Folk by the sea
Lyme Regis
THE summer folk festival programme continues with Lyme Folk Weekend, from Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th August, with four big events at the Marine Theatre.
Steve Knightley, half of the West Country’s favourite folk duo Show of Hands, has a solo gig on Friday, followed on Saturday by rising star Angeline Morrison.
Steve is a prominent figure in English folk and acoustic music, and is celebrated for his deep connection to the West Country. His extensive body of work blends historical narratives with contemporary themes.
Angeline Morrison is a folk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose 2022 album The Sorrow Songs, produced by Eliza Carthy, was The Guardian’s Folk Album of the Year. After making her TV debut on Later … with Jools Holland, Angeline has recently appeared at many festivals including London Jazz, Glastonbury and Brighton Festivals.
Sunday brings Ghosts, Werewolves and Countryfolk (see separate story) to the festival at 12.30pm, and the evening concert features another of the younger stars of the folk scene, the singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Nick Hart, at 8pm.
Six days of music and art
Burton Bradstock
VIRTUOSO musicians, playing instruments that range from classic strings to drums, guitar and accordion, return to Burton Bradstock in August for the village’s annual festival of music and art, from Saturday 10th to Sunday 18th, with the annual art exhibition in the village hall and six days of wonderful music, mainly in St Mary’s Church.
The festival begins in the now-traditional style with a tea party and live music in the rectory gardens on Sunday 11th, followed by the festival evensong in the church.
On Monday there is a conversation in the church at 11.30am, in which festival artistic director and violinist David Juritz talks to double bass player Sandy Burnett about his journey, growing up in a musical house in Southern Africa and about the music that has shaped his life. The evening concert is Balkan Bradstock, featuring the brilliant Paprika, six Balkan musicians, including the accordion maestri Milos Milivojevic and Zivorad Nikolic.
Tuesday’s lunchtime concert has pianist Veronika Shoot and David Juritz playing a programme called Faure and the Viardots, music from late 19th century France. In the evening there is Brazilian jazz with singer Carolina Lelis and a five-piece band. This is followed by a late-night recital, Bach to Brazil, with guitarist Craig Ofgden and Adrian Bradbury, cello.
The Wednesday evening chamber concert includes works by Schubert and Faure, and Peter Hope’s A Dorset Calendar. It is followed by a 9.45pm recital, with a quartet playing Messiaen’s haunting Quartet for the End of Time.
The busy Thursday programme begins with a lunchtime Summer Celebration with the Atea wind quintet and David Juritz, followed by a Viennese soiree with soprano Milly Forrest, harpist Eluned Pierce and the Festival Players at 7pm. The late night recital features works by Faure and another piano prodigy, the American-born Bud Powell—the musicians include David Gordon, piano, Paul Cavaciuti on drums and percussion, and bassist Sandy Burnett.
The festival’s gala finale features all the week’s musicians and singers in a programme that includes Bach’s Triple Concerto, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, Dvorak’s Rondo for cello and orchestra and Faure’s Dolly Suite.
Spooky songsters from down under
Dorchester
AUSTRALIA’s uniquely, peculiarly talented Spooky Men’s Chorale are back in Dorset, with a concert at the Hardye Theatre at Thomas Hardye School, Dorchester, on Sunday 4th August at 7.30pm.
As thunderous as a herd of wildebeest, as sly as a wagonload of Spike Milligans and as sonorous as a cloister of monks, the Spooky Men’s Chorale are the gift that keeps on giving. They emerged blithering and blinking-eyed from the Blue Mountains of New South Wales in 2001, and armed with no more than their voices, a nice line in deadpan and an ill-matched set of hats, have been gleefully disturbing audiences ever since.
Formed by New Zealand-born spookmeister Stephen Taberner, the Spooky Men soon attracted attention with a judicious combination of Georgian table songs, beautiful ballads, highly inappropriate covers and a swag-bag of often hilarious original songs.
Renowned for a combination of Visigothic bravado, absurdist humour and eye-moistening tenderness, the Spookies in middle age, and fortified with a new generation of wunderkids, are more masters of their territory than ever before. They will delicately garnish their much-loved black-catalogue with new incursions into beauty and surreal comedy.
The Spooky Men’s Chorale is also at this year’s Sidmouth Folk Festival.
Kinky Boots and musical nuns
Bridport and Honiton
THE award-winning Bridport Musical Theatre Company returns to the stage of the town’s Electric Palace from 20th to 24th August, with the feelgood musical, Kinky Boots. Meanwhile, a few miles west, Honiton Community Theatre Company has chosen another hit musical, Sister Act, for the summer show at the Beehive arts centre, in the week to Saturday 3rd August.
Kinky Boots is a joy-filled sensation, based on a true story—and a successful film—with Tony and Grammy-winning music and lyrics by pop icon Cyndi Lauper and a hilarious and life-affirming book by Tony Award winner Harvey Fierstein.
After inheriting his family’s failing shoe factory, and with a relationship on the rocks, Charlie Price is finding life very difficult. And then he meets Lola, a drag queen whose sparkle and unsteady heels might just hold the answer to saving the struggling business.
The show is guaranteed to Raise You Up and celebrate everybody’s individuality. Performances start at 7.30pm.
Sister Act is the improbable but very funny story of disco-diva Deloris Van Cartier who takes refuge in a convent after witnessing a crime. Disguised as a nun, Deloris finds herself at odds with the strict Mother Superior, but soon discovers the power of sisterhood, igniting the convent’s once lacklustre choir with her soulful rhythm and infectious energy!
Celebrating Sabine
touring
SABINE Baring-Gould is a name that is largely forgotten nowadays, but folk star Jim Causley and singer and musician Miranda Sykes of Daphne’s Flight and Show of Hands, aim to change that, as they celebrate the centenary of the death of this historian, folklorist, novelist and hymn-writer.
Ghosts, Werewolves and Countryfolk—Songs and Stories of Sabine Baring Gould, who lived at Lewtrenchard Manor in Devon, will explore Baring-Gould’s life and writing through the folk songs that meant so much to him. The Victorian polymath, who is now largely overlooked, was a pioneer of folk song collecting—inspiring Cecil Sharp to follow in his footsteps. He was a best-selling-novelist of the period and composed the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers, with a tune by Sir Arthur Sullivan.
But his work on the West Country folk music tradition was perhaps most important to him. He wrote: “To this day I consider that the recovery of our West Country melodies has been the principal achievement of my life.”
Local dates on the tour include Sidmouth Folk Festival on Saturday 3rd August, Beautiful Days at Ottery St Mary on 16th to 18th August, Lyme Folk Weekend on Sunday 25th August, the Plough Arts Centre at Great Torrington on 26th September and Bristol Folk House on 20th October.
Michael Rosen at the EP
Bridport
FANS of the much-loved poet and children’s writer Michael Rosen can join him as he celebrates 50 years of live performance, with two shows at Bridport’s Electric Palace on Thursday 1st August at 11.30am and 2.30pm.
One of the world’s best-selling writers for children, and a popular broadcaster, Michael Rosen will talk about his life and career and will answer questions from the audience, and sign books. Michael was the Children’s Laureate for England from 2007 to 2009.
This year is also the 50th anniversary of his first published collection of children’s poems, 1974’s Mind Your Own Business. In the five decades since then, he has published around 200 books for children and adults, and has had 55 million views on his YouTube Channel, Kids Poems and Stories with Michael Rosen. One of his best-known and most loved books is We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which has been adapted as an animated film for Channel 4 and turned into a successful stage show.
Michael Rosen’s first degree was from Wadham College, Oxford. He went on to study for an MA and a PhD and is currently Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he co-devised and teaches an MA in children’s literature.
As a broadcaster, Michael has presented BBC Radio 4’s acclaimed programme about language, Word of Mouth, since 1998, as well as regularly presenting documentary programmes for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3, including the Sony Gold Award-winning On Saying Goodbye.
He has written a book for children and teachers on writing poetry, What is Poetry?, and three booklets for teachers on writing and reading. He also writes a monthly open “letter” to the Secretary of State for Education in The Guardian, where he critiques government policy on schools from the standpoint of a parent. He visits schools, teachers’ conferences and university teacher training departments and regularly appears at literary festivals all over the UK and Ireland.
His many honorary awards include degrees from the Open University, the University of Exeter and the University of London Institute of Education, the Eleanor Farjeon Award for outstanding contribution to children’s literature. He received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his contribution to the profile of French culture in the UK.
Summer rep at the Marine
Lyme Regis
REP theatre comes to the Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis throughout August, featuring three consistently popular plays—two thrillers and a comedy—and running from 1st to 20th August.
The idea of rep—one play in production, one in rehearsal and one “on the book”—is long-established in the English summer holidays but has largely disappeared in the past few decades. The exception is just along the coast from Lyme, at Sidmouth where the Manor Pavilion continues to stage a programme that runs right through the summer and into September.
The Lyme season starts with the play that gave us the word which is now synonymous with a particularly horrible form of coercive control in relationships—gaslighting. Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight, running from 1st to 6th August, is the story of Jack and Bella Manningham, who have taken a four-storey house in London in the latter part of the 19th century. Jack is a man-about-town, often leaving Bella alone in the house in the evenings. While alone, she thinks she sees and hears things that frighten her—is her mind playing tricks on her, or is it something altogether more sinister? And who is the strange man who appears with disturbing tales of the house and its past?
From Thursday 8th to Tuesday 13th August, the choice is comedy with one of Alan Ayckbourn’s most dazzling plays, Taking Steps. Set in a crumbling, three-storey Victorian house that was once a brothel (and still said to be haunted by a murdered prostitute), and over the course of one hectic night and morning, this comedy has lots of running up and down stairs and in and out of rooms, mistaken letters and mistaken identities, with all the characters immersed in their personal problems, leading to much hilarious confusion.
Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder was made famous by Alfred Hitchcock in a 1954 film that starred Grace Kelly and Ray Milland. Playing at the Marine from Thursday 13th to Tuesday 20th August, this sinister thriller is a masterclass in suspense. Former professional tennis player Tony wants to murder his wealthy wife. He blackmails an old college associate to execute the crime but things don’t work out as planned.
Platinum anniversary
Sidmouth
SIDMOUTH Folk Festival returns this year, from Friday 2nd to Friday 9th August—for the 70th anniversary, making it one of the world’s longest established celebrations of traditional folk music and dance.
Sidmouth has been at the heart of the English—and British, European and world—folk scene, championing traditional music, dance and song since July 1955, when the English Folk Dance & Song Society (EFDSS), on Eileen Phelan’s suggestion, decided that the town was a perfect addition to their existing and established folk dance festival in Stratford, offering the added attractions of the seaside and the Devon countryside.
Over the following decades, the festival, spread in marquees and venues around this picturesque East Devon seaside town, attracted dance sides and traditional and contemporary folk performers from all over the world. Since the pandemic, the festival has rebuilt its programme and this year will see it continuing its reputation for creating an inclusive music community that celebrates tradition and the rich diversity of folk arts from the grassroots to the cutting edge.
The programme once again ranges from top folk stars to emerging talent, ceilidhs, Morris and folk dances, storytelling, a children’s festival, youth and other participatory sessions and workshops and much more.
The big names this year include Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham, Blowzabella, Blazin’ Fiddles, Karine Polwart, Kate Rusby, Oysterband, Ralph McTell, the Rheingans Sisters, Sea Song Sessions, Spooky Men’s Choral, Fay Heild, and Catrin Finch and Aoife Ni Bhriain (and many more).
Rob Rinder and music
Purbeck
HOT on the heels of his efforts at conducting Vivaldi in Venice during his televised Grand Tour with Rylan, the barrister, judge and television presenter Rob Rinder will be at this year’s Purbeck Chamber Music Festival, in conversation with festival artistic director, Natalie Clein, on Friday 30th August.
The music-loving lawyer and polymath will be discussing with the international star cellist “Why is music important in our lives?” The event, sure to be one of the highlights of the festival weekend, will be at St Mary’s Church, Swanage, at 5.30pm. It will be followed by a recital in the church at 7pm, when Natalie Clein will be joined by the festival’s other performers, including mezzo soprano Lotte Betts Dean, in a programme of works by Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Stuart MacRae.
The festival opens on Thursday 29th, at St Mary’s, Swanage, with Tales From the Enchanted Forest, works by the Norwegian composer and violinist Henning Kraggerud, Schubert, Beethoven, Dvorak and Brahms. The opening work, which gives the concert its name, will be performed by the young Kraggerud siblings, Alma on violin, Franz cello and Hector piano.
Other festival events include Cell’Ode to Joy, an all-cello concert on Friday 30th at 11am, at Studland’s St Nicholas Church, featuring Natalie Clein playing three Bach cello suites; a violin extravaganza at St Peter’s Church, Church Knowle, and a concert on the theme of Youth and Experience, Joy and Reflection, at St Mary’s, Swanage, both on Saturday.
The festival finale, Friendship Through Generations, will be held at St James; Church, Kingston, on Sunday 1st September at 11.30am and is dedicated to Purbeck’s famous sculptor and supporter of the arts, Tony Viney, who died in February.
GPW
