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Category: entertainment and leisure news

  • ‘Thame Music ‘ Launched By Top Orchestra

    THE world class, Orchestra of St John’s, will perform for the first event of an exciting new collaboration to form ‘Thame Music’.

    The concert will take place at St Mary’s Church, Thame, on Saturday, May 21, at 7.30pm.

    John Lubbock, OSJ’s founder, is the Artistic Director and the programme will include Christine Cairns, Mezzo-soprano, Britten’s Simple Symphony,Respighi Il tramonto, Walton’s Music from Henry V and the Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings. Tickets availabele on 01844 212834

    Since the OSJ was founded in 1967 by its Artistic Director, John Lubbock, it has built its reputation as one of the UK’s leading orchestras on world-class concerts at the finest festivals and concert halls combined with intimate music making in community settings. It commissions new music, produces recordings and is broadcast on radio and television, further ensuring its international profile and accessibility.

    OSJ Onstage (Leader: Harvey de Souza): Each year, OSJ performs concerts throughout the UK and overseas at leading festivals and concert halls, at its Residency bases and in community settings. Through its unique artistic policy, it presents innovative, integrated and audacious programmes that combine rarely or unperformed pieces with well-known repertoire. Its aim is to give audiences the opportunity to hear something new (unusual or previously unheard works by living composers or those from the past) alongside something familiar.

    OSJ Offstage – a partnership between OSJ and Create: OSJ is nationally acclaimed for its OSJ Offstage programme, run in partnership with Create, the dynamic new arts charity. OSJ OffStage takes a fresh, new approach to making music accessible to the widest possible audience. It promotes new experiences, fosters musical interests and talents, and stimulates participation, creativity and attendance at musical events. Activities include: creative music-making workshops in mainstream and special needs schools, with young offenders and with those who are homeless; concerts for children and for those with specific disabilities; cross-arts projects; informal performances for older people in residential homes and patients in hospices and hospitals; masterclasses; and major community events.

    OSJ Soundynamics – a partnership between OSJ and Create: Through their groundbreaking OSJ Soundynamics training initiative, OSJ and Create run bespoke creative music programmes to meet the training needs of both large and small corporate clients and other employers. Courses, ranging from graduate training programmes and management development seminars to large-scale conferences, use a series of interactive modules that enable participants to explore their creativity and develop sustainable skills including time management, teamwork, communication and leadership. Courses improve employees’ performance, motivation and job satisfaction.

  • Local Author Offers Creative Writing Advice

    VALERIE Blumenthal, who lives in a small village near Thame, is the well-known author of eight novels that have been widely translated, including
    Saturday’s Child, which has sold more than half a million copies.
    She has also written short stories for ‘YOU’ magazine, the Mail on Sunday, as well as many features for the Oxford Times. She will be bringing her expertise, encouragement and enthusiasm to Thame Adult Learning this summer term when she will be running a ten week course on Creative Writing, called ‘Focussing on Fiction’. The course starts on Thursday, April 21, from 12.45 to 2.45pm. Why not come along and explore the creativity within you?
    To book or for more details please call Thame Adult Learning on 01844 213400
    or go to http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/adultcommlearn and click on the link
    to course database.

  • Requiem Dedicated To Survivors

    THAME Choral Society will perform Brahms?s Deutsche Requiem at St Mary?s Church, Thame on Saturday, April 23, at 7.45pm.
    To sing this great masterpiece requires a great deal of stamina but the choir has given themselves the extra challenge of singing in German as originally written.
    Brahms?s Requiem is unusual in that it is a Requiem to the living ? a Requiem is customarily dedicated to a death ? and for that reason Thame Choral Society has decided to dedicate the performance to the survivors of the Tsunami Disaster on Boxing Day last year. Relief has flooded into the affected areas, but the help to re-stabilise the livelihoods of thousands of people will be interminable.
    Last November the Choir held a workshop under the guidance of Robert Dean of London?s Philharmonia Chorus. Choirs from all over Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hertfordshire joined in on that occasion and will be warmly welcomed to return to sing again for this very special performance. Also on that occasion, Benedict Nelson, a student from Guildford School of Music, astonished the gathering with an extraordinary talent for one so young. Thame Choral Society is very privileged to offer him the opportunity to sing in his very first professional performance as the Baritone soloist. Our Soprano for the evening will be Cheryl Enever who lives in Chesham and has previously sung with the TCS.

    To complement the Brahms, the programme will also include Mozart?s Horn Concerto no 4, soloist Herrick Hayes, and the Overture to the Magic Flute

    Tickets will be available from Thame Tourist information Office and at the door. For further details please call 01494 488687.

  • Thame Festival Latest

    PLANS for this year’s Thame Festival (Monday, June 13 to Saturday,18)are going well, and an exciting programme is being put together by the festival committee, under Chairman, Bob Davies.
    Bookings are being taken for a Jazz evening on the Friday, June 17, which will feature a Blues Brothers Tribute band as well as two other bands and a bar.
    A special ‘Thame Festival Ale’ is being brewed specially by the Chiltern Brewery at Terrick and other events will include a quiz for primary school-age children in the afternoon of Wednesday, June 15, one for the adults in the evening (with bar), a Fair Trade fashion show (with bar), Scout Gang Show at the Scout HQ in Southern Road (without bar!), a Teddy Bears’picnic for very young children, a Tea Dance for retired people at the Barn Dance and a Saturday night Bands session for young people at the Southern Road Recreational ground, sponsored by Interoute Transport, Rycote Lane, who will be providing two large lorries for the stage.
    Watch ThameNews.Net for Festival Up-dates.

  • Learn To Dance AND Keep fit

    HAVE fun and keep fit whilst learning to dance at Thame Barns centre, on thursday evenings 7.30pm to 9pm, starting March 3.
    Rock’n Roll, Salsa, Disco/Street dance and Jive, taught by a professional tuor. Bring your own refreshment; Ticket only

  • Football Club Rocks To Full House

    STUDENTS at Lord Williams?s School organised a charity gig at Thame Football Club last Friday featuring six local bands playing to a packed house.
    Last minute additions, SIXTHERA, started the evening off in fine style with their guitar driven sound impressing audience and fellow musicians alike.
    HIDDEN AJENDA followed. With Tom Smith?s guitar rig nearly obliterating the back wall, new guitar player going through borrowed gear and vocals struggling with an under powered PA, they could have been phased but these guys are experienced beyond their years and turned in another strong performance. Their following continues to grow in number and dedication.
    TWIN SISTER is Will and Ed from ?THURSDAYS OF VEGA?, on guitar and bass, and Alex Camp, HEDROOM?s guitarist, on drums! Dressed up in bizarre costume and cavorting around the stage almost in time to their mental riffs they proved genuinely entertaining. Throwing spiky, post punk aggression and complex time signatures all over the place their part performance art, part edgy, intellectual experimentalism was just plain nuts. If they survive, Twin Sister will definitely be worth seeing again. Mad as a box of frogs, brilliant.
    How do you follow that? Well, you come on, do your stuff and capture the audience in the way INVETERATE did. Powerful antipodean, tribal rhythms and delayed vocal; a hypnotic Angus Young look/sound/movealike guitar player, a front man with real presence and a voice, what more can you ask? Good band.
    Then HEDROOM! Here class and experience showed as the band took to the stage with their trademark ludicrous energy and performed superbly. Bass and drums really locked together and drove the whole thing from the very first. A more mature musical performance from Christian was strangely aided by the PA?s lack of power, his typically committed vocal delivery lacked the harshness that can dominate the set through a bigger rig, coming over with more warmth and sitting in the mix far better. A good night for such a happy accident as the band were really cooking with Alex?s guitar sound also benefiting. He proved he?s as mad on the axe as he is on skins. An excellent set from a really good band which has suddenly got a whole lot tighter; maybe they should turn off the treble forever.
    LAMENT finished the night, their first performance back here since Matt?s departure. How would they cope? Traditionally the most demanding band format, the 3 piece has no hiding place. Everyone must be on the money; if you can?t play it will definitely show; if you can, it can be inspirational. Well these boys can play and it was inspirational. With the best gear, they had the best band sound of the night ( I guess you get what you pay for). Full of wicked tight riffs and excellent interplay between a wildly dreadlocked Alex on bass and a thunderous Tom on drums, and with Dave handling lead and rhythm guitar duties and vocals superbly, they took it to another level. This set was a triumph.
    There may just come a day when this audience will be saying ?I was there????.?
    This 3 piece are going to be awesome, watch this space!
    Congratulations to everyone involved in making this a highly successful night, great bands, a great audience, great organization, excellent result. Can?t wait for the next one.
    Contributed By; The Stringer

  • Towersey Folk Duo Returning To Thame

    FOLK duo, Mick Ryan and Pete Harris are coming back to Thame for a concert on Friday, March 11, at the Thame Players Theatre in Nelson Street.
    Their most recent visit was to the 2005 Towersey festival when they stayed as guests of Chris and Margi Savory, who said: ?At their final concert at the festival they dedicated a song I had particularly loved, ‘The Poppies,’ to us, thanking us for being the people who had got them up for breakfast every day!? The friendship has now extended to Margie and Chris inviting them back to perform their mix of traditional and original material at a concert at Thame Players Theatre.
    Pete Harris explained that he was particularly happy to come back to Thame. ?Playing at Towersey festival was great? he enthused, ?but we didn?t get a chance to see the town. We?re really looking forward to playing at what sounds like a great venue, meeting the audience afterwards, not to mention sampling a pint at one of Thame?s many pubs, which Chris has told us about.?
    Mick Ryan is well known on the folk circuit as a particularly fine singer. His melodic voice catches at the heart on the wistful songs and stirs the blood on the rip- roaring traditional numbers. Mick also writes much of the material he performs; folk musicals like the hugely popular ?A Tolpuddle man? and ?A Day?s Work? include songs that have been performed by artists on both sides of the Atlantic.
    Pete Harris is a virtuoso multi instrumentalist, playing the guitar, bouzouki, mandolin, mandola, banjo, bass guitar and whistle with equal energy and skill.
    Together, Mick and Pete make up a remarkable duo; they have been described by a leading American folk magazine, (Dirty Linen, USA) as ?simply one of the finest acts performing English folk music??

    Tickets are

  • Opera Star Helps Raise Money For Thame Amnesty

    AN internationally known opera singer, and a popular TV actor, helped raise money for Amnesty, in the latest of the popular concerts of words and music, organised by Thame writer, Patrick Collins.
    The concert on Sunday, at the Players Theatre, Thame, was a sell-out and raised

  • Boris Congratulates Thame Cinema

    BORIS Johnson, MP, wrote to Thame Cinema 4 All over Christmas congratulating them on their grant from the UK Film Council.
    Thame Cinema has been awarded

  • Thame Choral Society’s Concert Success (Contributed)

    TRUE to its reputation, Thame Choral Society gave a really excellent Christmas Concert in St Mary’s Church on Saturday evening. The works included the popular Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten, accompanied by the brilliant young international Thame Harpist, Sarah Goss, the charming Dvorak Mass in D (on the occasion of his Centenary) and Pergolesi’s Magnificat. As usual, the audience joined in the carol singing and the organist was the celebrated Colin Spinks from Aylesbury.
    David Hayes, the society’s Musical Director, is to be congratulated for this wonderful programme which he conducted throughout, now fully recovered from his recent ill health.