A spring visit to the Midi-Pyrenees

TRAVELLING chef Philippa Davis from Shaftesbury has been back to France again (we can’t tell you how much we envy her, but then we don’t cook as well as she does!) and this week’s postcard from Philippa was full of the delights of visiting a lovely family who live in the Midi-Pyrenees, west of Toulouse…

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Sauce for the Goose, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School on tour

THE Bristol Old Vic Theatre School summer tour always provides audiences around the south and west a first chance to see students from the world famous school at the start of their careers, and this year’s production has an added twist. Director Christopher Scott has double-cast Peter Meyer’s translation of Feydeau’s famous farce Sauce for…

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The Apostles, Sherborne Abbey Festival

Sherborne Festival Chorus Chamelion Arts Orchestra, leader Simon Baggs Naomi Harvey (soprano), Janet Shell (Mezzo Soprano), Joseph Cornwell (Tenor), Peter Savidge (Baritone), Craig Bissex (Baritone), Jeremy Birchall (Bass) Conductor, Paul Ellis ELGAR’S oratorio The Apostles had its genesis as early as the composer’s schooldays, when a teacher put the idea into the future composer’s head that…

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Malcolm Archer, European Organ Music, Sherborne Abbey

MALCOLM Archer is one of the world’s leading church musicians and his recital on Bank Holiday Monday was bound to be one of the highlights of this year’s Sherborne Abbey Festival. Although the Abbey looked spectacular, with the sun streaming through the stained glass, our eyes were rarely drawn far from the big screen. This…

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Travelling, Love and Life, Ben Craw song recital, Sherborne School

BEN Craw’s recital in the Tindall Recital Hall, Sherborne School was given as part of the fifteenth Sherborne Abbey Festival. The venue itself was ideal, and, blessed with perfect weather and a good sized audience, we could be pretty sure that we were in for a lovely afternoon. His choice of programme, Schumann’s “Liederkreis” (Op….

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Under Milk Wood, Clwyd Theatr Cymru at Bath Theatre Royal

“TO begin at the beginning”, it began, and with that short phrase we were hushed into silence, the house lights snapped off and a blue moonlit night took over the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack auditorium of Bath’s Theatre Royal, as the haunting welsh lilt of actor Owen Teale transported us back 60 years to a…

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Swinging at the Cotton Club, Sherborne Abbey Festival

THE Jiving Lindy Hoppers and Harry Strutters Hot Rhythm Orchestra performed to a capacity audience in the Big School Room, Sherborne School as part of the fifteenth annual Sherborne Abbey Festival. Superbly fronted by compere / vocalist (and occasional trumpet player) Megs Etherington, we were treated to an action packed show celebrating the music, dance…

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Sir James Galway, Sherborne Abbey Festival

WHEN you think of the flute, you automatically think of James Galway. Indeed most of us would be very hard pressed to think of anyone else at all. It is quite remarkable to realise that the name of someone who came to prominence as long ago as 1975 should still be almost synonymous with the…

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