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…
THERE are several definitions of the term Pot Licker, and the one that describes mischievous Icelandic Yule Lads pranksters fits Dorset-based playwright Ed Viney’s play extremely well. Just as the Yule Lad licks a pot clean, leaving not a morsel behind, so Viney explores the fate of three school teachers who, faced with the problem…
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…
JOHN Godber’s 1977 play Bouncers was once voted the nation’s most popular play, and has been performed at the National Theatre, toured the world and been staged by countless amateur companies in its almost 50-year long life. The current production at Sherborne’s Studio Theatre, directed by Sarah Webster, is my first encounter with this story…
AN exhibition, at Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury, from 27th September to 10th January 2026, A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor, offers a new appraisal of the work and life of the Exmoor writer and artist. Created in partnership with The Exmoor Society, which cares for The Hope L Bourne Collection, the exhibition considers…
WE live in a time of advertising slogans and clichés, like “bucket list” and “best self” and “soundtrack of our lives”, and it can be infuriating. But the last of those really can’t be better applied than the opening bars of Henry Wood’s Barwick Green – more familiarly known as The Archers theme. It is…
THE attention of new generations of music lovers has been drawn to Woody Guthrie with the success of the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, and it is fortuitous timing for Somerset-based singer and songwriter Reg Meuross, whose brilliant new song cycle, Fire and Dust, was ready at much the same time. The release of the…
LEGENDARY folk singer Christine Collister, one of the great stars of the folk music scene for 40 years, has a new show featuring a collection of songs called Children of the Sea Over her four decades in folk music, Christine has released 24 albums, a DVD celebrating 20 years in the business and an acclaimed…
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…
MANY intellectuals pick over and dissect JM Barrie’s fantasy fable Peter Pan, just as they continue to do with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland – and find dark hidden meanings within the text. The American writer, composer and lyricist Jim Steinman, sometimes described as the Wagner of rock music, certainly found some very dark, violent…