It’s certainly a varied spring and summer season at Marsden Mechanics.
The village’s entertainment hub will feature community choirs, the songs of Bruce Springsteen, big band music, folk and a play about women policing in the 1950s.
Here are some of the highlights.
The Valley Voices Choir Fest on Sunday, May 14, features community choirs from the Colne Valley and beyond with all money raised for Colne Valley Help to support people needing food packs and Marsden Community Trust which runs Marsden Mechanics.
The choirs include Artful Voices, Huddersfield Community Gospel Choir, True Talent Theatre School, Unity Voices and The Soul Choir.
Tickets are £8 for adults and £6 for concessions. Doors are open from 3pm and the event starts at 4pm with a bar and the kitchen serving homemade cake and hot drinks.
Valley Voices Choir Fest organiser Siena Lloyd said: ”Valley Voices Choir Fest promises to be the number one music event in the Colne Valley this spring. Our amazing line up of choirs will get your hands clapping and toes tapping.”
The music of Bruce Springsteen will feature on Saturday, June 3, at 7.30pm with the Springsteen on Broadway show featuring Graeme Richardson and Louise Howarth from popular north east Springsteen band the NE Street Band.
They perform the songs from Springsteen’s critically acclaimed Broadway shows along with fan favourites and audience requests all done acoustically with guitar, vocals, harmonica and flute.
The Hootin’ Annies Big Band on Sunday, June 11, at 7.30pm features clarinettist and sax player Peter Long and the band will play an acoustic evening of Benny Goodman music. This is going to be an all acoustic gig set up in the style that Benny Goodman’s band would have played.
Peter, who is also a very witty frontman, has played and arranged for the Jools Holland Rhythm and Blues Orchestra where he worked with Tom Jones, Norah Jones, Solomon Burkes, Dr John, Lulu, Georgie Fame and Lionel Richie. He also directs the big band at Ronnie Scott’s and runs the repertory orchestra Echoes of Ellington whose 2018 album The Jazz Planets won the Times’ Must Have Jazz CD of the year.
Mikron Theatre presents A Force To Be Reckoned With on Saturday, May 13, at 7pm about women in policing in the 1950s.
On Sunday, June 18, at 7pm it’s the Washboard Resonators from Leeds in England who are best described as sounding and looking like a ragtime street band meets a Hollywood musical on a theatre stage somewhere around 1932.
They play the sounds of Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, The Washboard Rhythm Kings, Max Miller and George Formby along with some of their own songs.
The spirit of these long-gone artists and their music is summoned back to life every time Martyn and Jack take the stage with their mixture of old traditional songs and new songs written by the band.
On Friday, July 14, at 8pm the high energy Swing Commanders play some of the finest music from the 1930s to the 1950s. They have appeared at most of the UK’s top Vintage and Country Music festivals.
For something really different there’s 440 Theatre presenting Romeo and Juliet on Thursday, July 27, at 7.30pm.
They perform Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet in just 40 minutes for each play, transforming two of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies into outrageous comedies. To see the full list of events go to https://www.marsdenmechanics.co.uk/events/
Written by ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging, website content and copywriting.
