1. Art
Henry Moore: Sharing Form
Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 27 May-4 September
An unusually large and significant survey of Henry Moore, curated in collaboration with the artist’s daughter and spanning six working decades. The starting point is Moore’s early obsession with Stonehenge and its mysterious upright monoliths, which inspired drawings, prints and sculptures. With more than 100 items, including giant sculptures outdoors in Somerset, this will nonetheless be a uniquely intimate experience, illuminated with objects from both Moore’s studio and his home. LC
2. Pop
Freya Beer/Dog Unit
The Lanes, Bristol, 8 April/11 May
This Bristol venue often has free gigs by up’n’coming acts. Beer, who plays on 8 April, released her art-rock debut LP last autumn, gaining a fan in John Cooper Clarke. Avant-rock outfit Dog Unit’s category-shrugging sound combines electronics and post-rock; a second EP is imminent. They play on 11 May. KE
3. Theatre
The Passion of Jesus
Trafalgar Square, London, 15 April
In Trafalgar Square on Good Friday, the Wintershall company will enact the trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. A cast of more than 100 volunteer actors from London and the south-east, as well as horses, doves – and a donkey – will be involved in the production, with James Burke-Dunsmore taking the part of Jesus, for the 11th and final time. The performances, at noon and 3.15pm, will also be livestreamed via Facebook and available on Wintershall’s YouTube channel. SC
4. Art
Hew Locke at Tate Britain
London, 23 March–22 January 2023
The Scottish-Guyanese artist is the latest to face the challenge of filling the cavernous Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain. Given his eerie 3D meditations on imperial Britain, featuring haunted ships and porcelain busts of British monarchs embellished with sinister emblems of colonial oppression (from coins and skulls to Benin masks) expect a close contemplation of our island history in the form of a grand coup de théâtre. LC
5. Classical
Riot Ensemble Side By Side
Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London, 15 March
Riot Ensemble – the supergroup of top soloists playing new music – join forces, playing side by side, with students of the Royal Academy of Music. Works include the world premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s new work for solo horn, three premieres from Academy composers Cem Güven, Elliott Park and James Chan, and a new piece by Aaron Holloway-Nahum for accordion. FM
6. Art
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Serpentine South Gallery, London, 14 April-4 September
This immensely witty French artist, famous for her shaggy dog video sending up her own attempts to come up with something for the Venice Biennale, is given the run of the Serpentine galleries for a wild new immersive installation. Imagining what would happen if aliens fell in love with human beings, she promises a supernatural experience in which all your senses will be involved – tactile, sonic, even olfactory. Take a walk through the park then enter a fantasy world and find your eyes and mind overwhelmed. LC
Art, by Laura Cumming
Classical music, by Fiona Maddocks
- The best places, with high-quality music-making, are music conservatoires (the Royal College of Music; Royal Academy of Music; Guildhall School of Music and Drama; Trinity Laban in London; Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester; Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow; Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff; and all university music departments). Musicians need to play to audiences: go and support them. Only in term time.
- Check any cathedral, church or college with a choir for evensong or other sung services. The tradition will die out if no one is listening.
- Check spring and summer music festivals, many of which have free fringe events. Masterclasses are often free to those under 26 or students – for example, Opera North’s festival masterclass with Ann Murray on 28 April (operanorth.co.uk).
Theatre, by Susannah Clapp
- Most summer festivals are strong on street theatre. Greenwich+Docklands international festival, held in August and September, usually has a circus element, enhanced by the city and river backdrop. In August, a walk down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh provides tasters of what’s coming up at the fringe as well as a chance to see individual performers.
- Theatres in most cities have ticket offers. Any student of the performing arts or English (GCSE level or above) at a school, college or university in South Yorkshire can get a free ticket for productions at the Crucible theatre, Sheffield. Bristol Old Vic (bristololdvic.org.uk) is offering 100 free seats for its 2022 shows to anyone going to the Old Vic for the first time. Set up an account and choose your show from their What’s On pages. The Royal Court, London, which has a free open day on World Theatre Day, 26 March, is giving away 200 tickets to For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy before the show opens in April.
- Throughout the year, the Royal Shakespeare Company, in collaboration with theatres across the country, is inviting children and adults – including first-time writers – to create the comedies, histories and tragedies of today for 37 Plays, an online and in-person festival next year.
Pop, by Kitty Empire
- Cut out the Spotify app and stream great music for free via Bandcamp. Then, when you can afford it, buy some merchandise – or even entire albums – direct from the artists.
- The Dice app is a good place to find gigs and live streams, with free offerings by up-and-coming artists aplenty. You can search on the app by price and location.
- Online, the List and Eventbrite listings sites are also a useful source of free musical events local to you, from gigs to rock choirs to open mics, which are by no means all cringe-fests. Keep an eye out for name DJs playing club nights that are free to get into. Specialist venues often offer free gigs, too – for instance, Manchester’s Blues Kitchen hosts hill country blues player Cedric Burnside, grandson of RL Burnside, on 31 May.
7. Museum
Burrell Collection reopening
Glasgow, from 29 March
The world-renowned museum, closed now for more than five years, reopens with a magnificent £68m refurbishment and a third more space for showing the precious items in the shipping magnate Sir William Burrell’s private 9,000-strong collection.
Chinese art, exquisite stained glass and intricate tapestries appear alongside an enormous range of fine art, including masterpieces by Manet, Degas and Cézanne. Interactive displays, video walls, and 35% more gallery space will allow for temporary exhibitions and the display of many more of Burrell’s possessions, and all in the beautiful green space of Pollok Country Park. LC
8. Art
Dreamachine
Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, May-September
Intriguing doesn’t begin to describe Dreamachine, an immersive experience of sound, colour and light presented as part of Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, 10 oddball but interesting commissions taking place across the country from March to October. Dreamachine is inspired by radical artist Brion Gysin’s pioneering 1959 invention of a flickering light machine that created vivid illusions and kaleidoscopic patterns in the mind of the viewer. Reinterpreted by Turner prize-winning Assemble and composer Jon Hopkins, plus a team of scientists and philosophers, it will offer each audience member a unique experience – inside their own head. Venues are still to be announced with tickets bookable from late March. Other Unboxed highlights include Galwad, a story from our future, set across Wales, and Our Place in Space, a scale version of the solar system staged across 10km of trails in Northern Ireland and Cambridge, designed by children’s author Oliver Jeffers. SCr
9. Pop
Lumer/Warm Graves
The Shacklewell Arms, London E8, 22 March/30 March
Another music venue well known for its hot picks, the Shacklewell Arms plays host to low-slung Leeds post-punk band Lumer (22 March) – think Yard Act, but more disreputable – and German electronic musician Warm Graves (30 March), well-regarded for his dark ambient drones. KE
10. Art
Hockney’s Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction
Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, 15 March-9 August
The annual Hockney extravaganza takes place in Cambridge, this time, with a focus upon seeing and mechanical means of depiction. From the camera lucida to the camera obscura, from photocopies to digital drawings on iPad, Hockney uses a long tradition of optical devices to make his works. His art will be shown in what the museum is calling “provocative” encounters with past masters, from Ingres and Canaletto to Monet and Van Gogh. A new self-portrait, at 84, will be displayed, and the Heong Gallery in Downing College has an accompanying Hockney show. LC
11. Theatre
The Garden Party, Norfolk and Norwich festival
21-22 May
The centrepiece of this year’s Norfolk and Norwich festival, which runs from 13-29 May, is the Garden Party. Eight new outdoor shows can be seen from 12pm to 5pm on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 May in the Festival Gardens, Chapelfield, and the Forum, Norwich. Theatre Témoin will stage “a watery acrobatic adventure” called Flood; Matthew Harrison’s Community Chest is an interactive treasure-seeking puzzle for all ages; Avant-Garde Dance/Tony Adigun’s Scrum promises hip-hop dance theatre. Elsewhere, at the start of the festival on 13 May, Station House Opera have invited volunteers to take part in Dominoes, a moving sculpture made of thousands of breeze-blocks which in the course of the day will topple across the city, while throughout the festival, Every Step Is a Different Height will guide walkers through the medieval spaces of the Guildhall and 250 years of past festivals. SC
12. Classical
Lunchtime recitals at Tung Auditorium, Yoko Ono Lennon Centre
University of Liverpool, throughout March
Check out the series of free concerts and public workshops throughout March at the stunning new 450-seat Tung Auditorium, Yoko Ono Lennon Centre, University of Liverpool. Includes outstanding clarinettist and composer Mark Simpson and Solem Quartet, performing on 23 March at 1pm. FM
13. Dance
Set and Reset/Unset
Tate Modern, London, dates during 13 March–28 August
Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset, premiered in 1983, is one of the most transformative works in postmodern dance. With music by Laurie Anderson, set and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg and lighting by Beverly Emmons, it is rooted in a series of memorised improvisations, following a set of principles such as “Keep it Simple (the clarity issue)” and “Act on Instinct (the wild card)”. The permanent display, which reconceives the work as an installation in Tate’s Tanks space, is accompanied on 13 and 23 March, and then on the last weekend of every month, by a series of informal performances where dancers rebuild sections of choreography according to the parameters she set. SCr
14. Pop
BBC 6 Music’s Fringe festival
Cardiff, 28 March–3 April
The BBC 6 Music festival is in Cardiff this year and while the main festival events cost money, there are some interesting free events to be found as part of a spin-off fringe. Capturing the Sounds: An Introduction to Modern Music Journalism is an industry panel discussion and Q&A for anyone interested in writing about music or the wider industry, hosted by DJ Matt Everitt (31 March); it’s free but you need to register to attend. And on 2 April, there’s an all-day band showcase at the storied Cardiff venue Clwb Ifor Bach, which also hosts other free gigs. KE
15. Theatre
Brighton festival
7-29 May
This year’s festival, guest-directed by Syrian architect and author Marwa al-Sabouni and Tristan Sharps of theatre-makers dreamthinkspeak, will run in and around the city and include some great free events. As part of A Weekend Without Walls at Hangleton Park on 7-8 May, Eau de Mémoire will put on “perfumances” in which smells will bring memories to life, while the interactive outdoor dance show The Album: Skool Edition will encourage children and their families to make up dances to new music. On 14 and 15 May, Final Farewell, Tara Theatre’s audio walk in St Ann’s Well Gardens will feature the voices of seven individuals and a small black pug, while in Crawley on 14 May there will be hip-hop dance theatre in Born to Protest and Future Cargo, a sci-fi dance show in a 40-foot haulage truck at Memorial Gardens. On 8 and 22 May at the Chattri, James Wilkie’s immersive installations will fuse walk, performance and storytelling. SC
16. Art
Celia Paul: Memory and Desire
Victoria Miro gallery, London, 6 April-7 May
Since the publication of her memoir, Self-Portrait, Celia Paul has become almost as famous for her writing as her art. This new show accompanies a second memoir, Letters to Gwen John, in which the analogies between the two painters – solitary, spiritual, quietly magnificent – become even clearer. Self-portraits, portraits of her late husband and sisters: all Paul’s abiding themes are here, along with delicate new landscapes. LC
17. Classical
LPO, Foyle Future Firsts and Royal Academy of Music
Royal Festival Hall, London, 30 April
Conductor Edward Gardner presents members of London Philharmonic Orchestra in celebration of composer Oliver Knussen (2 Organa for large ensemble and music from Where the Wild Things Are) and his former pupils Louise Drewett (The Transparent Building) and Gareth Moorcraft (Reflections, after Orlando Gibbons). FM
18. Art
The Vasseur Baltic Artists’ award 2022
Baltic, Gateshead, 9 April–2 October
Named after the late curator Isabel Vasseur, this award, presented every two years, recognises international artists with £25,000 each and some proper museum exposure. But what is especially smart about the scheme is that three leading artists choose their younger colleagues. This year culture, nature, the cosmos, and political thinking are all addressed in the work of Laleh Khorramian, Fernando García-Dory and Ima-Abasi Okon, chosen respectively by Mika Rottenberg, Hito Steyerl and Otobong Nkanga. LC
19. Pop
Noon Garden
Rough Trade, Nottingham, 4 April
Formerly of the Flamingods, Charles Prest’s solo project will shortly release a heady album mixing psych with funk and west African inflections. After a tour with Los Bitchos, this gig and signing at the renowned Nottingham outpost of this indie chain of record shops is free and Noon Garden will also call in at the London and Bristol shops on 2 and 3 April. Check out Rough Trade’s other free events too. KE
20. Classical
Chamber Tuesday/Amser Jazz Time
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, Tuesdays/Fridays throughout March
Spot rising talent at Chamber Tuesday student ensemble concerts (Tuesdays at 6pm). Coming up: Sax choir 15 March; string ensemble 22 March; chamber showcase 29 March. Or try the popular Amser Jazz Time, every Friday at 5.30pm. FM
