| Taunton Association of Performing Arts |  |
Quartz Arts Festival
Quartz, Taunton’s first and best arts festival, kicks off its third season on October 3rd 2007. Once again Quartz is hosted at the Queen’s College campus on Trull Road. Sculptures will be outside on the school lawns with a free-admission exhibition of paintings and prints in the Victorian splendour of the former schoolroom. There’s also a performance every night of Quartz in the Queen’s Hall. “We couldn’t believe our luck at being able to book Seth Lakeman to headline the festival,” said Quartz director Keith Wheatley. “He’s moved very quickly from having a strong West Country following to becoming a major international figure.” Seth’s performances at this year’s Glastonbury enhanced his reputation as an artist who crosses and blurs musical boundaries and the Freedom Fields album is already on many “Best of the Year” lists. At the other end of the 12-day schedule the opening Blues Night on Oct 3rd is an evening of full on craziness and hard-driving roots music. The Birmingham Blues Bros take up where Jake and Elwood left off, performing all the old favourites from the cult movie with gusto & style. They share the evening with Spoonful, a North Devon band focused around the extraordinary vocal talents of Johnny Sharp Jnr. Cabaret fans will adore the uber theatricality of ShooShoo Baby on the first Saturday of Quartz. Singers Tanya Holt and Anna Braithwaite met on an opera course and discovered a mutual passion for Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Since then, together with pianist Carl Schneider, they’ve taken Broadway to Berlin around the world on cruise ships and to the Edinburgh fringe. Tickets include a meal and a glass of wine. Music maybe the pounding heart of the festival but Quartz also caters to the other senses. Michael Portillo takes to the stage on Oct 5th to outline a wide and varied career that has taken him from the Cabinet under Mrs Thatcher to becoming a familiar and friendly presence on TV and radio. His views of Brown and the Cameron regime are eagerly awaited and we anticipate a lively Q&A session. Fans of the Wessex novelist Thomas Hardy rarely get to see his work on stage. Hardy’s sprawling Victorian dramas seem more easily adapted to the bigger screen than the theatre. Undaunted, the Dorset Corset Theatre Company from Dorchester perform their own adaptation of Far From The Madding Crowd on stage during Quartz and convey beautifully the eternal romantic dilemmas of Bathsheba Everdene and her squad of admirers. Adam Night, one of Britain’s top stage hypnotists, makes a first appearance in Taunton. For many years stage hypnotism was banned by local licensing policies but recent legal changes mean that festival-goers can now safely be entranced into doing the unaccountable and the unbelievable – to the delight of their friends and relatives. Opera enthusiasts should not miss a chance to visit to the one-night-only Italian pizza emporium created on stage by English Pocket opera. Crazy tenor chef Ravanelli, his brother and baritone accomplice Gianlucca, and sister Lucia provide arias and ensembles from well-known operas, Neapolitan songs and an operatic recipe demonstration. Bellissimo!Contact Details: Keith Wheatley |
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