Celebrate the bicentenary the Super Slow Way

Published Friday 7 October 2016 at 13:57

Tickets are now on sale for the King George’s Hall celebration concert commemorating the bicentenary of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.

Super Slow Way: A Rhapsody to the Leeds & Liverpool Canal is a celebration of the history, people and stories of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal through music.

amanda roocroft red

It is based on a series of poems specially written by celebrated Yorkshire poet Ian McMillan.

They depict community life alongside and on the canal over the past 200 years.  From working families from far away places arriving at the canal and finding new homes there to the ambitious Victorian speculators and pioneers who sought their fortune in creating the Victorian ‘super highway’.

Taking place on Sunday, October 16 at 4pm, with an hour of outdoor entertainment outside Blackburn Town Hall from 3pm, the Rhapsody will draw together musical forces from Liverpool, Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Taking part are the 70-strong Blackburn People’s Choir and 100 school children coming together to form a choir from schools across Blackburn.

Joining them is the world-renowned Brighouse and Rastrick Band from the West Ridings of Yorkshire, and Lancashire-born soprano Amanda Roocroft, who has performed at some of the world’s most prestigious opera houses.

Also featured is Jonathan Aasgaard, the principal cellist of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and leading tabla player Kuljit Bhamra, one of the leading figures in the UK’s Bhangra scene.

Producer Ian Brownbill, who has been overseeing the project said:

The Rhapsody represents a coming together of different forms that perfectly reflects the communities and stories along the canal over the past 200 years, celebrating this great ‘super slow way’ that transported the huge barges of cotton and coal, which made Blackburn a lynchpin of the Industrial Revolution and the great town that it became.

Tickets adult £15, concessions £7.50

Visit www.kinggeorgeshall.com or call the box office on 0844 847 1664

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