ELEANOR Bron once appeared alongside Peter Cook as the first female member of the Cambridge Footlights revue troupe and has taken appearances in Doctor Who and Absolutely Fabulous in her stride.

Next Wednesday, the eminent actress is to share a York stage with the sound of an avalanche at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall.

Eleanor will narrate spooky stories in a 7.30pm programme entitled Ghosts Before Breakfast, an exploration of the darker side in words, music and visual elements in the cutting-edge company of the new ensemble Counterpoise. As well as The Castle By The Sea and In The Basement by Edgar Alan Poe, set to music by Richard Strauss and Heiner Goebbels, Eleanor will take part in On The Edge, a new Edward Rushton melodrama about Sir Arnold Lunn, the inventor of the slalom. Hence the terrifying avalanche sound-effects.

“Edward Rushton is married to a Swiss musician and they live in Switzerland, which is why he’s interested in the slalom,” says Eleanor, who will read writings from Lunn’s diaries, a mountaineering handbook and a folk tale of shepherd folk, kindness and cruelty – “as in all folk tales!” – set in the Swiss Alps.

“It’s music of a modern nature with a video going on in the background and then my narration, so three elements are going on at the same time. None of them is interconnected, so I’m not sure what people will make of it, but the great thing with modern music is to make people relax about it,” says Eleanor.

Eleanor already participates in musical events with the Nash Ensemble, and at the invitation of music critic and Wagner specialist Barry Millington she is now to perform with the Counterpoise quartet of Deborah Calland on trumpet, Kyle Horch on saxophone, Alexandra Wood on violin and Helen Reid on piano.

“I jump at any chance to work with musicians,” she says. “For this programme, Barry is interested in melodrama, but not what we know as melodrama. This is 19th century melodrama whereby a poem is read to the accompaniment of music; it was once fashionable in the salons of Germany and Britain, when they had composers like Liszt and Strauss and writers like Goethe.”

Wednesday’s concert takes its title from another piece, Hans Richter’s nine-minute Dadaist film from 1927, Ghosts Before Breakfast, whose rare screening will be complemented by a new score by Jean Hasse.

Richter’s experimental, stop-motion work was said initially to have been a film with sound, until the Nazi decree to destroy all copies left only a silent version. It is believed the only element lost was a musical score, and Hasse now provides a new one for Counterpoise.

The programme’s fifth flavour will be provided by two films by film-maker and composer Mauricio Kagel, MM51 and Old/New, pieces described as “vintage Kagel: funny, slightly sinister and utterly mesmerising”.

•Tickets cost £16, concessions £14, on 01904 432439.