GARETH Machin, artistic director of Wiltshire Creative – Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury Arts Centre and Salisbury International Arts Festival – urged audiences to let their imaginations take flight when he launched the 2025 festival programme, running from Saturday 24th May to Sunday 8th June. He said: “A festival is an opportunity to let imaginations soar and this…
THE millennium was not only the dawn of a new century, locally it marked the launch of a new celebration of visual art. Wylye Valley Art Trail, the brainchild of Crockerton-based artist Nick Andrew, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, from Saturday 3rd to Sunday 11th May. In the quarter-century since the launch, this eight-day…
BATH’s biggest free party kicks off this year’s festival on Friday 16th May in the new-traditional colourful way with music for every taste – acoustic, pop, blues, folk, funk/soul, jazz, blues and indie/rock through to choral and classical. You really are invited to put on your dancing shoes and let your hair down as the…
A PROJECT to find new plays for small professional companies to tour rural areas has been launched in the South West by Artsreach, Dorset’s rural touring arts charity. The aim is to discover a new piece of touring theatre from a South West based company or artist as part of a national arts scheme called…
A TRIO of harp, viola and flute players, who met at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama nearly 20 years ago, come to Dorset and Somerset on Friday 9th and Saturday 10th May, for a series with Concerts in the West, at Bridport, Ilminster and Crewkerne. Trio Anima are Rosalind Ventris, viola, Anneke Hodnett,…
DEVON Opera’s young singers will tackle one of the most popular – and vocally demanding – operas for their spring production – Puccini’s La Boheme, which will be staged at the Barnfield Theatre, Exeter, on 15th and 16th May. It is so well-known that it is easy to overlook just how vocally and emotionally demanding…
IF you were asked to identify a grave-digger in literature, chances are you would remember Hamlet, and that blackly comic scene by Ophelia’s grave when the prince picks up the skull of the clown he remembers from childhood and proceeds to ruminate on the fragility of life. This provides the inspiration for the new Ridiculusmus…
SINGERS from several Dorset choirs have been working with Anglo-Chilean band Quimantú on a project that ends on 15th, 20th and 22nd June with concerts at Sturminster Newton and at London’s “Actors Church”. The collaboration, organised by rural touring charity, Artsreach, has brought Misa de los Mineros (The Miners’ Mass) to audiences across the county….
ONE of the few criticisms of the Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes 1968 screenplay of Ian Flemings children’s fantasy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with music added by the Sherman brothers, was that it was too long at, 2 hours 25 minutes. This new production, which draws a long tour to a close when, after leaving…
DORSET Opera Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary at Bryanston School’s Coade Hall this year, following its move to Blandford from its original home at Sherborne School. This year’s festival will run from 22nd to 26th July, and will include two formal dinners in Bryanston House. The opera programme is thrilling, with Verdi’s cruel but musically…