The Friends of St Mary’s, Lowgate, are hosting an afternoon of words and music on Sunday 27th May, to raise funds for further restoration work.
‘The Gate of the Year’, starting at 2:30pm, will feature a programme of piano music including Arnold, Boutry, Chopin, Onac, Scriabin, Shostakovich and Schoenberg interspersed with readings from Lewis Carroll, S.T. Coleridge, Carol Ann Duffy, T.S. Eliot, Khalil Gibran, Thomas Hardy, M.L. Haskins, H.H. Jackson, Laurie Lee and Dylan Thomas.
Presented by the ‘Two Ann(e)s + Two’, the hour-long event has been devised by Anne Powell and will be performed by Anne and Mike Powell, Ann Airton at the piano and Brian Newbould, who are donating the proceeds to the church building restoration fund.
Doors will open at 2pm for the 2.30pm start. Tickets are £8 for Friends of St Mary’s, £8 booked in advance and £10 on the door. Tickets for under 21s are £5. Online booking is at TheGateoftheYear.eventbrite.co.uk
Refreshments will be for sale following the performance. Wheelchair access and an accessible WC are available.
Andrew Penny MBE, Patron of the Friends of St Mary’s, said, “The Gate of the Year promises to be a most enjoyable Sunday afternoon and we hope as many people as possible will join us in this beautiful church at the heart of Hull’s Old Town. We would like to thank Anne and Mike Powell, Ann Airton and Brian Newbould for performing for us once again in aid of the church restoration.”
Despite a significant fundraising drive and improvement works in recent years, which have given St Mary’s, Lowgate, a new lease of life, the church building still requires works with an estimated cost of over £800,000, including tower parapet and pinnacle, clerestory and roof parapet pinnacle repairs. The church building is not funded by the Church of England or by the local authority. Church volunteers have to raise any money required to keep the building open.
Ann Airton won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 17. A German Government Scholarship enabled her to study at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. Specialising in the art of accompaniment, she has performed widely in the UK and in Denmark, Canada, Cyprus and New Zealand.
Yorkshire woman Anne Powell taught English and drama before retirement, directing plays and musicals, many of which were staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round, Scarborough. In 2020 she won the King Lear Short Story Prize. Writing under the name of Anna Bransgrove, her novella, ‘Simple Dame Fairfax’, was published in 2015. Anne was Chair of Governance for the Brontë Society from 2019-23.