Rachel Bower

Nov 20, 2023 | yorkshiretimes.co.uk | Isabel Galleymore |Abeer Ameer |Matthew Stewart |Rachel Bower

artsIt is a testament to the power and authority of the combined forces of Langcliffe Singers and Settle Orchestra that they should persuade a confirmed Baroque enthusiast to recalibrate his compass. And you needn’t be a devotee of German Romanticism to have relished the sheer verve of Saturday evening’s performance of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, in the evocative space of Skipton’s Christ Church.

Nov 17, 2023 | yorkshiretimes.co.uk | Isabel Galleymore |Abeer Ameer |Matthew Stewart |Rachel Bower

If ever you were to doubt the educational potential of poetry, then Isabel Galleymore’s astonishing poem reveals, in acrobatic metaphors and linguistic circumlocution, as much about creatures that shuffle ungainly about the sea bed as you could ever learn from an aridly moribund textbook on marine biology.

Nov 11, 2023 | yorkshiretimes.co.uk | Abeer Ameer |Matthew Stewart |Rachel Bower |Alice Fowler

artsBystanderAlso known as collateral damage. The usual story for his type:minding his own businesstending to his pomelos and pomegranatesand watering his carnations. His granddaughter watchesas he spreads his fig leaf sap to cure his psoriasis. Guided missilesdon’t show the usual signs of guidance. They don’t shout Hallelujah,they don’t clap in praise of the Lordand they don’t quietly come seeking a Bodhi tree under which to sit cross-leggedto reach Enlightenment.

Nov 10, 2023 | yorkshiretimes.co.uk | Matthew Stewart |Rachel Bower |Alice Fowler

artsMatthew Stewart says no more than he needs to. Taking a synoptic compositional approach almost as an axiom – poetry is supposed to be a distilled arrangement of words – his poems carry as much weight as he wants to divulge. And his instinctive resistance to length or complexity is a refreshing leitmotif, as though pressing the reset button might actuate a momentous clarification of thought.

Nov 6, 2023 | yorkshiretimes.co.uk | Rachel Bower |Alice Fowler |Matthew Stewart

artsAs Gregory Batsleer reminded us before a thrilling performance of the Vespers of 1610, this was the first occasion on which Monteverdi’s masterwork had ever been attempted by Huddersfield Choral Society. That the conductor’s comment was a statement of objective fact, rather than a precautionary exercise in damage limitation, says much about Batsleer’s assured hand and intuitive feel for the moment.