7:30pm
Come and join us for a fantastic night of new queer work from local artists at Unity! We’re calling for short works of 15–20 minutes rehearsed readings, works in progress, fully formed excerpts – whatever stage your piece is at, as long as it’s bold, daring, and unapologetically queer. This scratch night is a chance to take risks, play with form, and bring your ideas to life in front of a supportive, lively audience.
Line up to be announced
The Girl who could Fly
The North West Duke Ellington Orchestra does what it says on the tin – plays the fantastic music written and arranged by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
Directed by Phil Shotton, the 15 piece big band celebrates the music of Duke Ellington playing music from all eras of Ellington’s output, from his Cotton Club days to the swinging suites.
With band members from all over the North West (Cheshire, Lancashire, Manchester, Merseyside) brought together by the challenge and excitement of playing Duke Ellington’s most brilliant music, this will be a night to remember.
This exciting concert is book-ended by two of Handel’s most popular works: Zadok the Priest, performed at every coronation since it was written for George II in 1727 and The Water Music, written in 1717 in which the players were seated in barges on the River Thames.
In contrast is the Mass for Choir and Orchestra, a most attractive setting by the well-known local composer, Jim Cooke, who studied at Liverpool Hope University. Another piece by a Hope musician is Idyll by Harriet Blaney-Green, a lyrical work for wind band. HMC gave this piece its first performance in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. The concert is conducted by Helen Thomas and is the first where the choir has been rehearsed by its new Director, Jess Atkinson.
NB: This concert takes place in the Great Hall at Liverpool Hope University Creative Campus, 17 Shaw Street, Liverpool L6 1HP.
Cabaret
Step into a world where sound becomes architecture and memory dissolves into signal. British electronic musician Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) brings his singular live performance to the stage—an immersive experience that blurs the boundaries between music, surveillance, and storytelling.
Renowned for transforming intercepted transmissions and everyday sonic fragments into richly textured compositions, Scanner crafts performances that feel both intimate and expansive. Pulsing rhythms, ghostly voices, and evolving atmospheres unfold in real time, creating a space where technology meets emotion with striking precision.
This is not simply a concert—it’s a live act of discovery. Each performance is unique, shaped by place, audience, and moment, drawing listeners into a deeply attentive state where the unseen becomes audible.
Scanner will be supported with an opening set by The Metamorph. The Metamorph (Gavin Brick) has been composing and recording with hardware synthesisers since 1982. His work is often ambient and experimental in nature, with a nod to the Radiophonic Workshop and sci-fi film scores. Live performances are predominantly improvised, with past shows including Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, Galeri Harlech, Victoria Gallery and Museum and FACT in Liverpool. The Metamorph also played synths for Pete Wylie and The Mighty Wah on their sold out UK tour in 2022. Music releases have appeared on Moolakii Club Audio Interface, and the acclaimed electronic label Castles in Space, among others. Scanner made a guest appearance on the Metamorph album The Man on the 99th Floor in 2023.
This concert of contrasts opens with Gluck’s Overture and Dance of the Blessed Spirits from his opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Gluck was an older contemporary of Mozart and his Dance is one of the most moving and exquisite pieces in the repertoire.
Next comes Stephen Pratt’s re-imagining of pieces by the baroque composer Lully, who had total control over music at the court of King Louis XIV of France. It is a strange but well-known fact that he beat time with a long wooden stick – you will hear a reference to this in Stephen’s piece – and died from a severe infection after accidentally hitting his own foot with it.
Quite different is a contemporary piece Lyric for strings by George Walker. This is being played in tribute to the orchestra’s much loved and missed violinist, Mark Julius, who died before his time.
Finally, Mozart’s Jupiter, one of the greatest of all symphonies and the composer’s last as it was written in 1788, some three years before his death. It is a profound and elegant piece with a bubbling Finale with which to conclude the concert.
NB: This concert takes place in the Great Hall at Liverpool Hope University Creative Campus, 17 Shaw Street, Liverpool L6 1HP.
Over three decades, Jo Johnson’s musical path has serpentined from punk through techno to deeply affecting electronic minimalism.
With her first solo album, Weaving (Further Records), she embarked on a new journey into transcendence and catharsis through improvised, generative and composed electronics. Her subsequent releases with Quiet Details (2025), Castles in Space (2024), Mysteries of the Deep (2023) and Going In (2021) show an artist in continual creative evolution.
Known for her immersive live performances as a Freerotation festival resident and regular at Castles in Space’s Levitation events, Jo has appeared at The Purcell Room and Cafe Oto (London), No Way Back (Detroit) and Parallel (Barcelona).
Polypores’ mercurial live performances range from highly textural, intricately woven modular synth tapestries, through to whirling psychedelic freak-outs with hypnotic polyrhythms and fuzzed-up drum machines. A riveting performer in complete symbiosis with his instrument, each Polypores performance is a unique channelling of the weird energies that make up his fractal musical universe.
Behind the Laughter 2026
The Phil Shotton ‘Kind of Cool’ Nonet plays live the entire iconic Birth of the Cool album! This concert is a rare and exciting opportunity to hear one of the most important and influential albums in jazz performed live, with the original instrumentation and arrangements, by some of the finest jazz musicians in the North of England.Birth of the Cool was the most important stylistic step to follow after bebop – generating an entirely new wave of playing that influenced a new generation in the early 1950s. This compilation album by American jazz trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis, released in February 1957 by Capitol Records compiled eleven tracks recorded by Davis’s nonet for the label over the course of three sessions during 1949 and 1950.Featuring unusual instrumentation and several notable musicians, the music consisted of innovative arrangements influenced by classical orchestral music techniques such as polyphony, and marked a major development in post-bebop jazz. As the title suggests, these recordings are considered seminal in the history of cool jazz.