THE distinguished conductor Mark Wigglesworth has been announced as the new chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. He will take up the role at the start of the orchestra’s 2024-25 season in September, when Kirill Karabits, the BSO’s inspiring chief conductor for the past 15 years, becomes Conductor Laureate and artistic director of the…
BATH Theatre Royal has announced a season of plays next summer, in which the actor will star in David Hare’s Grace Pervades, and will direct Harriet Walter and Gloria Obianyo in Shakespeare’s As You Like it. Booking opens for both on Wednesday 27th March (if you are an Associate member) or, for Friends, it’s Friday…
THE programming at Messums West, the gallery and art centre in the ancient tithe barn at Tisbury, gets ever more adventurous, with a collaboration this year with Salisbury International Arts Festival and a two-month sound installation, created by Orlando Gough and Alastair Goolden, which draws its inspiration, in part from the river Nadder. Running from…
BRISTOL Hippodrome is one of four regional theatres chosen to host a tour of Player Kings, director Robert Icke’s adaptation of King Henry IV parts 1 and 2, starring Sir Ian McKellen as Falstaff. The nearly four-hour reworking of the two plays will be at Bristol from 3rd to 6th July, following the end of…
A MUSIC organisation which has been bringing rising stars of the chamber and baroque music scene to Dorset, Somerset and Devon for 18 years, makes its debut at Shaftesbury this year, with two concerts organised in conjunction with Shaftesbury Arts Centre. The first Concerts in the West event in north Dorset will be on Sunday…
A SHAFTESBURY bookshop, which specialises in nature writing, has been named as the best independent book retailer in the South West. FOLDE Dorset has won the British Book Awards Independent Bookshop of the Year competition for the South West, organised by The Bookseller magazine and judged by a prestigious panel of industry specialists, authors, journalists…
MULTI-talented John Monie, the writer and star of Bath’s annual pantomime and a frequent performer in improv shows, tackles one of the greatest figures of pantomime and comedy history, Joseph Grimaldi, in a new play which has its world premiere at the Bath Comedy Festival from 14th to 20th April. SLAPSTICK! hauls its audiences into…
IF you have been watching over the past few years the slow process of restoring and converting Sherborne House, the listed Georgian building in Newland, Sherborne, you can see the results from 1st March with the first exhibition, Land Work, new and recent paintings by the Dorset artist Paul Jones, open for booked visits until…
A NEW arts festival for Bath from 7th to 28th March kicks off the region’s arts festival calendar. Curious Minds will champion the importance of curiosity for all, with more than 30 book talks, live performances, film screenings, writing workshops and walking tours. Described as “a festival to ignite ideas,” Curious Minds, curated by Bath…
LYME Regis continues to build on its long-standing heritage of community plays – the town hosted the first ever production of what is now known as a community play, Ann Jellicoe’s The Reckoning, in 1978. In 2024, the theme will be Shakespeare’s much-loved comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, following the success of a previous Shakespeare-at-Lyme…