OVER the past 13 years, singer and artistic director Lynsey Docherty has developed the Celebrate Voice festival that she founded at Salisbury into one of the region’s most exciting and varied events. This year’s festival runs from 21st to 31st October with a line-up of world-class singers and musicians delighting audiences with 11 days of…
MILLION Dollar Quartet, the hit musical which moved from Cirencester’s Barn Theatre to a London season, is going on a national tour in 2027, with 23 major venues all across the country from January to July. After its sell-out success at the Barn in the summer, Million Dollar Quartet is at The Arts at Marble…
THE Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis moves from its successful summer rep season to a month packed with music, continuing on Thursday 24th September with a gig by John Bramwell, singer with I Am Kloot from 1999 to 2014; and Friday 25th with Andy Featherweather-Low and the Low Riders. I am Kloot achieved a Mercury…
COMPOSER Helen Porter comes to Shaftesbury’s St Peter’s Church on Saturday 19th September with her Calstock Big Jazz Choir for a performance of her major new work Small Wonders, a musical celebration of the consolation of nature. Composed for choir, soloists and instrumentalists, Small Wonders had its premiere on the last night of this year’s…
A SIX-piece band, with a repertoire that extends from folk to cabaret, comes to the Beehive Centre in Honiton on Saturday 22nd August. Nothing Concrete, based in the French Pyrenees, is led by Scottish songwriter Fergus McKay. Rooted in original songwriting, the band brings together a wide range of influences, blending blues, world music, jazz,…
WHEN the great Martin Carthy unexpectedly retired, as he was due to go on tour with his daughter Eliza, she decided to continue the tour as a tribute to her father, and will be one of the major draws at this year’s Lyme Regis Folk Weekend, from Friday 28th to Sunday 30th August. Eliza Carthy…
JURASSIC Fields, a feel-good family festival billed as the “the jewel in the crown of a West Dorset summer of sounds,” returns to West Bay for a packed weekend of great music and food, from 14th to 16th August. With camping right next door to the West Bay Fields festival site, just a short walk…
BURTON Bradstock’s arts festival is renowned for the wide spectrum of music played by ensembles and soloists, led by violinist and artistic director David Juritz, alongside an exhibition of West Country arts, ceramics and crafts in the historic village hall. This year’s 44th annual festival runs from 15th to 23rd August. The majority of the…
BRIDPORT is celebrating the raucous, chaotic, energetic, musical blast that was punk and the infectious, joyful sounds of reggae with an exhibition at the arts centre featuring photographs by Adrian Boot, and a couple of punk rebooted gigs on 21st August, in collaboration with Clocktower Records. The two-band gigs feature Nasty Fishmonger, a folk-punk fivesome…
PHIL Beer, multi-instrumentalist and best known as half of the hugely popular folk duo Show of Hands, is currently pursuing his own musical thing, with gigs in the south and west between now and late October. Phil is at Sixpenny Handley village hall, from 7th to 9th August at Dartmoor Folk Festival, Friday 25th September…