Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
There is something about brass bands at Christmas which just seems right. Whether it is because it is the time when the Salvation Army regale shoppers with their renditions of carols, I don’t know, but it certainly adds a festive cherry to the fruit cake. Now where’s the Wensleydale? Naturally, the programme comprised a selection…
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I never knew that I had something in common with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but you live and learn. We are/were both seemingly enthusiastic exponents of the sport of bowling – as you can see from the feature image. By the way, that is me, not Mozart! How do I know this, well, the first piece…
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There are two consolations to make up for the end of the lunchtime concert series at Dewsbury Town Hall; the first is that the next one begins on 11th September, so only a month’s off-season, a bit like the football and the second, that the big finale was the incredible sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun. Since…
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Now here was a concert to gladden the heart of any Yorkshireman, it was a buy one, get one free offer. As well as the advertised work, Clarinet Trio Op. 114 by Brahms, we were treated to a second, this time from Beethoven, namely his Clarinet Trio in B flat major Op. 11. Not only…
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The May performance in the Lunchtime Concert Season at Dewsbury Town Hall comprised a violin and a piano playing half a dozen pieces of romantic music, as usual a mixture of the familiar and the obscure. Today, however, we had the privilege of being entertained by two of the upper echelon of musicians from the…
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Well, this was a surprise. Normally the lunchtime concerts at this venue comprise small groups of musicians but today the Orchestra of Opera North pulled out all the stops and fielded a team of seventeen players. I was really pleased as this is one of my favourite pieces of classical music. In fact, it was…
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March’s lunchtime offering in the Kirklees Concert Season was a set played by Blair Sinclair on trombone and Darius Battiwalla, piano. Not your normal combination, but you know by now that I don’t do normal. The other thing which was not quite conventional was that Guilmant’s Morceau Symphonique, refered to in the title of the…
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In the words of that esteemed philosopher and New York Yankees baseball catcher in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, Yogi Berra, ‘It’s like déjà vu all over again.’ My last visit to a lunchtime concert at Dewsbury Town Hall was to see ‘Baritone, Soprano and Piano’ during which we were treated to a vocal version…
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It was lovely to get back to Dewsbury Town Hall for one of their lunchtime concerts. It is like going to a gig at the village fete or the WI, with home-made soup, sandwiches and cake, followed by a presentation. Instead for a ‘humorous’ speech from the vicar, however, we were treated to a trio…
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Obviously there are not a lot of lilacs to be gathered in the middle of Dewsbury, this was the title of the latest in the Kirklees Concert Season from Opera North. It was a collection of English songs, although that was stretching things just a touch in a couple of cases. Traditional, and not so…
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Tyke It To The Limit 