PREVIEW Christmas past and present HONITON AND DORCHESTER
FOLK duo GreenMatthews bring two delightful Christmas shows, A Christmas Carol, to the Beehive at Honiton on 14th December and A Brief History of Christmas, to Dorchester Corn Exchange on 18th December. First published in 1843, A Christmas Carol is credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the British Christmas and has been loved and retold by every generation since. Using new lyrics and traditional English folk tunes, GreenMatthews use a bewitching blend of voices and instruments to create a musical retelling of this seasonal favourite. The first half of the show is a mixture of Victorian carols and midwinter folk songs which paint a vivid and colourful picture of the festive season in Dickens’ time. The second half is an hour-long retelling of the tale of how flinty-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge undergoes several ghostly visitations over the course of a cold and bitter Christmas Eve and awakes the following morning transformed into the epitome of the Christmas spirit—warm-hearted, generous and loving. In their Brief History, GreenMatthews and Jude Rees present a festive romp through 600 years of Christmas music, songs and carols played on archaic instruments such as cittern, shawm and rauschpfeife, as well as more familiar instruments such as guitar, flute, oboe and accordion— all helped along by GreenMatthews‘ trademark wit and humour. Beginning in the Middle Ages and ending in the 20th century, they take the audience on a whistle-stop tour of the origins of our midwinter festivities. The show includes long-forgotten songs and tales as well as some familiar and well-loved carols.
Moscow Drug Club on tour CHETNOLE
A QUINTET who met in Bristol, brought together by a shared love of the music of 1930s Berlin, Parisian Hot Club and gypsy swing are on tour in December with Artsreach, including Chetnole village hall on Saturday 7th December. Moscow Drug Club is a curious place, where elements of 1930’s Berlin Cabaret, Hot Club de France, Nuevo tango and Gypsy Campfire meet, have a few drinks and stagger arm in arm into the darkness of some cobbled street in eastern Europe, on a mission to find the bar where Django Reinhardt and Tom Waits are having an after hours jam with the local Tziganes. The band’s origins were in the darkness of late winter, in a shady watering
It’s Panto fun with Stuff and Nonsence at the Electric Palace in December hole south of the river, in Bristol, where North American chanteuse Katya Gorrie and guitarist Will Edmunds met to have a quiet drink. Through the door walked an old friend, jazz trumpeter Jonny Bruce, and soon the three of them were chatting about the swing music of the 1930s and 40s, German cabaret songs, and the Parisian songwriters of the 50s. Not long after this fateful evening, the three friends met Mirek Salmon, a classically trained accordionist from Poland, whose passion for French musette and Argentinian tango was both infectious and inspiring and together the four musicians started to create a small set of music derived from these ideas. Finally, long time friend and exceptional double bassist Andy Crowdy was called in to complete the quintet, and so Moscow Drug Club was formed. The band has wowed crowds across the
UK with their intoxicating and infectious sound. With previous performances at venues including the Royal Albert Hall and festivals including Womad, Larmer Tree and Marlborough Jazz, Moscow Drug Club want to lure you into their darkly comic world.
Puppet panto fun BRIDPORT
STUFF and Nonsense Theatre Company brings Puppet Panto, an original homegrown show, loosely based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, to Bridport’s Electric Palace from 28th to 31st December. When a group of puppets put on a show, how will they cope when everything starts to go wrong? What will they do to make sure the show can go on? Can you help them solve their problems and put on a brilliant show?
Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine December 2019 95