Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
I really don’t understand how I have managed to get to this stage of my life without ever having heard the music of Ron Sexsmith. I am familiar with the name but his work has sold me a dummy. Thank goodness I was able to put this right at an entertaining soirée on Friday. He…
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Calling all parents! If you have a child who is interested in a musical career and wants to learn an instrument, might I suggest that you buy them a violin. This is the third concert I have been to this week where a string quartet has been featured, so the employment prospects can’t be all…
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Another day, another trip to Howard Assembly Room. I didn’t realise just how much I had missed my visits to this beautiful venue until last night’s concert by David Brewis. I found it very touching that this feeling seemed to be reciprocated by the amazing people who work there. Every one of them said how…
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It was great to be back at the wonderful Howard Assembly Room after a three-month enforced break. No, I wasn’t banned, although goodness knows why not. Anyway, the reason I was there was to get back into the swing of things by seeing David Brewis perform his new album, The Soft Struggles. I have to…
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I can’t believe that it is over three years since I saw this show at Leeds Playhouse, how time flies when you are in a pandemic. In the interim it has undergone a total cast change and, after touring the country’s theatres, it has enjoyed a successful run in the West End. This production has…
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What better way can there be to spend a sunny spring morning than with a walk round the best city in the world in the company of the amazing cellist, Abel Selaocoe along with members of the Orchestra and Chorus of Opera North. The heads of the early bird shoppers were definitely turned! OK, they…
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Now here’s a novelty, Mikron Theatre Company performing in a real theatre! They normally put on their shows in the most unlikely places such as allotments, museums (should that be musea?), pubs, village halls, allotments and even a lifeboat station. I have seen two of their productions before, one in a working men’s club (the…
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After a break in proceedings I returned to the fold to see the touring production of Sister Act. As it happens, the musical has also had an enforced hiatus so we both resumed normal service together. Actually, it wasn’t quite normal service for either of us as the show began, and ended, 20 minutes late…
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In the programme the director, Radula Gaitanou, says she wishes that opera were more like football, with the audience not knowing the outcome until the end. Well, she certainly walked the walk in this production, turning it into a game of two halves and, not until the penalty shoot-out at the end, do we find…
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RIOPY, birth name Jean-Phillippe Rio-Py, like a lot of the performers I have seen at Howard Assembly Room, was someone I had not heard of before my visit. He is a French pianist and composer who has the most amazing back story. He was raised in a secular cult in France and taught himself to…
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Tyke It To The Limit 