Saturday 19 July at The Fringe

The middle weekend of the Buxton Fringe is packed with possibilities and opportunities and you could have a whole weekend of artistic indulgence for free. There are art exhibitions at the Buxton Museum and Gallery, the Green Man Gallery, at the Spring Bank Arts Centre New Mills. For this weekend only at the Dome – home to Fringe sponsors, the University of Derby – is the Peak District Artisans Art Fair. Over 50 artists and craftworkers will be displaying a fantastic array of work and there will be free talks and displays.

Taking to the streets of Buxton on Saturday – fingers-crossed for the weather – will be the Chapel-en-le-Frith Morris Men and 19 other Morris dance sides. For many people this will be their only encounter with the Fringe. Chapel Morris have been working hard to engage people with Morris dancing – running a workshop for beginners, producing cut-out paper Morris figures and organising a competition to find 21 Mini-Morris figures in 21 locations around town. Their energy, wit and enthusiasm deserve reward.

There are a number of one-off music events to look forward to and to squeeze in. On Saturday at St Mary’s Church at 3pm ChorAlchemy – a Youth Chamber Choir – will be presenting a wide-ranging programme drawing on cabaret, church music, pop, jazz and folk. At St John's the ever-popular and rightly admired Amaretti Chamber Orchestra brings us the music of Debussy, Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss and others - starting at 7.30pm.

At the Methodist Church at 8pm the Sovereign Saxophone Octet will be celebrating the 200^th birthday of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone. They will be playing music dating from across that whole period (and beyond).

Kenny Robertson will be doing a different sort of musical history – celebrating the blood, sweat and tears behind rock guitar. Beginning with the Delta blues and coming up to grunge and new metal. Kenny is going to get a bit of Django Reinhardt in there too.

If that sounds a bit too heavy for you the prospect of hearing 40 recorders might tickle your fancy. The Manchester Recorder Orchestra is at Trinity Church from 7.30 playing mostly pieces written for such a large ensemble – but with some Vivaldi in the programme by way of contrast.

On the drama front there is an ingenious small-scale adaptation (two-man, one-hour) of Shakespeare’s ‘Coriolanus’ which starts at Underground Venues at 6.15 – giving you just enough time to get to the Hydro for the start of another miniaturised production. ‘The Railway Children’ - should be ‘child’ given the casting – which the Crowd of Two Theatre Company is bringing to the Hydro Café in Spring Gardens starts at 7.30pm.

Amongst the Underground Venues comedy offer you’ll find: Alan Gibbons with tales of life as an Amateur Zookeeper (3.45); The Dead Secrets’ sketch show ‘Bulletproof Jest’ reaches the end of its run (10.30pm) and at the Arts Centre Studio Lolie Ware draws on her experiences as a full-time care (9.45pm). Not obvious comedy material, perhaps, but Lolie aims to break down some of the taboos and negativity around a role that more and more people find themselves taking on.

Buxton Fringe

Website: www.buxtonfringe.org.uk
Facebook: buxtonfringe
Twitter: @buxtonfringe