Hundreds of primary school pupils from nine North East schools have come together to re-enact Shakespeare’s illustrious comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Led by Theatre Royal associate artists, the feast of creativity from almost four hundred nine and ten year olds comprised a series of classroom workshops across Newcastle’s West End.

Perhaps the biggest surprise arrives with Faded Blue Jeans, featuring Josh Homme. It's an unlikely pairing that somehow makes complete sense, with Homme's gravelly vocals adding a rugged edge to a song that blurs the boundaries between country, blues and rock. Their chemistry is effortless, and the result is one of the album's most memorable collaborations

Amy Shark has always excelled at turning life's awkward, painful and complicated moments into memorable songs, but soft pop feels different. Stripped back and refreshingly uncomplicated, this is an album that places her voice and innermost thoughts front and centre, allowing the emotion to do the heavy lifting. The production rarely gets in the way, creating the feeling that you're sitting with Shark as she quietly unpacks her experiences without fear, shame or pretence.

Dicks There was little on which we did not draw a dick, compassing grey paint off lockers, etching desks, but mostly inking each other’s files or textbooks, apostles casting cocks across the Sea of Galilee, Tybalt shaking terrible showers onto poor Juliet, dark colossi swung over relief maps of Gallipoli, some veiny and ridged, some rushed as signatures.

Andrew Palmer, Group Editor, on how The Duke's Theatre Company concluded this year's festival at Ripon Racecourse with a Romeo and Juliet that showcased wit, precision, and considerable heart – a fitting finale!

Sussex novelist Elly Griffiths has won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2026 — the most coveted prize in British and Irish crime writing — for The Frozen People, a genre-bending mystery that sends a modern-day cold case detective back to the ice-bound streets of Victorian London.

This novel opens in the Henderson household, the everyday ‘chitchat’ establishing the ‘cosy’ genre. Who knew that a small florist’s business in the Lake District could be so busy, but Simmy is rushed off her feet. Husband, Christopher, is just as busy at his auction house in Keswick and between them, they juggle the care of their only son, Robin, who is two.

Marky Is minic do bhris béal duine a shrón. - Irish proverb Watching this cormorant on the Wharfe hold open its wings to the admiring sun, I recall Marky Malone on his stag night removing his silk suit jacket very slowly to show off his Bullworker pecs to us and the man he'd picked out to fight - who smartly coshed him across his beak and swanned out of the silent public bar…

There is a particular pleasure in returning to a recording again and again as a reviewer and finding that it yields something new each time, while one thing remains constant. With this latest Chandos disc from Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, that constant is the sheer beauty of the playing: the balance between soloist and accompanist is judged to perfection, and the engineers have done what Chandos so often manages, capturing the sound with such transparency that the listener seems to be eavesdropping on the duo rather than hearing a recording at all. It is sublime, moving and endlessly captivating.

Despite a shaky start, Simon Cowell's December 10 seems to be finally making headway. With the assumption that a Netflix series would propel them to instant international success and huge chart acclaim, they appear to have fallen very far short of those anticipations.

The North York Moors Chamber Music Festival celebrates its 18th consecutive year this August with the premieres of six brand new compositions from some of the UK’s finest contemporary composers.

Yorkshire crime author Roshan Pitteea will travel to Scotland later this month to meet readers and fellow writers at one of the UK's fastest-growing independent author events.

Theatre by the Lake has announced the cast for the world premiere of The Farmer's Wife, a new play by Hannah Khalil inspired by Helen Rebanks' Sunday Times bestselling memoir of the same name.

Having earned a reputation as one of Australia's most electrifying new acts, Headwreck already have their sights set on world domination.

Ripon Theatre Festival continues to unearth stories that deserve a wider audience, and Down to Chance is one of its finest discoveries yet.

Pickering Church, with its striking mediaeval architecture and clear, focused acoustic, provided an ideal setting for the opening Saturday of the Ryedale Festival. Staging Franz Schubert’s deathless Winterreise in the midst of a heatwave created an unintended antipathetic fallacy that worked remarkably well.

While there is no denying that there is amazing kudos in having a Primark range already raising their profile, the lack of single success means December 10 has notches both for and against their enduring success. However, their debut EP speaks volumes about what should be their destiny. Slick production, a strong balance of bops and ballads and, most importantly, striking vocals and an awareness of how to play to each band member's strengths – this is a solid introduction to a group that wishes to be taken credibly as the next big boy band.

All of which is background; what matters here is the music, and it is a delight. Her own chapel choir of Selwyn College sings with a polish that belies the demands of undergraduate life, recorded in the radiant, spacious acoustic of Ely Cathedral, where MacDonald is also the director of the girl choristers. The ensemble's diction, intonation, and balance are all delectably precise, and the phrasing, dynamic shading, and rhythmic vitality throughout the performance are genuinely impressive.

Am I the only person in the known universe to have never seen The Sound of Music? Well, I must be. Or more accurately, I 'was,' for now I have lost my innocence. I have been Rodger and Hammersteined, so to speak.

American-Armenian art-rap collective Samuum continue to push boundaries with their striking new single, Coffee Cup Reading (Yaman, Pt.2), a genre-blurring release that fuses Middle Eastern influences with rap, punk and rave energy.