Let’s Sing: The Hexagon

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Photo credit: Reading Arts

Choirs to battle it out for Mayor of Reading’s Let’s Sing 2019.

A “fantastic night of entertainment” is promised when 14 local choirs sing their hearts out to be the Mayor of Reading’s Let’s Sing champion 2019. 

Six youth and eight community choirs will be battling it out for the trophy at The Hexagon on Wednesday, 6th March.  

The youth choirs are: Calcot School Choir, Crosfields Chamber Choir, Jewel Tones, JMA Performing Arts, St Anne’s Primary School Choir and St Martin’s Glee Club.  

The line up for the community choirs is: Arborfield Military Wives Choir, Acquired Taste, The Barberettes, Reading Borough Council Staff Choir, Reading Community Gospel Choir, Readiphonics, Time to Sing Choir and Wargrave Community Choir.  

A winner will be chosen in each category and an overall Let’s Sing champion.  

Proceeds from the show will go to Mayor Debs Edwards chosen charities for the year – Berkshire Women’s Aid, Launchpad, Berkshire West Your Way and the YMCA. 

Cllr Edwards says: “We have got an outstanding selection of choirs taking part in this year’s Let’s Sing final. I think my fellow judges and I will have our work cut out selecting the winners. 

“It is going to be a fantastic night of entertainment and I would love to see The Heaxgon packed with supporters and music lovers enjoying the show and raising money for the Mayor’s Charity Fund.” 

The final starts at 6.30pm and tickets are £9.50, concs £4.50, family ticket £20.

  To book call the box office on 0118 960 6060 or visit www.readingarts.com

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Concert: Violin virtuoso

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Former Young Musician of the Year Jennifer Pike will be playing the piece that won her the title when she appears at Marlborough College.

At the age of just 12, Jennifer Pike became the youngest ever winner of the Young Musician of the Year in 2002.

Three years later she performed at the Proms and has gone on to build an international career which has included many more accolades, not least being the only classical artist to win the South Bank Show/Times Breakthrough Award.

Jennifer is passionate about helping other young people enhance their lives through music and is an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust.

You can enjoy her music on Sunday, 20th January when she takes to the stage in the Memorial Hall at the college, as part of the World Class Musicians in Marlborough series when she will perform Vaughan William’s The Lark Ascending alongside pieces by Bach and Wieniawski.

Following the redevelopment of the Memorial Hall (which Marlborough College provides as sponsors of the concert series) the town now has a state-of-the-art concert hall.

The £6.5million project retains the charm of the original design while adding contemporary touches to create a state-of-the-art facility. The acoustics received accolades after a BBC National Orchestra of Wales concert recently and with improved front of house facilities, a concert at Marlborough College will be a true treat for the senses.

  Tickets available at marlboroughconcertseries.org. Enquiries: 01672 892566 or [email protected]

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The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair

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The winter edition of The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair, the first of three in 2019, will welcome you to Battersea Park between 22nd and 27th January.

Inspired by fashionable 1950s and 60s nightspots, with a touch of deco glamour, the winter fair will showcase The Cocktail Hour as its foyer display – showing visitors how to create a contemporary space for parties or a modern club room vibe.

The Cocktail Hour will incorporate diverse seating, side tables, lighting and decoration of all periods for a fresh look, accessorised with 20th century cocktail sets and antique drinking paraphernalia. Bar carts and trolleys are still enormously popular, and stylish examples will feature, alongside cocktail cabinets, serving trays, champagne buckets and glassware. All items in the fair display come from exhibitors and will be for sale.

More than 150 dealers from the UK and Europe will take part in the fair, bringing a beautiful variety of antique and 20th century design drawn from sources around the world. Interior decoration dates from the early 1700s to 1970, by designers and makers from the British Isles, Europe, Scandinavia, the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Furniture, lighting, textiles, ceramics and porcelain, glass, natural history items, architectural elements, and garden artefacts and seating are all on display. Works of art from all periods to the contemporary – paintings, prints and sculpture – are all in the mix.

The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair is also the perfect place to find a wealth of accessories, especially mirrors of every style, and lighting; from antique to mid-20th century table lamps, floor lamps, wall lights, modernist ceiling lights and crystal chandeliers.

Finishing touches can make all the difference and at the fair, buyers love the choice of collectables that work in decorative groups, often presented by dealers in an inspirational fashion on their stands.

A wealth of specialist dealers offer antique and vintage glassware and ceramics for everyday use, colourful Scandinavian glass vases, and collections that make wonderful “tablescapes”, eccentricities such as antique dog collars, brass candlesticks and sets of decorative antique books.

Visitors to the fair can also enjoy home-coooked food and baking at The Kitchen and while visiting the winter fair why not pop into the London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair which is taking place on the mezzanine.

  For full details visit www.decorativefair.com

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Local artist: Lizzie Butler

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You can admire local artist Lizzie Butler’s sky-filled landscapes and more thanks to a mixed show at the Russell Gallery in Putney until Saturday, 26th January.

Lizzie’s background in figurative landscape oil painting and life drawing has informed her current work, which is expressive and semi-abstract in style. She trained at London Fine Art Studios and begins her landscape pieces, which are always inspired by land sea and sky, “en plein air”, in the form of sketches, photographs or paintings. She works primarily in oil, with some etchings.

“My love of painting comes from my father who was an architect,” says Lizzie “who etched at every opportunity he had, and my mother who was a fashion designer and colourist. I have always been drawn to landscapes and wide open spaces – big skies, the likes of which you find in Lincolnshire, where I spent all my childhood summers.

“I often begin my paintings ‘en plain air’ in Richmond Park, taking care to avoid marauding stags and hiding my lunch from enquiring dogs. If I am working from a photograph I’ve taken, this will be developed in my studio, in London, where many layers of oil paint are built up over several days, to create a depth and texture that achieve a different outcome to paintings created in a single day sitting in the open air.

“I was lucky enough to be included in a group exhibition entitled The Craft of Drawing and Painting, at the bewitching Leighton House Museum, in Kensington. Also, what has turned out to have become a pivotal moment for me, my work was hung in a joint exhibition with a friend, where we exhibited a series of sky paintings in Berkeley Street, London.”

Since then, Lizzie is in demand as a painter of skies whether they be in Lincolnshire or Cambridgeshire, “where the flat landscape lends itself to enormous, awe-inspiring skies. In my studio at the moment, I am working to complete a huge metre-square piece of a London sky!”

Trips to other parts of England are always an inspiration, too. The misty rolling hills of the Sussex Downs is another favourite location that has given rise to a series of paintings and etchings based just on this region.

  Find out more about Lizzie at www.artfinder.com/lizzie#

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