Fringe 2016: a party and some singing to get us underway

The 37th Buxton Festival Fringe opens for entries on December 1st. To mark the occasion the Fringe - along with good friends, the Green Man Gallery - are having a special party and we'd like you to join us.

The singing of Derbyshire Village Carols has begun to be re-established across the county thanks, largely to the efforts of Ian Russell in Winster. In many towns and villages - in halls, clubs, pubs and churches - it is now possible to hear and sing these lovely carols. The Buxton Festival Fringe and Green Man Gallery are pleased to be able to provide this opportunity for people to come together.

On Saturday December 5th - from 7-10pm - in the Green Man Gallery (the old British Legion building behind the Museum) we shall be singing a selection of Derbyshire Village Carols and if you want to listen or to join in please come to the Gallery and join us. This won't be a 'concert' performance and we'll probably sing each carol two or three times so that we can learn it better.

There will be an open rehearsal from 4-6pm - also in the Green Man - to give us a chance to familiarise ourselves with some of the carols. Please feel free to join us then if you wish. Many of us are not singers - this is something we want to do for anyone that values community singing.

There will be food and drink. So if you hope to join us please let us know - so that we can cater for everyone.

We hope to see as many of you as can make it on Saturday December 5th. In any event all best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. We look forward to seeing you during next year's Fringe (6-24 July).

Keith Savage
Chair, Buxton Fringe
t. 01298 70705
m. 07952 193 521

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

The Razzle-Dazzle of the Fringe

Three quick bits of news and gossip for you all.

We brought you news of the triumphs of Helen Keen and Barbara Nice recently well this may top that!
Hugo Chandor who has acted and directed at the Fringe many times is on TV in some adverts for a detergent. Hugo is the butler (or whatever you call the Mr Bates type Downton figure).
http://www.hugochandor.co.uk/

The Peak District String Orchestra played brilliantly in the Fringe last July. The Orchestra is now to play at the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday 24th November. Here is the full story in the Buxton Advertiser

It has been the warmest November anyone can remember - still nasturtiums and hollyhocks in Buxton gardens - but snow could arrive this weekend to coincide with the town's Christmas lights switch on. Much of the action takes place in the Pavilion Gardens this Friday from 2pm - with stalls and train rides promised. We'll also have a look at the Crescent where there will be another sort of switch-on. Glow - a sound and light installation by Andrew Robinson - will light up the building right through to 3rd January from 5-11pm every evening.

Buxton Fringe

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

Nice and Keen

We try to keep an eye open on what Fringe performers go on to do. This week good news of two comedians who have wowed Buxton audiences in recent years.

Helen Keen has been taking part in an event in the Netherlands:

Helen Keen is an award winning comedy writer and performer. She began her career by winning the first Channel 4 New Comedy Writing prize, and wrote material for various established tv and radio shows. As a performer she toured the country with Robin Ince and Prof. Brian Cox as a guest of the Uncaged Monkeys (the live version of Radio 4’s Infinite Monkey Cage which she has also appeared on several times). Helen was later appointed the first Comedian in Residence at Newcastle University’s Centre for Life Science Village.

In August 2013 she compered the first ever live comedy night at CERN, Large Hadron Comedy, the event was webcast and attracted CERN’s largest international on-line audience since the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson…
In 2014 she joined the Stargazing Live live roadshow as a comedian & history of space travel expert, and appeared in the second TV series of The Alternative Comedy Experience (curated by Stewart Lee), broadcast on Comedy Central.

Helen’s first solo stand up show It Is Rocket Science (winner – Buxton Fringe Festival, Best Comedy Performance) was picked up by BBC Radio 4 and has so far launched 3 critically acclaimed series. The show won the 2013 WISE Media Award and was shortlisted for the 2014 Writers’ Guild Award for Best Radio Comedy.

In 2015 she was selected as a Wired Innovation Fellow.

She has also been featured on:

• Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage, Museum of Curiosity, Wordaholics and Jon Ronson On.
• Live at the Electric BBC3
• Radio 4’s Fourth Dimension
• Woman’s Hour
• BBC7’s Comedy Club

“Embodies all the best things about intellectual comedy. Smart without being elitist, and with just the right amounts of sincerity and sarcasm”
Spoonfed.co.uk

Helen won the Association of British Science Writer’s Royal Society Radio Prize for her BBC Radio 4 comedy show about space history, It Is Rocket Science earlier this summerhttp://www.absw.org.uk/news-and-events/absw-news/winners-announced-in-the-2015-science-journalism-awards.html – and her latest science-comedy series, Big Problems with Helen Keen has just been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in their prime 6.30pm slot.

You can find some very short clips here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05xpyzw/clips and some more clips from the Rocket Science show are herehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hpjm9/clips.

Read that carefully and you'll see that she owes pretty much everything to the Buxton Festival Fringe. Bravo, Helen. See you in Buxton again sometime?

We missed Ms Keen in the Netherlands but still time to catch Stockport's favourite - Mrs Barbara Nice - on BBC Radio 2 at 10.30pm on Wednesday, 18 November. Stephanie Billen, previewing in The Observer reports that Barbara has reached the stage in life where she doubts that she'll have grandchildren but is also worried that she and husband Ken may become "silver splitters."  

Buxton Fringe

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