Kemp’s Men of Norwich (named in honour of Will Kemp, colleague of Shakespeare, fellow shareholder in the Globe Theatre, Europe’s most famous comic actor and Morris dancer extraordinary) danced in Shandy Hall gardens, Bank Holiday Monday 27th May 2019
A commemorative event in the church where Laurence Sterne’s funeral took place, to mark the 250th anniversary of Laurence Sterne’s death & subsequent funeral at St George’s, Hanover Square London.
Proceedings began at 7:30pm in the church where Laurence Sterne’s funeral took place 250 years ago:
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet. He went to university for mathematics and musicology.
In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music. A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions.
For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.
As a vocalist, Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure.
He has performed around the world, on all continents.
This poetry/performance event will include Jaap Blonk’s performance of the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters.
Time: 7:30pm Medical Society Rooms, Stonegate, York
Acclaimed poets Maura Dooley & Ian Duhig read from their newly published collections The Silveringand The Blind Roadmaker. Both titles Poetry Book Society Recommendations in 2016
Maura Dooley’s collections of poetry include Life Under Water and the anthology she edited The Honey Gatherers: Love Poems. She has twice been short-listed for the TS Eliot Award and twice for the Forward Single Poem Prize. She teaches at Goldsmiths, London University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her new collection, The Silvering is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
‘This deceptively delicate, often very tender poet: how she marries spare lyrical cadences with political scepticism, packing a whole gamut of wit and sharp observation into very little space.’- Ruth Padel, Financial Times
Ian Duhig was born in London of Irish Catholic parents, and now lives in Leeds. His jobs included managing York City Council’s single homeless services before he became involved in writing full-time. Named as one of the Poetry Book Society’s New Generation poets, he won the National Poetry Competition twice, in 1987 and 2001, and the Forward Prize for Best Poem in 2001. His work has three times been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. His new book The Blind Roadmaker is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
“If the starting point for a number of poems in Ian Duhig’s richly varied new collection is Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, its presiding genius is the great eighteenth-century civil engineer, fiddler and polymath Blind Jack Metcalf – whose life Duhig here celebrates, and from whose example he draws great inspiration . . . No poet today writes with such a sense of political and social conscience.” Picador Poetry
Supported by Arts Council England
Richard Boothby plays Carl Friedrich Abel, Frances Spalding reads Virginia Woolf‘s Death of a Moth
Digressions is a site-specific art and poetry project based around Shandy Hall where Laurence Sterne wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The project began in 2013 (the tercentenary of Sterne’s birth) and finishes this autumn with the publication of a book of artwork, poetry and prose also called Digressions.
Awkward Prophet – They say the moment before you die your life flashes before your eyes. Well, that’s true, but what they don’t tell you is that not only do you see your entire past, you also see all your possible futures – everything that could have been if things had turned out differently.
Joz Norris presents a kaleidoscopic and shambolic journey through his own mind, explaining every accident and naive decision that led him to where he is now, and indulging speculatively on just how things will turn out for him in the hope of finally deducing why he thinks burying a woman up to her neck in rocks is appropriate behaviour on a date.
“The audience loves every second…Norris is one to watch and a real talent for the future.” – The Skinny
“Quality moments of silliness…the kind of cheeky grin that was probably a hit with the dinner ladies.” – London is Funny
“One of the most exciting comic character creations on the up-and-coming comedy scene.” – Comedy Blogedy
“Actually pretty good.” – Terry Pratchett
“Norris’s comic ability is evidently present.” – Three Weeks
Joz Norris was born in 1989. His relative youth is still his major selling point. Due to a Robert Johnson-esque Faustian pact he made at a crossroads in the late 90s, he hasn’t aged in 15 years. He worked extensively in theatre and student films throughout his teens, setting up the No Answer Theatre Company to showcase local writing and acting talent in 2007. At the University of East Anglia he started dabbling in comedy and moved to London in 2011 to pursue it properly. He is an accomplished and acclaimed stand-up as well as being noted for his work as a character comic and on the clowning and cabaret circuit. To date he has written and performed two solo character shows, “Joz Norris is Matt Fisher: Uberperson” and “Joz Norris Has Gone Missing,” which was part of Time Out’s Top Ten Free Shows 2013 and Laugh Out London’s Pick of the Free Fringe as well as being Fringe Review’s Top Pick for the Blind Poet venue. He is now working on his next solo show, which will be his first non-character-based show, as well as working on several webseries which are in the early stages of development. He was the host of the student TV panel show “Punchlines” and is one half of the What Not Comedy Podcast with Karl Schultz.
Laurence Sterne’s birthday weekend was celebrated with Stephen Oxley’s unique one-man performance of Sterne’s famous novel, Tristram Shandy. Oxley plays the book’s eponymous hero, Tristram, who tells the story of his life with all of its riotous digressions. An unmissable historical stand-up performance.
“Hilarious – the first stand-up comic in English Literature” Sunday Express
“A virtuoso performance by Stephen Oxley” Scotsman
“An extraordinary reincarnation of the author and his characters” Independent
“Wittily and elegantly told” Times
Stephen Oxley trained at Rose Bruford College. His theatre work includes Don Juan in Don Juan for ATC, Abel’s Sister (Royal Court), View of Kabul (Bush), Macbeth (London Shakespeare Group), Tom & Viv and Betrayal (Millstream), Twelfth Night, The Jew of Malta, and The New Inn (RSC). Stephen has toured worldwide with his adaptation of Tristram Shandy.
Voice from the Pulpit – a special performance in the Quire of York Minster to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Laurence Sterne.
Voice from the Pulpit was a concert inspired by Sterne’s final sermon, ‘The Case of Hezekiah and the Messengers’ from 1764. The event featured the premiere performance of David Owen Norris’s new composition, ‘STERNE was the MAN’, written especially for Sterne’s tercentenary. The concert included period instruments, voice and four school choirs.
Voice from the Pulpit included a reading of ‘The Case of Hezekiah and the Messengers’ by Sterne himself in the guise of Yorkshire-born actor David Bradley. Bradley is well-known for his roles in television and film including Harry Potter and starred as William Hartnell, the first Doctor Who actor in BBC Two drama ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’.
The four schools choirs were: Riverside Community Primary School, Tadcaster; Tadcaster Grammar School, Carlton Miniott Community Primary School, St Peter’s Brafferton. The choirs were coached by Choir Master Jonathan Brigg from the University of York.
Speaker: David Bradley
Tenor: Mark Wilde
Square Piano: David Owen Norris
The York String Quartet
Viola da Gamba: Susanna Pell
Natural Trumpet: Michael O’Farrell
Conductor: Jonathan Brigg
Performance starts at 7.30pm
Entrance via the South door from 7.00pm
Voice from the Pulpit was supported by Arts Council England
The Choir of Jesus College Cambridge directed by Mark Willams presents ‘A Choral Concert – Music from the British Isles from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day’
Saturday 6 July 2013, 6.00pm
St Michael’s Church, Coxwold – FREE
There was a retiring collection in aid of Shandy Hall, home of Laurence Sterne (former student of Jesus College Cambridge), and Songbound, a charity with which the Choir of Jesus College has strong links and which aims to improve the lives of under-privileged children in India through music.
This poetry / performance event concentrated on Jaap Blonk’s performance of the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters. Find out more about this unique work here.
Jaap is artist-in-residence at Shandy Hall for the last week of April and performed at the University of Leeds, Teesside University, Leamington Spa and London.
The performance at Joseph Rowntree Secondary School was by special request and lasted for approximately 45 mins – followed by questions.
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet.
He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies.
In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music.
A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.
As a vocalist, Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure. He performed around the world, on all continents.
‘Jaap Blonk and the Ursonate’ is part of the Poetry by Heart Poetry, Memorisation and Performance programme which has been organised by the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) and is hosted by the Laurence Sterne Trust and Joseph Rowntree Secondary School.
New Play written for Laurence Sterne’s Tercentenary. Also a Theatre Royal Book Group and a Shandy Hall Visit and Theatre Trip. The actors all visited Shandy Hall.
Very loosely based on the novel by Laurence Sterne with footnotes, gratitude, savoury snacks and pregnant pauses.
Members of a teachers’ Book Club meet to discuss the latest ambitious read in their season of Yorkshire classics, the insurmountable Tristram Shandy.
It’s fun loving English teacher Susan’s turn to host and as always, she insists on an elaborate fancy dress theme. As the friends gather dressed as characters from the novel, excitement builds about meeting the group’s newest member. After all, he was the one who suggested Tristram Shandy in the first place!
However, this is no ordinary cosy night in with a good book as the evening takes some extraordinary twists and turns. As confusion mounts and hilarity ensues, the meeting descends into debauched absurdity and this cunning comedy becomes as saucy, surreal and dangerous as Sterne himself.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel by Coxwold based writer Laurence Sterne, released in nine volumes over seven years from 1759. There will be several associated events linked to this new production to help celebrate the 300th anniversary of Laurence Sterne’s birth.
Warning. This product may contain unavoidable nuts and other adult themes, including at least 17 verbal references to *******’s and a visual *!
“To celebrate 300 years since the birth of Laurence Sterne, we have an introduction from Patrick Wildgust, curator of Shandy Hall.
Featuring a roll call of the great and the good of British comedy talent, Winterbottom’s (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE) adaptation of the essentially unfilmable novel, ‘The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy’, is a pure joy.
It brings to mind Charlie Kaufman’s ADAPTATION in that it is really about the making of the film you are watching.
Coogan plays both Shandy and his father Walter, with Brydon cast as Shandy’s unfortunate uncle.
They move in and out of the film-within-the-film, preening and bickering on screen and off in a hugely enjoyable clash of egos.
True to the spirit of the original, Winterbottom holds a candle to the creative process and lifts the curtain on the movie-making business in all its self-important glory.”
A concert with David Owen Norris on a Square Piano of 1781 by Christopher Ganer – similiar to the Zumpe Piano that Sterne gave to Eliza Draper for her journey to India.
The performance included examples of eighteenth-century songs from the collection at Shandy Hall – these were their first modern performances – sung by Fiona Hymns and Jessica Gillingwater, students of the Royal Northern College of Music
The programme included music specifically designed for the Square Piano by Carl Friedrich Abel.
Ticket holders were invited to spend the afternoon in Shandy Hall gardens (with a picnic) and the exhibition ‘Eliza Draper – An Absent Presence’ was open in the gallery.
A welcome return visit to St Michael’s Church, Coxwold by Coope, Boyes and Simpson where they performed a selection of songs traditional and contemporary, set against the story of Laurence Sterne’s relationship with Eliza Draper.
Hope Shortens all Journies tells the story of an affair of the heart, a series of intimate letters, a locket and a sea voyage from England to India in 1767. This collaboration between the Laurence Sterne Trust, Georgina Boyes and the group continues an exploration into music and text that resulted in Songs of Freedom and Oppression.
‘Dark & Stormy’ (Rum and ginger wine) was served in the interval.
Part of the Precious Cargo project.
The exhibition Eliza Draper : Absent Presence will be open in the gallery at Shandy Hall before the concert.
March 2012
7.45pm with a 2.00pm matinee (Thu) York Theatre Royal
A Sentimental Journey is a digital opera for a mixed ensemble of technologies, remote audiences and live performers. It is inspired by Laurence Sterne’s novel, first published in 1768.
The work was performed live to the theatre audience, and streamed to hundreds of people around the world, who reported back with photos and postcards of their sentimental journeys. The end result was a shared experience between the audience(s), the performers, the music, the book, and the collective imagination.
Created in association with the Laurence Sterne Trust.
Each performance included a post show discussion and was streamed live at The Sentimental Journey website.
The celebrated artist Eugen Gomringer (born 1925) will be visited the UK in September 2011. Gomringer spent a lifetime immersed in the creation of text based work, concrete poetry and minimalist art, as well as publishing, editing and curating. This was a rare opportunity to see and hear examples of his work.
Reading and presentation by Gomringer, together with informal conversation at Shandy Hall. With guided tours of the Hall and lunch at Coxwold Village Hall. Also viewing the exhibition ‘The Emblem of My Work‘, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the marbled page in ‘Tristram Shandy’ featuring works from international artists and writers.
A £15 charge for the day included lunch, admission to the Gomringer reading, guided tour of the museum and entry to the exhibition and gardens.
Mister Macaroni and his bungling troupe of players came to Coxwold for a highly entertaining evening of Georgian comedy: Laurence Sterne’s major works, A Sentimental Journey & Tristram Shandy as you’d never seen them before.
In A Sentimental Journey we follow the absent minded, and easily distracted, Parson Yorick as he encounters an assortment of lords, ladies and chamber maids in his travels through France and Italy. Things get complicated: he forgets that England is at war with France, he doesn’t have a passport and he finds himself stranded in a storm in the mountains . . .
Tristram Shandy introduces us to the love story of Captain Toby Shandy and the Widow Wadman. Just how serious is the Captain’s war wound, and will it influence the outcome of his – amours?
Founded in 1988 HC Productions built a reputation for staging colourful productions with a strong 18th Century flavour. The Company has performed at the Newcastle Comedy Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe and toured extensively in Germany featuring at the International Shakespeare Festival in Neuss.
Christian Bok (Professor of English at the University of Calgary) is perhaps best known in the UK as the author of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001) which became a bestseller. This delightful and astonishing work of experimental literature won the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. He has also earned many accolades for his virtuoso performances of sound poetry (particularly the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters).
His current project is The Xenotext Experiment which will involve the encoding of a short verse into a sequence of DNA in order to implant it into a bacterium, after which Christian plans to document the progress of the experiment for publication.
His visit to England was singled out for particular mention on Ian McMillan’s The Verb.
During his stay as artist-in-residence at Shandy Hall, Christian gave two talks – on 19 May at the University of York and on 23 May at the University of Northumbria.
Voice of the People: Ralph Vaughan Williams and Folksong
Coope Boyes & Simpson, Fi Fraser, Jo Freya, Georgina Boyes
Voices ringing out in the frosty air or echoing in atmospheric
candlelight are the most evocative sounds of Christmas. ‘I love a carol,’ said Vaughan Williams.
In the decade before the First War, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) discovered a source of melody and an approach to music that inspired compositions throughout the rest of his career. During summers spent in cottages, village pubs and gypsy camps from Essex and Surrey to North Yorkshire and Herefordshire, Vaughan Williams recorded around eight hundred songs and tunes that underlie orchestral works like Norfolk Rhapsody, Fantasia on Greensleeves and the English Folk Song Suite and were the sources of tunes in The English Hymnal and The Oxford Book of Carols. Folksong was, he wrote, ‘the voice of the people’ beautiful in itself and which has in it the germs of great art.’
Voice of the People brought together Coope Boyes and Simpson, whose innovative acappella arrangements of folksongs collected by Vaughan Williams have already won international acclaim and Classic FM Christmas favourites Fi Fraser, Jo Freya and Georgina Boyes in a specially written words and music production. Songs Vaughan Williams noted from the countryside are interlinked with his characteristically perceptive descriptions to give a first-hand account of this exciting period in English music. It’s a rare opportunity to hear the original sources of some of the composer’s best-loved music for concert hall and church, as well as lesser known songs and carols he collected across England.
The recitals, at Coxwold Church and at Harewood House, concentrated on viola da gamba music of the 18th century composed by Carl Friedrich Abel.
Pieces were selected and performed appropriate to the mood and the occasion. The recital wase an improvisation to the Story of Le Fever from Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.
Both Sterne (who played the gamba) and Abel were exponents of sensibility and in one of the composer’s obituaries it is recorded: The death of Abel occasions a great loss to the musical world. Sensibility is the prevailing and beautiful characteristic of his compositions. He was the Sterne of Music – the one wrote and the other composed to the soul.
‘Abel’s pieces are reminiscent of J S Bach’s solo cello suites, so if you like them then you’ll like these… (BBC)
The 2010 summer’s poet-in-residence at Shandy Hall, Coxwold was co-organised by Information as Material and the Laurence Sterne Trust.
Shandy Hall, Coxwold, the former home of the celebrated 18th-century English writer Laurence Sterne (author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman), is a museum dedicated to exploring his astounding and continuing influence on the arts. -Through exhibitions, and by hosting residency programmes, it explores how contemporary artistic practice, whether text-based, visual, sonic or otherwise, can help visitors to the museum unlock the Trust’s collection of 18th and 19th-century literature, said the museum’s curator, Patrick Wildgust. – Our aim is to encourage an inventive exploration of Sterne’s legacy and experimental spirit, in the context of the artefacts of his estate. The outcome of Kim Rosenfield’s and Rob Fitterman’s visit was featured in The Perverse Library exhibition (04 September -31 October 2010, Shandy Hall, Coxwold). The exhibition unfolds around Professor Craig Douglas Dworkin’s personal library of 2427 titles.
Kim Rosenfield was taken up by the LA poets (Dennis Cooper et al.) when she was only 17 years old and they published her first book of poetry ‘Some of Us’ to widespread critical acclaim. As the literary critic Julian Spahr described her recent book Good Morning-Midnight-
“For those trying to understand the relation between innovative writing and feminism, Kim Rosenfield’s Good Morning-Midnight- is required reading. Rosenfield samples with artful and humorous juxtaposition the languages of science, money and fashion so as to critique how they define and limit women.”
Rob Fitterman has been teaching poetry at NYU for years and is renowned for his radical writing which includes books such as Rob the Plagiarist. Craig Dworkin said the following about his book:
“As we know from Jack Torrance, who typed an entire manuscript of the one repeated, plagiarized line: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. With Fitterman, a plagiarist extraordinaire, we have all the play and all the work together in some of the smartest and sharpest textual interventions yet.”
They are two of the most radical exciting performers on the American poetry circuit and regularly perform at the legendary Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan, New York City. They were delighted to be performing at Artspace in York and looked forward to presenting an evening of extreme poetry.
The opening of an exhibition of the maps of J.L.Carr in this year was celebrated with a performance by the Easingwold Silver Band.
Because J.L. Carr was a Wesleyan Methodist, it was felt appropriate to have Methodist hymn tunes drifting through the grounds whilst visitors were enjoying the maps in the gallery. The beautiful music was appreciated, not only by the guests, but by the neighbouring cows, who strolled across the fields, and stood looking over the garden wall, entranced.
Perfomed in St Michael’s Church, Coxwold, following on from our project ‘A Bitter Draught: the Starling and Slavery” heralding the 200th anniversary of Parliments abolition of the slave trade in 2007, and part of the Ilkley Literature Festival.
Some songs from this show now released on CD ‘As if . . . ‘
On Flanders Fields takes its name from the poem written by John McCrae who was killed near Ypr’s in the First War. Written and compiled by Coope Boyes and Simpson, the production is a tribute to lives caught up in the War to end all Wars. It brings together the humour of the soldiers on the Western Front who contributed to the famous Trench magazine, The Wipers Times, the poetry which turned experience of ‘the pity of war’ into a lasting memorial and – most evocative of all – music of the time and specially commissioned songs.
Combining words and music for In Flanders Fields is particularly significant. Soldiers sang as they marched to the Front, pianos and gramophones were given a place in the deepest German trenches, enemies joined in carol singing during the Truce of Christmas 1914 – it was called ‘The Ragtime War’. Haunting and irreverent, these songs catch the indestructible spirit that defied one of the greatest human tragedies of the twentieth century.
Coope, Boyes & Simpson, Fi Fraser, Jo Freya and Georgina Boyes – Midwinter Songs and Carols: A words and music programme of regional and historical carols. St. Michael’s Church, Coxwold.
Mourners and Weepers included:
