An evening with Linton Kwesi Johnson at Howard Assembly Rooms
Gary Younge was the ideal person to interview Linton Kwesi Johnson. Both are accomplished wordsmiths, analysers of society and campaigners for justice. A clear mutual respect exists between the two men, which made for easy but informative conversation. The event at Howard Assembly Rooms, part of the Out of Many Literature Festival, was organised by […]
Opera North – Monteverdi’s Orpheus Reviewed (at Leeds Grand Theatre This Week)
A scholastic consensus identifies the first exotic entertainment combining song, dance and instruments that, today, we might classify as Opera, to the Florence of the Medicis in 1598. From whatever tentative, embryonic beginnings, the musical world had not long to wait, therefore, for the genre’s first assured masterpiece in Monteverdi’s setting of the Orpheus legend […]
Honouring a Pledge to The Hospice
Wendy McCallum has recently completed a 24-hour running challenge in aid of Sue Ryder Wheatfields Hospice in her continued efforts to honour the pledge she made 12 years ago. Wendy’s mum, Fiona, was cared for at the Hospice until she died in 2010. Every year since then, she’s completed a variety of challenges. The first […]
Leeds Haydn Players at West Park United Reformed Church
Leeds’ vibrant amateur orchestral scene starts its Autumn Season each year at the beginning of September, at the end of the long school holiday. Weekly rehearsals normally result in a Christmastide concert, so it’s particularly enterprising of Leeds Haydn Players to bring off a concert by the second week in October. As the ensemble’s name […]
Nine Night at Leeds Playhouse Reviewed
‘Nine Night’ is the debut play by award-winning writer and actor Natasha Gordon. It enjoyed a spectacular sold-out run at the National in April 2018 before being transferred to Trafalgar Studios. This made Natasha the first Black British female playwright to be produced in the West End. For this achievement and in recognition of the […]
