Silver Screen Weekly - What's Coming Up At The Cinema From Friday 4th October
Our film critic and media correspondent has been looking and trawling the new releases.
In Conversation With Vonda Shepard
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Vonda Shepard first shot to fame in the late-nineties via her long-running appearances, performances, and musical accompaniment on the wildly popular US TV show Ally McBeal. The show cast her as the resident performer in the bar where the characters would hang out at the end of each episode.
New Light Prize Exhibition Comes To Harrogate 12 October – 5 January
The hugely popular New Light Art Prize Exhibition will be arriving at The Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate from Saturday 12th October until Sunday 5th January 2025. A celebration of Northern talent, this free exhibition shines a light on the incredible artistic flair that the Northern region has to offer, rewarding local artists with grants, solo exhibitions and mentoring.
Sheffield Chamber Orchestra Appoints Laurence Perkins As Artistic Director
Sheffield Chamber Orchestra has announced the appointment of Laurence Perkins as its new Artistic Director. A celebrated bassoonist and conductor, Laurence brings a wealth of experience and a deep passion for classical music to this leadership role.
Poem Of The Week: Pornography For Pandas By Victoria Gatehouse
Pornography for Pandas Yang Guang (Sunshine) raises himself on hind legs, reaches for the carrot, a little higher building muscle for the two-minute act to come, his enclosure dim lit, smooth jazz dreamy daubed with the urine of Tian Tian (Sweetie) when last in season – all this to get him in the mood his bodyweight in food each day for stamina and now, a forty-inch screen, erected beyon…
Delights For All The Family At The Raworths Children’s Festival
The Children’s Festival (October 19-20) returns by popular demand as part of this year’s Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival with an array of imaginative events that promise fun for all the family.
Artists Bring New Blood to Classic Dracula
An artist-led independent publisher in Whitby has launched a limited edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula as part of a wider revival and growing appetite for illustrated classics.
Magnificent Seven Heritage ‘Game Changers’ Celebrated At Huge Land-Art Installation
The National Lottery marks 30th birthday with epic 5,400 square meter ‘Heritage Tree’ land-art enveloping English Heritage’s Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire
Unveiled on Today actor and broadcaster, Sir Tony Robinson, the artwork celebrates the extraordinary achievements of seven Heritage ‘Game Changers’ - including the founders of the Eden Project and Windrush Foundation. The breathtaking installation is created by globally renowned land artist, David Popa, who used the abbey’s vast landscape and natural pigments painted on the ground to show the Game Changer’s hands holding the roots of a tree.
Book Review: The Night-Soil Men By Bill Broady
In an interview with Richard Owain Roberts,* Bill Broady recalls the unformed stylistic ambition of his teenage years with the kind of serendipity that propelled Harold Wilson from the doorstep of no.10 as a holidaying child to his later Prime Ministerial tenure.
The Magic Flute - An Early Christmas Present?
Ok, I'm convinced. The part of Papageno in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute should always be sung by a Welshman. There's something about Emyr Wyn Jones' lovely lilting Welsh accent in Opera North's season-opening production that is just so right.
Freida And The Art Of Burlesque
She was a sociology and politics student whose career choice might have been very different had it not been for the chance sighting of a poster advertising a burlesque show. It was the day before her 20th birthday when the woman now known in the burlesque world as internationally-acclaimed performer Freida Nipples – and who chooses not to reveal her real name - spied the poster.
Channel 4 Writing For TV Awards Announced
In Conversation: Brand New Heavies
Albums: Terrorvision: We Are Not Robots
The new set continues Terrorvision's tradition of stomping rock, which always wears a smile on its face.
Intelligent, Witty And Very Funny: Dizzy
 and Sera Mustafa (Qamar) in Dizzy. Photo by Chris Saunders..jpg)
Qamar is desperate for answers following her brother’s death, and whilst visiting the place where he died to pay her respects and leave some flowers, she meets Stax, an infamous graffiti artist who also wished to pay his respects, but in his own way, ie with a spray can of paint. Qamar is initially unaware that Stax was her brother’s mentor and friend. Stax and Qamar are complete opposites.
Classical Music: Welcome Joy – A Celebration of Women’s Voices
With a group of 12 upper voices, they excel in their ensemble blend and word clarity. Crowley has curated a programme of exquisite repertoire, encompassing a century's worth of music for upper voice and harp.
Classical Music: Puccini Love Affairs
The 29th of November 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of Puccini’s death, and as a tribute, Jonas Kaufmann is marking the occasion with a superb album where he has selected for the new recording six great duets and scenes with six outstanding sopranos—legendary love scenes, emotionally charged love affairs.
A Doll's House
 and Tom Glenister (Torvald) in A Doll’s House. Photo by Mark Douet..jpg)
In 1879 when Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House was first staged, it was engulfed in scandal as it fully exposed how society’s restrictive expectations, particularly in regard to women, controlled their lives from the cradle to the grave.
Silver Screen Weekly - What's Coming Up At The Cinema From Friday 27th September
Our film critic and media correspondent has been looking and trawling the new releases. Here's what you can see on the big screen this week. From Friday 27th September Megalopolis (15) The legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola returns to the big screen for the first time in over a decade for his new film Megalopolis.
Leeds Civic Trust Unveiling 200th Blue Plaque To Honour Visionary Dance Teacher And Educationist, Nadine Senior MBE
Leeds Civic Trust is celebrating a significant milestone by unveiling its 200th blue plaque in honour of the esteemed dance educator Nadine Senior MBE. The blue plaque will highlight Senior's lasting influence on the world of dance and education, particularly in Leeds, where her work transformed the arts landscape.
A Pleasing Adaptation Little Women
This was a very pleasing adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women. It is never easy bringing a hugely popular novel to the stage, but Anne-Marie Casey does this very well indeed. Little Women is a story filled with humour, despair and relationships intertwined with the role that women had in society when the novel was written in the mid 1800s.
Raworths Solicitors Confirm Big Names For 2024 Literature Festival In Full Programme Reveal
Raworths Solicitors has announced the full programme for this year’s Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival – and it features bestselling authors and some of the biggest names in politics, sport, comedy and broadcasting. The Festival, which runs from October 10-20, is sponsored by Raworths Solicitors and is one of the biggest dates in the literary calendar.
Creative Future Writers’ Awards 2024 Prize For Under-Represented Writers Announces Winners
The winners of the prestigious Creative Future Writers’ Awards (CFWA), the UK’s only national awards for all underrepresented writers, who traditionally lack opportunities due to mental health issues, disability, identity, health or social circumstance, were announced today.
Bestselling Novelist And Entrepreneur Is The Special Guest At Raworths Literary Lunch
Novelist, tech entrepreneur, futurist and venture capitalist Ajay Chowdhury is the special guest speaker at this year’s Literary Lunch, part of Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival. He will discuss his own remarkable journey and the future of technology, with a focus on AI and its potential impact on creativity, at the Literary Lunch at the Crown Hotel, in Harrogate, on Thursday, October 17.
Stephen Joseph Theatre Appoints New Associate Director
The Stephen Joseph Theatre has appointed a new Associate Director, Chantell Walker. Chantell will join the SJT in late October for an 18-month residency. Originally from Sheffield, she is now based in Manchester. She trained at the Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres and her work has been performed at many regional theatres in the North.
Canadian Pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko Wins 21st Leeds International Piano Competition
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Canadian pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko, 24, has won the 21st edition of the Leeds International Piano Competition. Performing with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Chief Conductor Domingo Hindoyan at St George’s Hall in Bradford, Izik-Dzurko was chosen as the winner by the jury after a performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No.
Skinny Living Take Their Place In The Charts
This Wakefield band took me by surprise. Both in my introduction to them (happy accident) and the quality and honesty of their music. And they may well have surprised themselves, their fans and those who undoubtedly are soon to be, by hitting the top forty on Friday. No mean feat for an unsigned band.
Albums: Paco Versailles – Ole Maca
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A French flair meets a dash of Spanish guitar, creating a sound that is as refreshing as a summer breeze felt under the hot Italian summer sun.
Albums: Snow Patrol: The Forest Is The Path
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Snow Patrol return with their first new album in six years—the wait, it appears, has been worthwhile.
Classical Music: Schurmann - Orchestral Works
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Be prepared, because, as Conway writes, although his harmonic language absorbed aspects of serialism, Schurmann never confined his material inside strict tone-rows, preferring instead to adapt some of the discipline of a restricted palette to very personal artistic ends.