A Grammy-nominated folk singer-songwriter, Mary Gauthier’s songs have been recorded by everyone from Dolly Parton and Jimmy Buffett to Boy George and Candi Staton. She now performs her latest enchanting album, Dark Enough to See the Stars.
As she has so eloquently accomplished over the past 25 years, acclaimed singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier has used her art once again to traverse the uncharted waters of the past few years. Her gift to us, the powerful Dark Enough to See the Stars, collects ten sparkling jewels of Gauthier songcraft reflecting both love and loss.
Motel Sundown are an Americana band based in Liverpool made up of three songwriters, Karen Turley, Naomi Campbell and Robert Johnson. Formed in 2018, they combine the sounds they grew up with such as The Beatles, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, with three-part harmonies inspired by the likes of Fleetwood Mac and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
In 2022, the band released their debut album If You Were Listening, produced by Mercury Prize nominee Andy Ross and featuring pedal steel legend Gerry Hogan. Since releasing the album, Motel Sundown have been playing shows across the UK both as a full band and acoustic trio. The band have played support slots for Americana artists such as The Hanging Stars, Ashley Campbell, The Chapin Sisters and, more recently, Grammy-nominated artist Courtney Marie Andrews.
Motel Sundown have also made various festival appearances including at the British Country Music Festival, Cosmic Cape, Sound City, and Black Deer Festival.
Motel Sundown performed during the Liverpool Philharmonic Open Day, and were one of the biggest hits of the day!
BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winners, Irish/Manx/Scottish quintet Ímar are amongst Glasgow’s hottest folk property. Their two albums – Afterlight and Avalanche – have amassed a devoted fanbase all around the world, whilst live audiences are transfixed by Ímar’s collective and individual technical prowess. With a line-up boasting a heavyweight haul of top solo prizes, the group’s collective synergy and live energy is positively electric.
Adam Brown (bodhrán), Adam Rhodes (bouzouki), Mohsen Amini (concertina), Ryan Murphy (uilleann pipes) and Tomás Callister (fiddle) share a strong background in Irish music – a grounding that underpins many of Ímar’s distinctive qualities, in both instrumentation and material.
The shared cultural heritages between Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man are well documented: all three once shared the same Gaelic language, and a similar, clearly potent, kinship endures between their musical traditions.
BBC’s Bob Harris and author/music journalist Colin Hall set out upon an intimate speaking tour based around their mutual love and appreciation of The Beatles, including rare archive from Bob Harris’ collection of interviews with Lennon & McCartney.
By 1963 the pair had written so many songs they simply couldn’t all be accommodated on just their own Beatles releases, so it made artistic and economic good sense to be offered to other artists for recording and the Merseybeat boom of 1963 & 1964 gave them a tailor-made outlet in artists such as Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer and Tommy Quickly. This is the story behind those songs, the hits, the misses and the demos that the group never released: ‘The Songs The Beatles Gave Away’
‘Whispering’ Bob Harris, OBE has been at the very heart of UK music scene for the best part of fifty years. He has established a worldwide reputation as one of the most trusted and influential broadcasters of his generation – described by Radio Times as “…one of the greats of British contemporary music broadcasting” and by The Mail On Sunday as “a national treasure”.
For the past 20 years Colin Hall has been the custodian at John Lennon’s childhood home ‘Mendips’ (guiding the likes of Bob Dylan, Yoko Ono and James Taylor around the property), he’s written two books on The Fab Four and presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary with Alexei Sayle titled ‘The Lennon Visitors’. Colin was incredibly in the audience at the Village Fete where John was first introduced to Paul..! The two friends have worked on several projects together before including the upcoming film Pre:Fab (which focuses on the band’s early days as The Quarrymen), a WBBC production of ‘The Songs The Beatles Gave Away’ and 2007’s Sony Award winning ‘The Day John Met Paul.’
Based in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall yet reaching out to the wider world, Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening explore the connecting threads of music, landscape and people over a period of almost 2000 years.
Songs range from themes of freedom, nature and venturing out into the world after times of darkness, to a Roman inscription with links to Libya and Syria magnetically pulled into the 21st century with glorious vocal harmonies and the wildest of piping.
Named after the old Northumbrian word for twilight, The Darkening is made up of four North-East England-based members: Kathryn Tickell (Northumbrian smallpipes, fiddle, vocals), Amy Thatcher (accordion, synth, clogs, vocals), Kieran Szifris (octave mandolin), Joe Truswell (drums, percussion); with Josie Duncan from the Isle of Lewis (vocals, clarsach). Together these dazzling musicians create musical magic; dynamic and unique “Ancient Northumbrian Futurism”.
American countertenor Reginald Mobley, harpsichordist/director Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music explore a different vision of the English Baroque in which the music of Purcell, Handel, and Ignatius Sancho redefined the culture of a nation.
Curated by Reginald Mobley, Sons of England weaves music and words to explore alternative histories of the English Baroque, culminating in a Sancho-inspired new commission by composer Roderick Williams: musical history shaping a shared future.
Baroque England was a nation turned inside-out: a fledgling democracy that could also be profoundly unjust, a culture convinced of its own uniqueness but which welcomed genius from all lands. Tonight, the Academy of Ancient Music explores an era that’s never felt more current.
The music of the London-born Purcell sits alongside masterpieces by Handel – a German who became English by choice, and Ignatius Sancho, who was born into slavery but found freedom and musical success in Georgian England.
The programme will include works by Henry Purcell, Samuel Pepys, GF Handel, MC Festing and Ignatius Sancho, and a new work by Roderick Williams.
We would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their support of this performance.
It is still one of the best kept secrets in showbusiness that Dame Patricia Routledge trained not only as an actress but also as a singer and had considerable experience and success in musical theatre, both in this country and in the United States.
Her many awards include a Tony for her Broadway performance in the Styne-Harburg musical Darling of the Day and a Laurence Olivier Award for her performance in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.
Her one woman show Come for the Ride toured the UK in 1988 and in 1992 she played Nettie Fowler in the highly acclaimed production of Carousel at the National Theatre. In this fascinating encounter with the writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson, she recalls this very special part of her career with access to some rare and treasured recordings.
Writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson is former Chief Classical Music Critic of The Independent newspaper and a founder member of The ArtsDesk.
Sarah Jane Morris celebrates 10 women that blazed their own musical trails, in a collection of new songs that tell their stories in words and music that encapsulates each one’s own style.
This remarkable concert by Sarah Jane and her band salutes some of the women that changed musical history: Bessie Smith, Joni Mitchell, Billie Holliday, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Rickie Lee Jones, Annie Lennox and Kate Bush.
Liverpool piano legends John Gough and Tom Kimmance will be joining forces to play both of the Tung’s Steinways in a ‘two pianos, four hands’ recital.
John was previously a music tutor in the University’s Department of Music, and Tom, once one of John’s pupils, is now a current member of staff. They have performed widely together over the last 12 years including for Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos.
Programme:
Mozart: Piano Sonata in D major K. 448
Bach-Grainger: Blithe Bells (‘Sheep may safely graze’ from Cantata BWV 208) Brahms: St Anthony Variations (variations
Brahms: St Anthony Variations (variations on a theme by Haydn)
Debussy: Petite Suite (arr. for two pianos by Henri Busser)
Rodney-Bennett: Three pieces from 4 Piece Suite
Delius-Trimble: La Calinda
Chaminade: Valse Carnavalesque Op. 73
Guitarist Tom Ollendorff teams up with one of the jazz world’s great piano players, Aaron Parks, for an unmissable concert in Liverpool.
Parks, a forward-thinking jazz musician, first came to the public’s attention during his time with trumpeter Terence Blanchard. Tom is known for his highly distinctive sound which blends virtuosic technique, sophisticated harmonic concepts with nuance and sensitivity.
