Preview of Oxford Gospel Choir: Oxford Town Hall
‘Uplifting and happy” is how choir director Jules Francis describes the Oxford Gospel Choir’s forthcoming concerts at the Town Hall. Soul in the City sees the choir joining forces with ACM Gospel...
View ArticleCornbury Festival: Great Tew
Jools Holland made an appeal to the Boogie Woogie God to stop the rain halfway through his Sunday night set, which brought the ninth Cornbury Festival to a close.
View ArticleAlice Illustrated, edited by Jeff A Menges
‘What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures?” She had a point, and John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were the perfect complement to Lewis Carroll’s...
View ArticleZanetto and Gianni Schicci: Opera Holland Park
A blend of adventurous, little known works and staples from the repertoire has been a trademark feature of Opera Holland Park during the 16 years of its existence. In the case of its latest double...
View ArticleOxford Philomusica: Sheldonian Theatre
After its successful launch last year, the Oxford Philomusica’s Summer Baroque series is back — and it’s even bigger and better this year.
View ArticleEugene Onegin: Grange Park Opera at Nevill Holt
On its tenth and final visit to the glorious Nevill Holt estate in Leicestershire, Grange Park Opera presented a lucid, affecting and extremely good-looking production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin,...
View ArticleThe Curious World of Dickens
The Curious World of Dickens by Clive Hurst & Violet Moller (Bodleian, £15.99) is a lavishly illustrated companion to the Dickens exhibition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
View ArticleThe Ramsden Village Story
Many villages manage a small pamphlet about their history, but Ramsden has been more ambitious.
View ArticleGeoffrey Guy's War
As a spitfire pilot in the largely unsung Photographic Reconnaissance Unit, Geoffrey Guy’s wartime experiences were a world away from his pursuit of academic excellence at Brasenose College, Oxford.
View ArticleGötterdämmerung: Longborough Festival Opera
Martin Graham styled them “the impossible-ists” — the doomy folk who claimed that Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle could never be satisfactorily presented in the little theatre fashioned from a barn beside...
View ArticleFalstaff and Yevgeny Onegin: Opera Holland Park
As with Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, Verdi’s farewell gift to the world in the shape of his ebullient last opera Falstaff is a marked improvement on its Shakespearean original. This is chiefly because...
View ArticleSweeney Todd: Longborough Festival Opera
Stephen Sondheim succeeded Richard Wagner on Longborough’s stage last weekend. The focus was still on death and destruction, though — if that seen in Sweeney Todd was on a slightly more modest scale...
View ArticleCorona Strings: Deddington Church
Perverse: it’s a word you could use to describe a decision to found an orchestra that excludes wind and brass players. But there is plenty of varied repertoire for strings alone, as conductor Janet...
View ArticleAlexander Kobrin: Holywell Music Room
It’s straight down to business with Alexander Kobrin: there’s no exaggerated bowing to the audience or fiddling around with the piano stool. Moscow-born Kobrin was appearing as one of the recitalists...
View ArticleOxford Philomusica: Christ Church Cathedral
Saturday’s magnificent concert by the Oxford Philomusica, in the glorious setting of Christ Church Cathedral, marked both the end of the orchestra’s summer baroque series and the opening of its annual...
View ArticleOxfordshire County Youth Orchestra: Sheldonian Theatre
In the year of both the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, it was appropriate that the OCYO’s latest concert was an all-English affair, with music by Bax, Walton and Elgar. As always with this...
View ArticleWomad: Malmesbury, Wilshire
IT’S a Sunday evening, the sun is going down and inside an enormous blue marquee thousands of music-lovers are being treated to one of the most striking, stirring, and surreal spectacles of the summer.
View ArticleMidsomer in photographs
Midsomer, the fictional place where TV detective Insp Barnaby solved countless murders, has taken on a life of its own. It was even mentioned in reviews of the Olympics opening ceremony: “According to...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....