SOMERSET Art Weeks returns from 13th to 28th September with an enthralling range of art works by painters, printmakers, sculptors, potters, print-makers and multi-disciplinary creators. From the artists studios at Watchet’s East Quay to a music and sound-scape installation in the atmospheric grounds of Shave Farm, Brewham, there is a dazzling display of the talent…
THE words and music of the inspirational medieval Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, a visionary musician, polymath and nun in Germany in the 12th century, echo down a thousand years. Performance group The Telling come to St Mary’s Church, Dorchester, on Tuesday 30th September, at 7.30pm, to perform Vision, celebrating the life, testimony and music of…
PIANIST Lucy Parham comes to St Mary’s Church at Dorchester on Sunday 21st September at 7pm, with Sir Simon Russell-Beale to present Reverie: The Life and Loves of Claude Debussy. This is the fourth in her extraordinary Composer Portrait series and for this exploration of the prolific and innovative French composer, she is joined by…
VAN Gogh’S Wheat Field with Cypresses positively sings of late summer – an appropriate image for a concert that celebrates the season. To the Idle Hill of Summer: Memories of the Season will be performed by pianist Clare Sydenham, with narrator David Hindley, at St Mary’s Church, Bruton, on Sunday 21st September at 3pm. The…
SOMERSET Opera has joined with Valley of the Rocks-based Pleasure Dome Theatre to create a Handelian delight for audiences this Autumn. Between 30th August and 25th October, they will tour a reworking of Handel’s classic 1724 Giulio Cesare, this time set in the villages and towns of Somerset where the protagonists are Cesare, chairman of…
PURBECK International Chamber Music Festival, under its charismatic artistic director, cellist Natalie Clein, returns from 4th to 7th September. With the theme of “Love in all its forms.” The programme starts with Love of the Cello, with Natalie Clein playing works by Bach and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, and Cello: A Journey through Silence to Sound author…
ONE of the West Country’s most delightful festivals, Burton Bradstock Music and Art Festival, returns to the West Dorset coast from 10th to 17th August. The programme of classical, jazz, folk and chamber music in St Mary’s Church is complemented by an art exhibition which is a showcase for artists from around the region, in…
THERE is grand opera in world-famous venues, country house opera in historic and beautiful gardens – and there is village opera at Oborne, the pretty little village close to Sherborne. Here local music lovers, with Jon and Jenny Fletcher of the Grange at Oborne hotel, have established a small but perfectly-formed summer festival which brings…
A STUDENT from Wareham, a counsellor from London and a former art teacher from Southsea have been announced as the winners of the inaugural Lark Music-Making prize, in conjunction with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. They have each won £1,000. The competition, which is sponsored by Lark Music Insurance, was launched by the BSO in the…
AFTER six years in its second venue, Belcombe Court in Bradford on Avon, Iford Arts’ If Opera moves to the beautiful surroundings of Church Farm, Wingfield, south of the town, for the 2025 season. This year’s festival runs from 7th to 17th August. The Clare Teal picnic prom on Sunday 10th August is now sold…