Classical innovation in the Lake District

Gabriella Swallow
appears 10 August

Creating a classical music concert series in a way which is new, innovative and will attract newcomers to the genre is a talisman for many groups. On Sunday 10 August, a new venture launches at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick. There are four concerts themed around the four elements, and rather ambitiously the concerts aim to combine music, dance, poetry and animation. They are promoted by SplashClassics, a Cumbrian organisation founded by Artistic Director Andrew Lucas, who spent 16 years in charge of Lake District Summer Music. The concerts involve a wide variety of artists including Martin Roscoe, Peter Donohoe and Red Priest, and quite a degree of imagination has gone into trying to put together intriguing combinations of music and the other arts.

The first event, Fire, on 10 August combines music from Stravinsky's Firebird improvised by a tango ensemble (!), with Argentinian tango duo Gernan Cuestas and Natasha Leinger, with the sand animator Lindsey McConnochie, known as the Sand Artist. Water, on Sunday 17 August combines the brothers Tom and Jonathan Scott's piano duo in Ravel's Mother Goose Suite with Tom Scott's animations, and danced solos to Schubert's Trout Quintet. Air, on 24 August features Red Priest in Vivaldi's Four Seasons, plus new poetry from Carola Luther the poet-in-residence at The Wordsworth Trust in 2012 and choreography by Kelly McLelland. The final event, Earth, features Martin Roscoe and Peter Donohoe in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, they are joined by singers Wendy Dawn Thompson and Christopher Diffey for Mahler's Song of the Earth, all danced by Undiscovered Dance Company.

Further details from the SplashClassics website.