How Like An Angel, Ripon Cathedral, July 19-20 (From York Press)

How Like An Angel, Ripon Cathedral, July 19-20

12:43pm Friday 13th July 2012 in Music news and reviews

RIPON Cathedral will play host to the British premiere of How Like An Angel, a combination of perilous Australian circus skills and I Fagiolini’s choral singing, on July 19 and 20.

Tickets are selling fast for Thursday’s 9pm performance and next Friday’s 8pm and 10pm shows, which form part of the London 2012 Festival, a 12-week nationwide arts festival at the climax of the four-year Cultural Olympiad.

The Ripon performances are being co-ordinated by Create, the North Yorkshire arts agency behind events such as Scarborough’s Coastival.

Create director Wendy Clews says: “How Like An Angel is something that people will never have witnessed before: truly brilliant acrobatics and beautiful music in the majestic, stunning architecture of Ripon Cathedral.

“There’s now a real buzz that this is a great opportunity, right on our doorstep.”

How Like An Angel will take the audience “on a contemplative theatrical experience – an interplay of Renaissance music and physical movement, both intimate and beautiful” – in a union of traditional and re-invented circus skills, sound, projection and light.

Australian theatre group Circa will be performing their acrobatics accompanied by 16th and 17th century choral music sung by I Fagiolini, a week on from the English vocal ensemble’s brace of promenade performances in York Minster at the York Early Music Festival.

Devised specially for cathedrals, How Like An Angel is conceived and directed by Circa’s artistic director, Yaron Lifschitz, working in tandem for the first time with I Fagiolini, whose director, Robert Hollingworth, is soon to take up a reader’s post in the University of York music department.

Thursday and Friday’s audience are invited to will walk around Ripon Cathedral on a journey of discovery, experiencing the singers’ soaring choral sounds and the daring acrobatics of aerial performers in the medieval cathedral’s high open spaces. The event is being toured to Ripon, as well as Norwich, Ely and Gloucester cathedrals, by Norfolk & Norwich Festival artistic director William Galinsky, who was born and bred in Leeds.

“I’m really looking forward to bringing this unique production to Ripon Cathedral,” says the Yorkshireman. “I have fond memories of growing up in Yorkshire and it was during those formative years that I developed my interest and career in the arts.”

How Like An Angel’s Ripon performances are also part of the 2012 Harrogate Festival.

Tickets are available in person at the cathedral, online at harrogateinternationafestivals.com and on 01423 502116.