CERNE Abbas has long hosted one of the West Country’s most delightful music festivals, for years featuring the Gaudier Ensemble, but now scaled back to just two days, 19th and 20th July at the beautiful and historic St Mary’s Church, and nearby Ashton Farm. Still one of the musical jewels of the summer, the…
THE peripatetic Southern Cathedrals Festival comes to Salisbury this year, from Wednesday 16th to Saturday 19th July, with a programme of services and concerts that celebrate the beauty and power of choral and organ music. The annual festival brings together the choirs of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester Cathedrals to present choral music at its finest….
THE talented Scottish violinist Colin Scobie is the July soloist with Concerts in the West, with recitals at Bridport, Ilminster and Crewkerne on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th July, playing works by Beethoven, Elgar and Schumann, accompanied by pianist Jâms Coleman. Born in Edinburgh in 1991, Scobie (pictured) is already established as one of the…
WHILE the rest of the world was reeling and retreating in shock at the images of planes crashing into the Twin Tours and the Pentagon, the residents of Gander in Newfoundland had little time for horrified reflection. Planes from all round the world who were in US airspace were diverted to the town airport, and…
THE clock at Strode Theatre will be turning the clock back almost 70 years next week, when the Street Theatre Company brings Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood’s play 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche to the region for the first time. Set in New York State in 1956, The Susan B Anthony Society for the Sisters…
TAUNTON Thespians head out on the road on Tuesday 15th July for their summer tour, this year taking William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights’ Dream to ten venues around Somerset. Directed by Bob Corwin, the big-cast company will tell the ever-popular story of capricious young lovers and their dictatorial parents, a group of local workmen putting…
I MUST have seen Michael Frayn’s enduringly hilarious play Noises Off more than a dozen times during my reviewing life, with TV stars, leading West End actors, the Number 3 touring professional companies that it sends up, and by amateurs. I have never seen a production so wonderfully inventive and brilliantly performed as that by…
RODGERS and Hammerstein’s last musical together, The Sound of Music, was first performed only 14 years after the end of the Second World War, when memories of Nazi incursions over Europe were fresh in the minds of audiences. Now, the details of that war are unfamiliar to younger viewers, but, thanks to the powerful story…
THE first performances of David Hare’s new play Grace Pervades offer a unique opportunity to theatre lovers – to sit in one of the country’s most beautiful theatres learning fascinating facts about Victorian theatre legends Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, from a stage on which they actually performed. And, for these days of breathless star-struckery,…
THE Shaftesbury Chamber Music Series ends its season ton Saturday 5th July with a concert at the Farrington Hall at Port Regis by the Aquinas Piano Trio. Once again series found Ruth Rogers joins Martin Cousin and Katherine Jenkinson, this time for a programme of works by Mozart, Ireland, Shostakovich and Brahms. The performance starts…