Archives for Music - Page 2
Let’s Get It Together 2026 Introduces Special Ticket Deal For Local Residents
The Let’s Get It Together Festival have announced a special deal on tickets for local people wanting to join their three day celebration of dance music culture, which is taking…
Open Doors: Fine Music for Free
VICTORIA KINGHAM Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, under the redoubtable leadership of Marcio Da Silva, have deservedly secured funds to enable them to perform no less than seven free concerts…
Adventures in Pop
JUDE MONTAGUE Adventures in Pop has been running original creative rock and pop nights at the Jenny Lind for over a year. The scene has built up, and the First…
Utopian Dreams
HARRY HAWKINS It’s a Tuesday evening, and someone can’t quite get the Zoom camera working.”I like it when you’re visible!” says one. “I like it when you’re risible,” replies another.…
Multi-Venue Dance Music Festival Returns to Hastings and St. Leonards
For the May Bank holiday, revellers will see a multi-genre range of dance music showcased across the town with the Let's Get It Together Festival. First put on as a…
Barbed Bard
DAVE MILTON AND SMOKEY BROWN Even in a town that boasts its fair share of post-punk prodigies, sightings of DIY luminary Bing Selfish are as rare and as welcome as…
Jazz: Luft and Duni Reach for the Moon
VICTORIA KINGHAM Guitarist Rob Luft has been a regular visitor to Jazz Hastings, having appeared here with his own band and with other musicians celebrated for their originality: Byron Wallen,…
Father, Forgive Us
VICTORIA KINGHAM It’s always a joy to remember that the first person recorded as having written music down systematically, was a woman. Hildegard of Bingen was a highly-regarded, highly devout…
McNiff Sings Cohen
Talented local singer/songwriter Jason McNiff is launching a new theatre show at the Stables on 7 May, which is lined up afterwards for dates around the country. Songs of Love…
Afrobeat legend Dele Sosimi to Galvanise White Rock Theatre
DAN MCCARTHY On 23 April, multiple award-winning Afrobeat ambassador Dele Sosimi is set to bring his signature grooves to Hastings’ White Rock Theatre. Hackney-born and UK-based, Dele has long been a…
International Connections
VERA BELL This small town must surely be unique in the number and extent of its international musical connections. Think of any venue – the Kino-Teatr for example with its…
On Thin Ice
COVEN CLUB Music Review Local Pink Floyd tribute Band, On Thin Ice, who pay an extraordinary nod to quintessential band Pink Floyd, drew in an extra special energy recently to…
Love of the Awkward, Different,and Strange
Xelis de Toro and ChopChop Jude Montague Xelis de Toro, writer and performance artist from Galicia, performs at the Jenny Lind music pub with the band ChopChop – a collective…
TUFT in Ireland and Rome
Local performance company TUFT are bringing two fascinating theatre events to Hastings this April. First up – the Brighton Fringe previews of storyteller Helen Black’s new solo show A Dublin…
Musical Conversations on the Edge of Modernity
VICTORIA KINGHAM Sonatas for violin and piano were never my thing, really. But I dare say I have watched and listened to more of these in the past four years…
Not Last Orders Yet
GEOFF MARTIN Fear Of Last Orders erupted onto the Hastings live music scene with all the subtlety of a bar stool lobbed through a window at 2am, at a lock-in…
Deconstructed traditional folk– the Smallpipe
Scottish folk star Malin Lewis brings a new solo project to The Stade Hall in Hastings on Saturday 21 March. In a trailblazing new solo work, Malin deep dives into a hypnotic…
A Triumph for Music and Humanity
VICTORIA KINGHAM Matthew AndrewsRyan Zhu, 2026 winner Hastings International Piano competition had sponsorship to offer free places in the early stages for everyone who wanted to wander in off the…
Witching It Up at the Carlisle
A Hastings all-women promotions company is launching a new live music night to bring more oestrogen-fuelled rock and metal bands to the town. The Coven Club at The Carlisle Rock…
Love a Market and DJ Nights too
The restoration and adaptation of St Leonards Church – the one that stands on a little hill at the end of Pevensey Road – has occupied Chris Love and Jamie…
Locally Sourced Jazz Album
Local multi-talented musician, artist and photographer Greg Heath has produced (and in the case of one tune, co-written) a fine album of unashamedly nostalgic jazz rock, Point Nemo, by the…
Choral Music for Easter
Hastings Philharmonic Choir will perform a programme of beautiful choral masterpieces: Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Brahms’ Schicksalslied (‘Song of Destiny’),accompanied by the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Marcio da Silva.…
Big Sexy Catharsis
OLIVER SPEER “I’ve killed so many men, but I saved one,” Lydia Lunch says as she puts an arm around me to pose for a photograph at The Piper. She’s…
Reflections on Fat Tuesday
JOEL CHESHIRE & HARRY HAWKINS FRIDAY ‘Unconvention’ kicked off Fat Tuesday: a one-day grassroots music conference held at the White Rock Theatre Studio. This brought together musicians, industry professionals, promoters, educators…
The Beat Goes On
HELEN MURPHY AND NICK PELLING On 20 February, the polyrhythms of Afro-beat are coming to the Kino-teatr, in the form of the band Samaki. The band has a jazz-infused style…
Another Rousing Chorus, You Idiots!
HARRY HAWKINS catches up with some FAT TUESDAY musicians Fat Tuesday CICEse & the Vouduu People To whet your appetite for the town’s forthcoming Fat Tuesday festivities (the 16th such…
Sonics Boom
TOBY BULA-EDGE Emanating from French’s on 14 and 15 February will be a selection of unusual and surprising sounds. That is, very different noises to those that normally exude from…
Going Wild at The Carlisle
JOEL CHESHIRE The Carlisle played host to a lively charity fundraising gig on the evening of 17 January, showcasing five local bands in a celebration of grassroots rock in ;The…
Alexander Wolfe, Life, and the Universe
VICTORIA KINGHAM Wolfe has that gift of good songwriters: an ability to make lyrics sound like conversation, and vice-versa. I’m not sure that it’s a technique you can learn, but…
When Love Gets Tough
Anja Petitto is an extraordinary woman, and so was her beloved mother, Tuula. Anja has spent the past four years working hard to set up the brilliant independent record shop,…
Music of the Sphere(s)
VICTORIA KINGHAM Robert Mitchell inhabits a musical sphere which John Fordham, writing in The Guardian 14 years ago, called ‘private’. His albums from 2008 onwards corroborate this view in several…
Dancing to the Music of Time
VERA BELL The current St Leonards Concerts season ended on 4 December with an extraordinary performance by five exceptional players. Who knew that the back room at the Horse and…
Philharmonic Christmas
CHRISTOPHER CORMACK This year, Hastings Philharmonic has given us three options for Christmas celebrations with their quality ; The first Advent Concert took place on 6 December, and celebrated 20th…
Come All Ye
Nick TuckerMike Willis at Henry Ward Hall Gather Round the Piano is Mike Willis and Alex Bryson’s annual Christmas concert – part celebration, part reflection, and part joyful community sing-along. What…
Hope blows in with Woodpig: When The Winds Came
HARRY HAWKINS Woodpig are a Hastings modern folk quartet made up of Harrison Caruna on bass guitar, Josh Gentle on drums, Mol Jo on backing vocals, and Al Mitchell on…
Blur in Focus
TOBY BULA-EDGE A never-before-seen snapshot of Blur in their early years is now available thanks to drummer Dave Rowntree’s new book No One You Know. He will be talking about…
Music, Mayhem& Mardi Gras
Hastings is preparing to welcome back its flagship winter music event – the Hastings Fat Tuesday Festival, running from Friday 13 to Tuesday 17 February 2026. This five-day, town-wide celebration…
Crown House and the Meeting Tree
VICTORIA KINGHAM The revival of Folk Music began in the UK with musicians and musicologists like Cecil Sharp, Vaughan Williams and Ewan McColl, who faithfully collected, wrote down, unearthed broadside…
Snapped Ankles, but Furious Dancing Anyway
DAN MCCARTHY What do you get when you cross Jack in the Green with synthesisers, a drum kit and a group of mates keen to upset the apple cart? Snapped…
Kay Iris: New Single
Hastings-based band Kay Iris have recently released a new single, The Other Side. Kay’s signature sound incorporates Country, Americana and Rock. Formed in 2024, the band has played Big Feastival…