BEST-selling novelist, playwright and scriptwriter Chris Chibnall is one of the big draws at this year’s 29th Beaminster Festival. One of Dorset’s prettiest towns has an eclectic and stimulating programme, from 27th June to 5th July, including Chris Chibnall, superstar folk duo Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman, actress and singer Lucy Stevens as the great…
IF you were raised on hymns included in Hymns Ancient and Modern, you now have 847 to choose from in the latest edition – and whatever your choice, you can go and hear it played live on the organ of St Gregory’s Church in Marnhull over the weekend of 19th to 21st June. The Great…
JULIUS Caesar is centre stage at Grange Opera Festival, where Sarah Brady (pictured) captures the magnetic power of Cleopatra. Christian Curnyn, well-known to local opera lovers from the former Iford Opera Festival (near Bath), conducts his Early Opera Company to accompany the singers, led by countertenor Tim Mead, as Caesar. One of Handel’s most popular…
OPERA Anywhere is touring with a delightful new adaptation of Mozart’s satire Cosi Fan Tutte, making three stops from 19th June to 12th July in the south west. The company will be performing the wickedly funny “Thus do all women” story of two flirtatious young women, two jealous (and rather stupid) young men, an old…
JENEBA Kanneh-Mason, the fifth of the seven remarkable Kanneh-Mason musical siblings, returns to Dorchester Corn Exchange on Tuesday 2nd June at 7.30, welcomed back after her Dorchester Arts debut in 2023. Her programme for this return visit features works by Bach (Partita No 5), Beethoven (Sonata No 17, Tempest), William Grant Still (Summerland), Debussy (La…
HISTORIC performance duo GreenMatthews are touring arts venues with their new show, Midsummer Revels, with local dates at the Museum of Rural Life at Glastonbury on 17th June and the Corn Exchange at Dorchester on Sunday 21st June. Chris Green and Sophie Matthews are modern-day balladeers, specialising in telling stories through song, and playing a…
AXE Vale Orchestra, conducted by Walter Brewster, gives its summer concert at the Minster on Sunday 7th June at 3.30pm. The afternoon programme includes Bizet’s Petite Suite: Jeux d’enfants, Dvorak’s Romance for violin and orchestra, with soloist Jane Bultz, and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The audience can enjoy tea and cake after the concert. The Axe…
ACCLAIMED baritone Roderick Williams has concluded his year-long tenure as Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s artist-in-residence, with a concert with the orchestra, and a song recital, both at Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre. He also visited Longfleet CE Primary School at Poole, where he joined an assembly and shared in a workshop with pianist Simon Gilliver and music…
THERE is a concert with a difference at Lady St Mary Church at Wareham on 24th May, as part of this year’s Purbeck Art Weeks. The early music collective Parnassus Ensemble will be joined by artist Jeremy Queyras for a programme of cantatas by Pachelbel, Kuhnau and Bach, with the painter responding to the music…
PRIMARY school aged children in around the south west have a chance to experience live music, when the BSO’s Explore the Orchestra tour visits Poole Lighthouse on 19th and 20th May. With the addition of a digital concert, broadcast live from Poole’s Lighthouse arts centre in May, the project enables thousands of young people to…