Highlights:
- The Lightning Seeds celebrate the 25th anniversary of Jolification
- Jaki Graham, one of the first ladies of British Mowtown
- Award-winning author, Roddy Doyle
Folkworks
Chris Wood
Monday 9 March, 8pm
In a world of soundbites and distractions, Chris Wood is a truth seeker. His writing is permeated with love and wry intelligence, uplifting and challenging as he celebrates the sheer one-thing-after-anotherness of life.
Tom Robinson and Chris Difford are fans while Stick In The Wheel and The Unthanks look to him as an influence.
Winner of 6 BBC Folk Awards, he’s played with The Royal Shakespeare Company and was a key member of The Imagined Village along with Billy Bragg and Martin Carthy. A wise and soulful craftsman, his concerts are a cliché free zone.
Book now: https://sagegateshead.com/whats-on/folkworks-chris-wood/
NICMS: Endellion Quartet
Wednesday 11 March, 7.30pm
- Endellion Quartet
- Beethoven String Quartet in F, Op 14 no 1
- Sally Beamish Quartet (A Myndin’)
- Mendelssohn Quartet in E minor, Op 44 no 2
- Puccini Crisantemi
- Ravel String Quartet in F
Returning for a ninth visit to the Chamber Music Series in their fortieth and final season, the Endellion Quartet will bring not just experience, but freshness and enthusiasm to their varied programme, including a Beethoven rarity – the composer’s own arrangement of one of his piano sonatas.
Book now: https://sagegateshead.com/whats-on/nicms-endellion-quartet/
The Lightning Seeds
Thursday 12 March, 7.30pm
With the release of the 25-year anniversary reissue of Jollification last September, The Lightning Seeds will be performing the seminal album across a six date UK tour in March 2020. The tour will see Ian Broudie and the band perform Jollification in its entirety live in Sage One on Thursday 12 March.
The original 1994 LP has sold over 900,000 copies, receiving critical acclaim and going on to be certified platinum. The reissue will be released digitally as well as on heavyweight black vinyl and limited edition strawberry red (and strawberry scented!) coloured vinyl.
Both vinyl releases will include a bonus 7” with two rare b-sides: Perfect (acoustic version) and Lucifer Sam.
Book now: https://sagegateshead.com/whats-on/the-lightning-seeds/
The Rifles – Unplugged Tour
RESCHEDULED date from 7.2.2020
Thursday 12 March, 8pm
The Rifles are an English indie rock band from Chingford, London.
Their debut album, No Love Lost, was released on 17 July 2006 and reached No. 68 in the UK charts.
The band currently consists of Joel Stoker, Lucas Crowther, Rob Pyne, Grant Marsh and Dean Mumford.
Book now: https://sagegateshead.com/whats-on/the-rifles/
Classical Season 2019/20 | RNS at Home
Montero plays Tchaikovsky
Friday 13 March, 7.30pm
- Alexandre Blochconductor
- Gabriela Monteropiano
- Royal Northern Sinfonia
- GriegNorwegian Dances
- TchaikovskyPiano Concerto No.1
- StravinskySymphony in C
The horns throw down the gauntlet: the piano strides forward to take the challenge. And with one of the greatest melodies in Russian music, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto is on its way. Thrilling stuff – it’s no wonder that this is one of the best loved of all romantic masterpieces for piano and orchestra, and played today by the inimitable Gabriela Montero, it should be gripping.
Guest conductor Alexandre Bloch sets the scene with the Nordic freshness of Grieg’s irresistibly tuneful Norwegian Dances and crowns the concert with a bracingly original take on the symphony from the razor-sharp imagination of Igor Stravinsky.
Book now: https://sagegateshead.com/whats-on/rns-at-home-montero-plays-tchaikovsky/
Jaki Graham
Friday 13 March, 7.45pm
Jaki Graham is one of the most appealing soul entertainers to emerge from the UK, as a true pioneer having paved the way for many a black British female solo artist who followed. Jaki achieved international success with a string of hits from 1985, including Could it Be I’m Falling In Love?, Round and Around, Set Me Free, Step Right Up and Breaking Away, also making the Music Guinness Book of Records in the 80s as the first black British female solo artist to have six consecutive Top 10/20 hits.
Her career excelled in the 90s with her album, Real Life, selling more than 800,000 copies in less than four weeks. Her cover of Ain’t Nobody reached No. 1 in the US Billboard Dance charts for five weeks as well as achieving gold in Australia, Japan and the USA.
Jaki is officially a Motown artist, one of the only British females to hold this credential alongside Kiki Dee. Jaki also holds a doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton, for which she was also made pro-chancellor due to her outstanding contributions to the music industry and awarded her very own star on Birmingham’s Broad Street.
Jaki Graham firmly maintains her position as one of Britain’s most revered ladies of soul with the 2018 release of her long awaited new studio album, When a Woman Loves, which topped the UK Soul Charts.
An Evening With Jaki Graham gives the perfect opportunity for real music lovers to experience Jaki’s hits and Motown classics stripped back, whilst turning the spotlight on her powerful and emotive vocals, highlighting her effervescent personality that she’s known and loved for, up close and personal!
Book now: https://sagegateshead.com/whats-on/jaki-graham/
Conversations with Roddy Doyle
Saturday 14 March, 8pm
Celebrate the career of one of Ireland’s best-loved writers, as he discusses his work in an intimate and entertaining evening of sprawling conversation – special guest interviewer to be announced.
Roddy Doyle’s writing is immediately recognisable for his rich humour, unique use of dialogue and contemporary references. Credited with having reinvented the modern Irish novel, Roddy presents difficult critical social and historical issues in a concise and accessible form. His work inimitably portrays the experiences of everyday Irish life – and he has even managed to persuade quite a few people that Mustang Sally is a traditional Irish song.
With a chance to hear the man himself read from such books as The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and A Star Called Henry, this is an evening not to be missed.
Roddy Doyle is the author of eleven novels, two collections of stories, a memoir of his parents, eight children’s books, a number of plays and screenplays, an opera translation, and co-wrote The Second Half with Roy Keane. His many awards include the Booker Prize for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993), the Irish PEN Award (2009), and the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Commitments (1991).
Most recently, Roddy wrote the screenplay for the film Rosie, which heartbreakingly depicts Ireland’s homelessness crisis in some of his most moving and insightful work to date.
His new novel Love – in which two old friends spend an evening looking back on their relationships with women, with parents, with each other – will be published in June 2020.
Book now: https://sagegateshead.com/whats-on/roddy-doyle-20/
Classical Season 2019/20 | Piano Greats
Piano Greats: Gabriela Montero
Sunday 15 March, 3pm
- Gabriela Monteropiano
- MozartSonata No.10 in C major K330
- BeethovenSonata No.21 in C major ‘Waldstein’
- SchumannKreisleriana
Flamboyant, imaginative and irrepressible, the Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero is a virtuoso in a class of her own: a pianist whose unique gift for improvisation put creativity back at the heart of classical performance, and whose outspoken ethical principles mean that her music-making is about infinitely more than just the notes on the page.
The winner of the 2018 Beethoven Prize celebrates three fellow free spirits – Beethoven, naturally, but also Mozart, before throwing herself into the exuberantly romantic fantasy-world of Schumann’s Kreisleriana: a musical portrait of the artistic spirit at its most unbuttoned.
Book now: https://sagegateshead.com/whats-on/piano-greats-gabriela-montero/