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Abbotsbury Music: previous performances and projects

The Garden Operas Our most popular productions are the outdoor operas, put on by the Garden Opera Company and enjoyed by constantly growing audiences. The words are translated into modern, lucid and amusing English. This year will be our ninth production.
Babar the Elephant A story teller, with pianist Eleanor Riu, brought Babar's Adventures to an audience of children in Bridport Arts Centre. Children from local schools made collages which were displayed in Bridport and Weymouth Libraries. Elizabeth Fortescue and Barbara Laurie made a child-sized Babar to stand outside the Bridport Arts Centre to publicise the show.

St Catherine: the Play For the Millennium Year our project was a play with music about St Catherine, the patron saint of the chapel above the village of Abbotsbury. (Visit our St Catherine website www.st-catherine.org.uk) . We took the text from the play Tyrannic Love by John Dryden. Ronan Magill wrote music to interpret the text. The performances by professional actors and musicians were at Abbotsbury, Dorchester, Lyme Regis and Muchelney.




St Catherine: the banners
 As part of Abbotsbury Music's Millennium project we invited the people of Abbotsbury to make banners celebrating their lives, societies and businesses.
We hung no less than 48 banners in St Catherine's Chapel, suspended in rows high above the floor. They were in the Chapel during Dorset Arts week 2000 and were seen by more than a thousand people from all over the world who walked up the hill from the village.

Columbian Fiesta evenings
 We have put on two Columbian Fiesta evenings in the Abbotsbury Sub-Tropical Gardens. These were extremely popular events enjoyed by all ages.There was a workshop in the afternoon at which people could make themselves exotic hats and costumes for the evening. At the performance, children in the audience were invited to have their faces painted. Immediately beforehand, anyone who wanted to learn was taught a dance which became part of the show.


Abbotsbury Arts Week 2001
Music to Maze:
Tom Weld built us a intricate maze of willow hoops, tall enough to walk through and covered with painted cloth. The passages wound around the floor of the village hall, and out into the yard. Children from four local schools painted picture and messages onto the covering and contributed pieces of art to hang inside. Jonathan Lloyd composed a haunting, repeating skein of music, Francis Silkstone recorded it together with sounds from the village recorded by Lucetta Radcliffe. In 2 weeks, more than 1,200 adults and children explored it. Our visitors' book showed how moved many of our visitors were by this combination of visual art and music.



Dorset Art Weeks 2002: Music to Maze Again:

In 2002 Tom recreated his tunnel Maze in the Mulberry Gallery at Weymouth Library. It had new work by children , mostly in the form of minature, hand painted books.
Music Workshops
Many more children - and adults - would learn to play instruments if there was some way they could try them out first.
We sponsored several workshops by Jane Amos who brought a collection of 50 instruments which visitors could try out on the spot. If they liked one, they could carry on to have formal lessons. As a result of these workshops, by local demand, Jane is running the Abbotsbury Music Club over the winter and spring 2002.

Abbotsbury Music in collaboration with ARTS IN HOSPITAL presented two performances of classical guitar music played by James Boyd in the public spaces of the Dorchester County Hospital. The concert took place on Dec 18 2002 and was enjoyed by patients, staff and visitors. James played works by Granados, Sor, Albeniz, Rodrigo, Rawsthorne and Walton. Click for CV
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