Month: April 2024

Lancaster Venues 14 to 16

My tale of our debut attendance at the 2023 Lancaster Music Festival continues as we left the Pub and traversed down Market Street to the historic Lancaster Market Square which dates all the way back to 1193. On one corner of the square resides the Lancaster City Museum, which is contained within a Grade II listed building. This sits alongside Lancaster Library where I have previously attended many fine gigs as they were the forerunner of the utterly commendable Get it Loud in the Library scheme.

Lancaster Market Square with the Library building to the right. Image Credit Geograph Britain and Ireland.

On the festival day this was one of the central hubs with food stalls selling tasty Indian snacks that you didn’t know you needed until you sampled them. There was a stage located on the square and the first band we saw had the distinctly unappetising moniker of Do You Like Worms? They are an acoustic duo who are based in Lancaster and home record their own material.

The second act was the Baybeat Street Band, they evolved from and are the longest standing project of the More Music education and music charity. This initiative is an Arts Council organisation and was established in 1993 with the primary purpose of delivering workshops, training, performances and festivals across the Northwest of England area.  The carnival band play regularly at festivals around the local area and around the country and have a pot pourri of influences including Brazilian, Cuban, North African and Caribbean sounds.

It was a rather Baltic day, and emergency visits were made by members of the festival crew to Mountain Warehouse and Primark to purchase various forms of funky knitwear to keep the icicles at bay. The latter named shop is located in the Lancaster Marketgate Shopping Centre and next to their entrance the full personnel of the Haffner Orchestra were all squeezed in place to play a novel afternoon set.

Haffner Orchestra performing at the festival. Image Credit thebayhealthfestivals.org.uk

They are Lancaster’s very own symphony orchestra, and they are composed of a mix of amateurs and professionals from across the region.  They undertake three regular shows each year however they generously included an additional performance this year specifically for the festival. Alex Robinson is the current musical director and conductor who also plays a suite of musical instruments himself, but this was his debut performance at the helm.  

The content of their performance related to Mozart’s 40th symphony in G Minor where they broke the music down into components and crafted it all back together alongside periodic commentary updates from the conductor. Additionally, members of the audience, many children, were offered the rare and exciting opportunity to literally take up the baton and conduct the orchestra themselves.

I looked around at one point and identified that all my crew had disappeared, so took the chance and headed off on my ‘Jack Jones’ to locate a bonus gig and venue as there were so many to be picked off. So, I headed off again further up Market Street followed by a right turn into Penny Street and after Shoe Zone took a left into Diggles Ffrances Passage, one of the many old ginnels in Lancaster.

This leads out onto Gage Street directly in front of the Tap House pub on the right and the Lancaster Collegian Club on the left.  The building is home to a private working men’s clubthat can be hired for functions,and I have walked past many times without a reason to visit, but today I did! Up a set of stairs brought you to the traditional function room with trestle tables. On stage was a hometown singer/songwriter Nicky Snell who was undertaking her second set of the day. Nicky is also an artist and chairs songwriting workshops alongside exhibiting her paintings.

Lancaster Collegian Club. Image Credit whatpub.com

Manchester Venue 114 – Albert Square Festivals

One of the most famous buildings in Manchester is the neo-gothic Town Hall which obtained Grade 1 listing status in 1952 and currently houses Manchester City Council and other local government staff. The town hall was completed in 1877 after a nine-year build and the small matter of the usage of 14 million bricks! It contains within the Great Hall, which is adorned with Ford Madox Brown’s Manchester Murals, there is also the impressive Clock Tower which is 85 metres high which even has a singular name for the clock bell, Great Abel. 

Manchester Town Hall. Image Credit citybaseapartments.com

The Town Hall’s resemblance to the Palace of Westminster resulted in it being used as a location for the original 1990 version of House of Cards and the BBC drama State of Play. The venue was in fact used to announce the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

However, a report in 2014 highlighted the urgent need for modernisation and essential repairs to be undertaken on the building. Subsequently it was closed to visitors in 2018 to undergo a £330m renovation. I have read in the last month that due to ongoing pandemic impacts and the rise in pricing of materials the original completion date has pushed back from July 2024 to provisionally summer 2026.

The building faces St Peters Square to the South and Albert Square to the North. Due to its size and location, the latter named has been used for events and public gatherings including memorials commemorating the Manchester Arena bombing.

It is also a perfect site to host music events so in July 2018 I attended Manchester Albert Square Festival Hall when the 9-day Manchester Jazz Festival was taking place. I grabbed a couple of opportunities to dive into the site for some bonus gigs when heading from work to Manchester Oxford Road station for my commute home. On the first occasion, I saw Minor Swing and on the second I witnessed Squid Ink.

Manchester International Festival. Image Credit ilovemanchester.com

In March 2019 they also had a St Patricks day festival gathering around Cheltenham races time, and I saw the Ceilidh Boys at that soiree. A couple of months later when attending the Dot-to-Dot festival I managed to catch a bonus act called Gobe Band there at a separate event taking place on the square as they were not part of the festival roster of my event.

In 2019 the bi-annual Manchester International Festival took place with the hub location being Albert Square. It was a relaxed set up with lots of food outlets and a couple of real ale tents and with music starting at noon I also had a sally over at lunchtime on the days I was in the office. They set up the music stage under a covered marquee with comfy seats and I always had room when I visited, but I heard it was extremely busy when The Orielles and Working Mens Club played a late evening set there.    

The Orielles. Image Credit soundofbrit.fr

Thus, my first attendance was on 05/07/19 when a group of us were in town and we headed to the site and happened to see House of Ghetto. On my next visit I witnessed Chloe Foy, a singer-songwriter from Gloucestershire who subsequently released her debut album ‘Where Shall We Begin’ in 2021.

The following day there was a Welsh oriented bill hosted by 6 Music DJ Huw Stephens. He introduced a Welsh-language pop band called Gwilym (translates as William), who sounded like they have been influenced by their forebearers Super Furry Animals. Mary Anne Hobbs also hosted a 6-music show on the festival site in a temporary DJ booth and there was the obligatory appearance from the omnipresent John Robb.

The following week I saw a seven-piece local band called Kara. On the lunchtime the next day I witnessed a solo singer Matthew Whitaker and after work the artist was Hannah Ashcroft, a local indie lass who has collaborated with Beth Orton and had support slots with BC Camplight and the Lathums.

My final appearance was when I met up with Gill and we grabbed some tea on the site. Playing that day were acts called Aim Sky High and One Little Atlas who are a local two-piece dream pop combo. They had an ethereal sound and have composed a couple of film scores and have had the opportunity to play at unusual venues such as John Rylands Library and the Whitworth Art Gallery in the city.