Summer programme at Helmsley Arts Centre (From Gazette & Herald)

Summer programme at Helmsley Arts Centre

3:24pm Friday 11th May 2012 in What's on

Helmsley Arts Centre’s summer programme starts this week with an array of shows, concerts and events.

This week’s busy agenda highlights the diversity of talent on offer, with York Opera tomorrow promising a vibrant concert of solos, ensembles and choruses from the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, Mozart, Vaughan Williams, Verdi, Wagner and Mascagni. The show is at 7.30pm, tickets are £12.

On Friday, Ryedale Live relaunches an Open Acoustic Night at 7.30pm, inviting anyone to perform in the intimacy of the Studio Bar. There are no microphones, no need to book, just an open space and a warm atmosphere for musicians and performers to turn up and do their thing. Tickets are £2.

Saturday sees An Audience with Charles Dickens at 7.30pm, with the author’s great-great-grandson Gerald Dickens performing some of the greatest scenes from his best stories, including Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield. Tickets are £15.

Meanwhile, international award-winning singer songwriter Vin Garbutt rounds off the weekend on Sunday at 7.30pm. Hailing from Teesside, from where he gets his inspiration, Vin has been on the road for much of the past 42 years, with performances described as “powerful, hugely moving and gut-wrenchingly honest”.

Tickets cost £12/£11 concessions.

The new season also offers an opportunity to discover some of the dynamic young theatre companies who are already making waves in the region, such as Middle Child Theatre Company, who are presenting a spine-tingling murder mystery as a pit-stop on their way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and The Flanagan Collective, an ever-growing and changing group of artists.

The programme also welcomes back familiar faces such as Badapple Theatre, who will be taking the audience on a trip back to the 1960s, and the Tim Kliphuis Trio, with their high-energy brand of classical, Gypsy jazz, Celtic and world music.

“Magicians, musicians, performance poets, tribute bands and the muchloved Mardi Gras Lunchtime Jazz jostle in our packed programme with our popular cinema listings, 1812 Theatre’s production of the JB Priestley classic, When We Are Married, and Ryedale Festival’s Chethams School concert,” said artistic director Em Whitfield Brooks.

“There’s something for everyone, we hope.”

Helmsley Arts Centre has also installed digital cinema equipment, enabling them to begin receiving live transmissions from the National Theatre, plus opera and ballet, from the autumn.

Meanwhile, young performers can brush up on their skills by taking part in the theatrical summer school and summer holiday performance project which forms part of the centre’s youth development programme.

For more information, visit www.helmsleyarts.co.uk and for a copy of the programme phone 01439 771700, or email helmsleyarts@yahoo.co.uk