789 or sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.

February 4, 2020February 4, 2020

Leo Sayer and Squeeze’s Chris Difford to join Jools Holland for York Barbican gig

Jools Holland: on tour for 32 autumn and winter dates

BOOGIE WOOGIE pianist Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra will be joined on tour for the first time by veteran singer Leo Sayer, as well as original Squeeze compadre Chris Difford.

Both Sayer and Difford will perform at York Barbican on November 11, Harrogate International Centre on November 27 and Leeds First Direct Arena on the 32-date itinerary’s closing night, December 20. Sayer, but not Difford, will be a guest at Holland’s Sheffield City Hall show on December 3.

Tickets for Holland’s 24^th autumn and winter tour will go on sale at 10am on Friday (February 7) via Ticketmaster, See Tickets, Ticketline and Stargreen, as well as the venues.

Leo Sayer: touring with Jools Holland’s orchestra for the first time in 2020

Joining jaunty Jools too will be two long-term participants, gospel, blues and soul singer Ruby Turner, who has written songs with Holland, and original Squeeze drummer Gilson Lavis. Regular vocalist Louise Marshall will be there each show too.

Sayer, 71, who became an Australian citizen in 2009 after moving to Sydney, New South Wales, in 2005, charted in the Top Ten with all of his first seven hits between 1973 and 1978: The Show Must Go On, One Man Band, Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance), Moonlighting, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, the chart-topping When I Need You and How Much Love.

Further success followed with I Can’t Stop Loving You (Though I Try) and More Than I Can Say in 1978, Have You Ever Been In Love in 1982 and Thunder In My Heart, contributing vocals to Meck’s number one in 2006.

Chris Difford: Squeezing in autumn and winter dates with Jools Holland

Difford, Holland’s fellow Squeeze co-founder, has worked through the years with Glen Tilbrook, also writing with Elton John, Paul Carrack, Lisa Stansfield, Bryan Ferry, Helen Shapiro, Elvis Costello and Holland too, who calls him “the John Lennon of London, the John Betjeman of Blackheath and the Alain Delon of Deptford”.

Holland and his orchestra have performed previously with Eddi Reader, Lulu, Joss Stone, Fine Young Cannibals’ Roland Gift, Spice Girl Melanie C and Marc Almond. For his 2020 tour, UB40 featuring Ali and Astro will join him for three November gigs in Guildford and London.

Jools is recording his next album, whose focus will be on piano stylings, duets and collaborations with top instrumentalists, for autumn release.

Tickets for York Barbican, where Holland last played on October 31 2019, will be on sale on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Leeds, firstdirectarena.com; Sheffield, 0114 278 9789 or sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.

February 4, 2020February 4, 2020

York Guildhall Orchestra marks 40th anniversary with special Barbican concert

Cello soloist Jamie Walton. Picture: Wolf Marloh

YORK Guildhall Orchestra will celebrate its 40^th anniversary with a special York Barbican concert on February 15.

Almost 40 years to the day from when the orchestra was founded by John Hastie and played in a “one-off” in the York Guildhall in February 1980, the anniversary will be marked with a 7.30pm programme of works and composers from that first concert.

Who could have foretold the amazing journey, reputation, critical acclaim and popularity of the Guildhall group that has developed in the intervening years?

The anniversary concert will begin with the first piece the orchestra played in 1980: Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite (Mere L’Oye), a showpiece for glorious orchestral tunes featuring the talents of the wind section.

This will be followed by the return of soloist Jamie Walton, founder of the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival, for Elgar’s evergreen Cello Concerto. A celebratory orchestral work by John Hastie will open the second half that will conclude with Brahms’s Symphony No 2 (Symphony In Norahms).

This finale will call on the whole orchestra to do what it loves doing best: play a luxurious, full orchestral work of the Romantic period of classical music.

Tickets cost £6.30 to £17.55 on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.

January 31, 2020January 31, 2020

What, again, Alan? Yes, Not Again, Alan! tour books third night at York Carrbican

Loud hailer ! Alan Carr announces a third night at York Barbican

WHAT, again, Alan? Tickets have sold so quickly for Alan Carr’s first tour in four years, that Not Again, Alan!, is now, Yes, Again and Again and…Again, Alan, at York Barbican.

Carr, ever-chatty son of former York City footballer Graham Carr, will play three successive Christmas nights in York, newly adding December 17 to December 18 and 19.

Tickets are on sale on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.

Since his last comedy travels, chat-show host Carr has “managed to find himself in all sorts of dramas”, apparently. Such as? “Between his star-studded wedding day and becoming an accidental anarchist, from fearing for his life at border control to becoming a reluctant farmer, three words spring to mind…Not again, Alan!” says his tour publicity. “Join Alan on tour as he muses upon the things that make his life weird and wonderful.”

Carr pile-up: Alan Carr to play York Barbican again and again and again

Not Again, Alan! will be Carr’s fourth UK solo show in four-year cycles in the wake of Yap, Yap, Yap’s 200 dates in 2015 and 2016, Spexy Beast in 2011 and Tooth Fairy in 2007. He last brought his chat, chat, chat to York on the Yap, Yap, Yap! itinerary on July 11 2015 at the Barbican.

Later this year, Carr will host Alan Carr’s Epic Gameshow on ITV, wherein five all-time favourite game shows will be supersized and reinvigorated for a new audience: Play Your Cards Right, Take Your Pick, Strike It Lucky, Bullseye and The Price Is Right. In 2020 too, Carr will return to the judges’ panel on the second BBC series of RuPaul’s DragRace UK.

January 27, 2020

Not again, Alan? Very much again, Alan, as comic Carr confirms York Barbican gigs

Loudhailer! Alan Carr announces a brace of York Barbican gigs for December

HOW does joker Alan Carr feel news of his first tour in four years will be received?

By calling it Not Again, Alan!, the son of former York City footballer Graham Carr supplies his own answer as he announces York Barbican gigs on December 18 and 19.

Tickets go on sale on Wednesday at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.

Later this year Carr will host Alan Carr’s Epic Gameshow on ITV, wherein five all-time favourite game shows will be supersized and reinvigorated for a new audience: Play Your Cards Right, Take Your Pick, Strike It Lucky, Bullseye and The Price Is Right. In 2020 too, Carr will return to the judges’ panel on the second BBC series of RuPaul’s DragRace UK.