I first heard about this project, Who is this that Comes? A Ghost Story for Christmas, when I went to see an installation of William Tuckett’s at the Whitechapel Gallery – somewhere back around May. At that point I got “Christmas! Two-hander! Vampires! Alasdair Middleton’s writing!” and I was immediately on board.

I’ve worked with Will a number of times on varied dance, theatre and puppetry projects and I always have a great time. He’s challenging, quick, and works incredibly lightly and cleverly. Last year we collaborated on Pleasure’s Progress, a dance/opera/theatre hybrid that Alasdair wrote. The writing was brilliant and the show was a joy to make. Paul Englishby composed some wonderful music, and he is also working with Will and Alasdair on this piece. So Who Is This That Comes always felt like a must-do project for me.

The piece is really creepy. It’s a relief to be working with the actor Harry Melling on it as we already have a relationship from working on The School For Scandal at the Barbican this summer. We have been tasked in this piece to freak each other out, and hopefully the audience too. Tripping ourselves up, spooking us all out. The stories of M R James, which the play is based on, are eerie in that you often don’t know what exactly has happened, but something leaves a bad taste in your mouth and your mind goes into overdrive from there….

Today we had fun trying to gauge just the right amount of knowingness to implant a really creepy feeling in the room. The Howard Assembly Room’s Victorian history will be the third character of our play and I’m really looking forward to exploring the place when we arrive in Leeds next week. Until then it’s the scary task of learning lots of lines! Oh, and there are no vampires, sorry Twilight fans! I must have misheard. But what’s there is is a whole lot badder… Do you hear it?

Laura Caldow, Dancer and Actress

Who Is This That Comes? A Ghost Story for Christmas is a new performance piece commissioned by Opera North Projects for the Howard Assembly Room. Combining music, drama and movement, and inspired by the ghost stories of MR James, the piece is written by Alasdair Middleton and directed by William Tuckett, with a score by leading film, TV and theatre composer  Paul Englishby. It is based on a number of MR James’ ghost stories including Lost Hearts and There was a Man Who Lived by a Churchyard.

Who Is This That Comes? A Ghost Story for Christmas is performed in the Howard Assembly Room on Wednesday 14 December at 7.45pm. For more information and booking, click here.

More information about Laura Caldow’s work can be found at http://www.lauracaldow.com/

Watch a video here of another Flyboy performance, Flyboy and the Robot, recorded at the National Theatre in 2009: 

Flyboy Is Alone Again This Christmas takes place at the Howard Assembly Room on Saturday 10 December at 2.30pm and 8.00pm. It is suitable for adults and brave children, and family tickets are available. For more information and booking, click here.

In the show I perform the music live with my band, while the stories unfold on the big screen above or sometimes behind us. The pictures are created live with an old OHP and black cardboard shadow puppets, or sometimes little home-made creatures made of wool or papier mache and string.  

I’m very influenced by Hollywood, old musicals and cartoons, and since I saw Jurassic Park when I was 15 I’ve wanted to do something as good as that – a sort of “Jurassic Park: the Musical” made up of 5 minute cartoons and stories. In this show there is also a chance for the audience to join in and make their own dinosaur puppets to feature in the second half. 

 And, because its Christmas, Flyboy will also be visiting the Planet of the Haunted Snowmen…

I think of these shows as like being episodes in a weird cardboard soap-opera, with added songs and shadow-puppets. A lot of my work is based on things I read or watched when I was younger, and most of the characters are vaguely based on me and my friends. I’m from a West Country village near the sea, so my music and stories are influenced by that and by the idea of making your own entertainment out of whatever you have around you, which for me was scissors, glue and paper, as it still is today. 

The last time I played a gig in Leeds was in a pub somewhere in the centre of town, and I’m not sure people had turned up expecting to find an overhead projector and cardboard monsters where the pool table was supposed to be. Hopefully you’ll be ready for me this time, Leeds…

Matthew Robins
Artist, filmmaker and musician

Flyboy is Alone Again this Christmas will be at the Howard Assembly Room for two performances on Saturday 10 December. It is suitable for adults and brave children. More information and booking details can be found here.

DANNY DRIVER – PIANO

Following his concerto debut at the 2011 BBC Proms, Danny Driver will perform both Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Reizenstein’s Concerto Popolare with the Minnesota Orchestra in July 2012. After his Royal Albert Hall debut earlier in 2011, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Orchestra of Opera North, Danny has been asked by the orchestra to play Grieg’s Piano Concerto in 2012.  

Next year will also see Danny returning to the Wigmore Hall, following a very successful solo recital in July 2011, where he will play Beethoven’s last Piano Sonata (Op 111), Chopin and Ligeti Études and Bach’s First Partita.  Danny’s recently released CDs of solo piano music by Balakirev and Benjamin Dale on Hyperion have been acclaimed in publications including Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, Classic FM Magazine, International Record Review and International Piano, as well as the UK national press.   His recording with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, of works by Eric Chisholm, will be released in April 2012.  

CHLOE HANSLIP – VIOLIN

At the age of 24, Chloë Hanslip has already established herself as an artist of great distinction on the international stage. Her recording forNaxosof the John Adams Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin prompted Philip Clark, writing in Gramophone, to conclude that “Playing like this should secure Chloë Hanslip’s reputation for life”. She made her BBC Proms debut in 2002, herUSconcerto debut in 2003, and has performed in major venues in theUK (Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall) and Europe (Vienna Musikverein, Louvre and Salle Gaveau-Paris, The Hermitage-St.Petersburg) as well as Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Arts Space inTokyoand the Seoul Arts Centre.

OLIVER COATES – CELLO

Oliver Coates is an Artist in Residence at Southbank Centre London. He is principal cello of Aurora Orchestra, and is a guest principal with London Sinfonietta and Britten Sinfonia. This season he is giving the world premieres of cello concertos by Nico Muhly (at Barbican Centre) and Mark Bowden (BBC National Orchestra of Wales). He is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician as well as a curator of new and old music- he runs the Harmonic Series at Southbank Centre which was sold out in its first season.

The Gambler is a unique one-off performance created by Opera North Projects for the Howard Assembly Room, taking place on Thursday 17 November.

The Gambler features Russian chamber music from Danny Driver (piano), Oliver Coates (cello) and Chloe Hanslip (violin), accompanying a performance based on extracts from Dostoevsky’s novel The Gambler, directed by Alan Lane of Slung Low Theatre Company.

Cast:
Alexei – Dominic Gately
Polina – Louisa Clein
The General – Stuart Richman

Director – Alan Lane
Lighting – Tim Skelly
Production Assistant – Aaron Marsden

You can find more information about The Gambler here.

Cover from Dostoevsky's The Gambler

The concept behind The Gambler, taking place on Thursday 17 November, is to turn the Howard Assembly Room into a 19th century Russian casino for the evening, to host a performance of music and acting based on Dostoyevsky’s book by the same name. The beauty of this idea is that the audience will be sat in the “casino” at either roulette tables or card tables. The action will be taking place around them, unlike a usual performance with everyone at a safe distance from the actors! To add to the overall feel of the room, it will be decorated with various items such as lights hung over the card tables, opulent Kentia palms in gold pots and packs of cards a-plenty.

As Production Assistant, my role is to work with the Director, Lighting Designer, Project Manager and other technical staff to make sure everything that is needed gets built, hired or borrowed for the show, on time and on budget! As with most performances within Opera North, a lot of props are out of the ordinary. You can’t just find working roulette wheels and tables down the local supermarket.

The tables are quite intrinsic to the show, so we were keen to get the right look. Sourcing accurate 19th century tables is nigh on impossible, so we’ve ended up recreating a design that we are happy with and having the cloths printed to ensure we get exactly the right look. It’s trickier than you think to find accurate Austro-Hungarian gulden from the right period, but we’ve managed that too, as it was the currency that is mentioned in Dostoyevsky’s book.

The day before the show is where the excitement will really start for me. It’s the first time all the items will come together in the space and the actors and musicians get to see it for themselves. The day will be full of setting tables and chairs, bringing in the props, sorting out lighting cues and sourcing any last minute items.

On show day hopefully all will be calm for final rehearsals, but if that were so there would be no fun! I have no doubt there will be little alterations to set and props right up until the time the doors open and the waiting audience comes in to enjoy their evening at Dostoyevsky’s casino. Just keep an eye out for things that may surprise you during the show…

Aaron Marsden
Production Assistant, The Gambler

The Gambler is a unique one-off performance created by Opera North Projects for the Howard Assembly Room, taking place on Thursday 17 November.

The Gambler features Russian chamber music from Danny Driver (piano), Oliver Coates (cello) and Chloe Hanslip (violin), accompanying a performance based on extracts from Dostoevsky’s novel The Gambler, directed by Alan Lane of Slung Low Theatre Company.

Cast:
Alexei – Dominic Gately
Polina – Louisa Clein
The General – Stuart Richman

Director – Alan Lane
Lighting – Tim Skelly
Production Assistant – Aaron Marsden

You can find more information about The Gambler here.

This video of Group Inerane performing was taken in Paris last week:

Group Inerane perform at the Howard Assembly Room on Saturday 3 December in a double bill with Flower-Corsano Duo, the exciting collaboration between free drummer Chris Corsano, and Mick Flower, who plays the shaahi baaja or Japanese banjo. You can find more information about Group Inerane + Flower-Corsano Duo’s performance at the Howard Assembly Room here.

Follow @Howard_Assembly on Twitter.

What are you looking forward to most about your upcoming tour?

“Specifically, getting to rub shoulders with Harold [Budd] will be a real privilege; in the more general sense, it’s still such a buzz to come to the other side of the world and find a room full of people have turned up to listen to one’s music. We started The Necks 24 years ago as a private experimental band with the express intention of never performing in public. It’s come quite a way, and I never cease to be amazed at how much this band has captured people’s imaginations, considering its modest original goals.”

The Necks in performance. Photo credit: Tim Williams

Which styles of music, and musicians, would you say have inspired you?

“Just about everything has inspired me (positively, or negatively!). In terms of the positive, in the early days of the band it was some very specific works such as John Coltrane’s first version of My Favourite Things, Shh/Peaceful from Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way, and Steve Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians.

“These days there’s no one thing that I’m into, nor any one artist. I’m really inspired by electronic music in general these days, even though I play no electronic music myself, and I couldn’t name any one artist in the field who is really doing it for me. 

“Probably the one thing I’m really done with for the time being is western classical music, except for some very modest, pure works from the baroque period.”

Is your music really completely improvised?

“One can get into tangled philosophical knots debating whether it’s possible to ever improvise, or to ever not improvise, but I’m comfortable saying that our music is entirely improvised, save for the fact that we have a rule that one person starts, and another convention (not really a rule per se), that we take our sweet ol’ time time working through the textures at play.”

A lot of your fans refer to a trance-like, meditative state – is this something you specifically reach for?

“Being improvisers, we wouldn’t feel comfortable with always setting out to achieve a particular state, any more than we’d feel comfortable setting out to create particular textures every time, but it is something that we do happen across a great deal; something that we as performers achieve too, and it’s always wonderful when it happens for us. But as to the audience, we just want them to relate to our music on whatever level suits them. If they reach a deep altered state, that’s wonderful; so is a totally distracted one; so is sleep.”

Lloyd Swanton, centre, with The Necks

 What are you enjoying most about your work at the moment?

“Its regenerative qualities. Both in the short term, i.e. how good I feel coming off stage even if I felt terrible when we started, and in the long term – I’m fifty one now and I feel twenty years younger than that, and I attribute much of that to being in a life of music.”

Lastly, is improvisation as important to you as it ever was?

“Yes. I tend to think life is one big improvisation, and one’s performances are compact slices of that larger piece.”

Lloyd Swanton
Bassist, The Necks

The Necks + Harold Budd: Time Being will be at the Howard Assembly Room at 7.45pm on Friday 25 November. More information and booking details can be found here.

The Necks + Harold Budd: Time Being is presented by Sound and Music, co-produced by gogobetween and Tusk Music, in association with No Nation.

Forced Entertainment's And on the Thousandth Night. Photo credit: Hugo Glendinning

Given its improvisational, marathon character And on the Thousandth Night… is hard to prepare for and often hard to remember.  And On the Thousandth Night… (or The Kings, as we’ve come to call it at Forced Entertainment) is a free-for-all, governed by a simple set of rules; other than “having a think about stories you might try to tell”, any work in advance is pretty sure to bite the dust as eight performers, all wearing makeshift king costumes, jostle for space. The main rule (and arguably the only important one) is that no story is ever allowed to finish, since any performer who is speaking may be interrupted at any moment by another player, who’ll use the word “stop” to halt the narrative and claim the stage for their own story. It makes for what you might call a cut-throat playfulness.

Performing is always a three-way balancing act between the ideas you can think of at any given moment, the lurching mood or dynamics of the performance itself, and your own shifting state of tongue-tiedness or exhaustion-inspired lucidity. You may plan to embark on a slow-burning horror story, but at that particular moment your colleagues’ mood could be for short, comic tales involving depressed kings or sex-crazed plumbers. In this context, your tale can be stopped the moment you start.

At other times, you’ll find yourself venturing a whimsical one-liner about a talking dog, or a love letter that gets lost in the post, only to find that here, where you least want it, your colleagues allow you to take the stage and don’t interrupt you for a long time. Sometime towards midnight you could be treading the shallow water of a story that lacks purpose or direction, begging silently for the “stop” to end your misery. More often than not, no such luck; there’s more amusement in letting you hang.

Looking back on the show is always tricky. You’re aware of mood swings and flows of energy, periods of elation and laughter, or places where time seemed to crawl past, minute by minute. You’re dizzy with the volume of words, awhirl with fragments of unfinished tales. Fittingly, perhaps, almost no complete narratives will remain. Perhaps only assorted fragments of gay soldiers and pirates, wizards in forests, cleaners in offices, murderous children, philosophical robots, tyrannical despots, lost knights and adulterous travelling salesmen…

Tim Etchells
Artistic Director, Forced Entertainment

A longer version of Tim Etchells’ blog was originally published in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/apr/13/tim-etchells-on-performance-improv-storytelling

Forced Entertainment perform And on the Thousandth Night… at the Howard Assembly Room on Saturday 26 November, presented as part of the Compass Festival of Live Art. The piece is a 6 hour durational theatre performance, throughout which audience members are free to come and go as they please. For more information and to book tickets, click here.

You can now follow @Howard_Assembly on Twitter.

Alongside Opera North’s production of Tchaikovsky’s dark tragedy The Queen of Spades, we’re staging our very own Russian tribute.  Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, we’ve been celebrating with concerts specifically focusing on two composers who were oppressed by the Soviet Regime:  Dmitri Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke.  Originally part of of GOODBYE STALIN! festival in Kings Place, London, in May, it’s great to be able to present this condensed version, featuring some of the best-known and most powerful chamber music from each composer. 

Endymion. Image credit: Dody Nash

Shostakovich had a rocky relationship with Stalin, and this manifests itself in a perilous musical language which both conforms and rebels. This complex musical persona has made the Piano Quintet a great challenge to interpret musically – humour, irony, false joy and sincere sadness are abound in the work, and we’ve enjoyed grappling with these contrasts.  Even the Soviet censorship authority perhaps didn’t know how to interpret it… Is it nationalist or subversive?  In this case they fell in favour: the quintet won the prestigious Stalin prize in 1941.  But the contradictions are clear, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight.  

Schnittke’s equally fraught relationship with the Soviet authorities resulted in some equally wonderful music.  The bittersweet contradictions are clear in Schnittke’s own Piano Quintet  – pulsating, hauntingly beautiful, spookily surreal – and also in his Duo, written in memory of Shostakovich, of whom he saw himself as successor.  It’s incredibly powerful music.  As a lapsed violin player myself, the Duo is one of my personal favourites: it’s so simple but incredibly dramatic. 

It has been interesting rehearsing these Russian works alongside Arvo Pärt, whom we’ve also been profiling this year in performances at Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre and Sound Festival in Aberdeen.  Pärt fled his home in Estonia to Vienna in 1980 after a prolonged struggle against Soviet officialdom.  Summa, for string quartet, is something of a more spiritual, peaceful response.   Whilst Shostakovich’s oppressor already seems like a distant nightmare, Pärt continues to speak up against current regimes, recently dedicating his 4th Symphony to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, imprisoned by Putin since 2003.   We’ll be performing ‘Summa’ again, alongside two more works by Pärt at our next ‘Music for People’ concert in Aberdeen on 12 November, and three new commissions.

We’re really looking forward to coming up to Leeds – I hope you are able to join us for the concert.  And remember you can always find out more about what Endymion is up to, together with details of all our performances at www.endymion.org.uk

Philip Venables
Artistic Director
Endymion

Endymion perform Goodbye Stalin! in the Howard Assembly Room on Friday 4 November at 7.45pm. For more information and ticket booking, click here.

Tweet us at @Howard_Assembly.

Here is a video of Endymion performing a section of Summa, recorded earlier this year at the Purcell Rooms, Southbank Centre:

More information and booking for Endymion’s Goodbye Stalin! concert at the Howard Assembly Room can be found here.

Follow @Howard_Assembly on Twitter.