June in June, Lucy as a Space Mam, jester Matt, a Bush tribute and Guinness times eight add up to CHARLES HUTCHINSON’S weekend pick for June 21 to 23

 

Friday night is...jazz/folk music night

Quercus featuring June Tabor, National Centre for Early Music, York, tonight, 7.30pm

FOLK singer June Tabor unites with jazz soprano and tenor saxophonist Iain Ballamy and pianist Huw Warren to create poignant chamber music. Tabor’s intensely passionate voice combines with Ballamy’s mellifluous melodies and Welshman Warren’s off-kilter musicality to tell life’s bittersweet tales.

Two-time winner of the BBC Folk Awards Singer of the Year, Warwick-born Tabor, 71, rose to fame in the mid-1970s and has since worked with Maddy Prior and the Oyster Band. Bellamy is listed in the BBC’s 100 Jazz Legends; Warren’s past collaborators include Maria Pia de Vito, Mark Feldman and Erik Truffaz.

York Press:

TABOR'S TRIO: June Tabor plays NCEM with Warren and Ballamy

First comedy gig of the weekend

Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club, The Basement, City Screen, York, Saturday, 8pm

SUNDERLAND’S Matt Reed tops tomorrow’s Laugh Out Loud bill, with support from Sean Percival and Davey Ash, introduced by master of ceremonies Damion Larkin.

Reed is an affable, spontaneous jester equally at home performing at music festivals and burlesque shows. Percival, a former welder from Dudley in the Black Country, steers clear of surrealism to “confront realism in an explosively funny way” in his down-to-earth way. Affable Scouser Ash tells fantastic stories from his strange and sometimes wonderful day-to-day life.

Second comedy gig of the weekend

Lucy Beaumont & Susan Riddle, Edinburgh Fringe previews, The Basement, City Screen, York, Sunday, 8pm

YORK’S Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Hull comic Lucy Beaumont and Scottish writer Susan Riddell in a night of Fringe warm-ups.

In Space Mam, offbeat new mum Beaumont marks “finally turning into a real woman” by telling surreal anecdotes about bubble wrap, ladies’ boxing and boobs; in Duvet Day, her debut show, Riddell champions laziness in an increasingly manic world.

Wow, wow, wow, amazing tribute gig of the weekend

Cloudbursting – The Music Of Kate Bush, Fibbers, York, Saturday, 7.45pm prompt

MANDY Watson leads her five-piece band through Wuthering Heights,Running Up That Hill, Hounds Of Love, Wow, Babooshka, This Woman’s Work et al.

Watson’s vocals are an homage, with no hint of pastiche. "There can only be one Kate Bush!" she says. "These songs are full of so many wonderful characters; when you perform them, that’s who you become."

Anniversary of the weekend

Kind Hearts And Coronets (U), 70th Anniversary screening, Vintage Sundays, City Screen, York, Sunday, 12 noon

ONE of the pearls of British film, Robert Hamer's comedy is a black-humoured study in the gentle art of murder.

Alec Guinness famously takes on eight different roles in the story of an ambitious young man who plots to secure a family fortune by creatively dispatching those ahead of him in the line of succession.

Dennis Price and Valerie Hobson co-star in arguably the greatest film from the Ealing Studios stable.