Within popular culture, what we know as 'The Blues' is epitomized by either a solitary man playing an acoustic guitar, or a band playing the electric 'Chicago Blues', which is nearly always played by men. But this is only part of the story of 'The Blues'. The other part of the story relates to the...
Within popular culture, what we know as 'The Blues' is epitomized by either a solitary man playing an acoustic guitar, or a band playing the electric 'Chicago Blues', which is nearly always played by men. But this is only part of the story of 'The Blues'. The other part of the story relates to the...
An Audio Journey Through Time What would it be like to gently glide through the Somerset Levels in a canoe in the Iron Age? What bird and animal sounds would we hear. Well, there is no need to wonder any more. Joe Monkhouse, a sound special effects expert, has created a 10-minute video that transports...
You can watch this event LIVE at Queen Square or online - please select the appropriate tickets when booking. Bob Dylan rose to fame amidst the folk boom and civil rights unrest of the early 1960s, but his impact – on music and beyond – has been felt in many different ways throughout his six-decade...
You can watch this event LIVE at Queen Square or online - please select the appropriate tickets when booking. England is fortunate to have a rich traditional culture, as rich as any in Europe. Many people will be familiar with the music of Vaughan Williams and others, based on beautiful English folk songs. But as...
Please note: you can watch this talk LIVE at Queen Square or online, please select the appropriate tickets when booking. In this talk, John Sandford will explore the cultural and social issues that influenced the development of Progressive Rock Music in the late 1960s and early 70s and how those same influences ultimately led to...
An exhibition of prints, drawings and paintings, selected from twenty years of work by artist Howard Jeffs. Now open until Saturday 27 November! Open Monday to Saturday, 10am - 4pm. Free entry, with donations welcome.
You can watch this event live at Queen Square or online - please select the correct tickets when booking Samba and Bossa-Nova are familiar musical styles from Brazil, but years before these emerged it was Choro music and Maxixe dances that rocked the world. Join Mike Pryor, Dave Griffiths and some musical friends to experience...
Digital imagery & photography from Jason Dorley-Brown and Andrew Polson Although Jason and Andrew have spent much of their lives in Bath and have many mutual friends, it was only recently that they were introduced through their mutual love of photography. Jason then curated an exhibition of street photography images that Andrew took while visiting Tokyo for the Rugby World...
You can watch this event live at Queen Square, or online - please choose the relevant tickets when booking. You would be forgiven for thinking that the standard Christmas carols you have sung since childhood are all the carols that exist. What surprises many people is that there is a long and rich heritage of...
Join us and sing along with some German carols, followed by a quiz and light refreshments! Music will be provided. This event is live at Queen Square only - please note the early start time of 6pm.
You can watch this event live at 16 Queen Square or online; please select the correct tickets when booking. Within popular culture, what we know as ‘The Blues’ is epitomised by either a solitary man playing an acoustic guitar, or a band playing the electric ‘Chicago Blues’, which is also nearly always played by men....
This month in the Jenyns Room we are displaying design-work created for the Institution by students currently studying on the MA Design course in Visual Communication at Bath School of Design. This is a multi-media exhibition of work created in response to the experience of following our Bath Discovery Trails app. Previous students of this course...
This talk will be in German Ludwig van Beethoven – ist er tatsächlich der beliebteste Komponist aller Zeit? 2021 hatte er 5 „Schläger“ in den ersten 20 in der Classic-FM Ruhmeshalle errungen. „Unwahrscheinlich!“ hätten seine Zeitgenossen gesagt. Woher kommt also sein Erfolg? Wie hat er seine zahlreichen Problemen, Hindernisse und Nachteile überwunden? Ist sein Geburtsjahr...
This event can be watched live at Queen Square or online; please select the correct tickets when booking. It’s common knowledge that Louis Armstrong was one of the world’s great entertainers. What is less commonly known is that this man, born and raised in the slums of New Orleans, was one of the great creative...
Milestones: The Music of Miles Davis is a provocative analysis of this iconic musician’s huge legacy on creative jazz and the Arts. Steve Day will take on the impossible and condense his vast knowledge of Miles Davis into a consumable hour for our entertainment and learning. This talk is a must for any jazz fan! Steve...
Bill Smarme takes a light-hearted, irreverent musical look at the coming of rock and roll music to these shores in the 1950s; its energising impact on the youth of the time and one impressionable teenager in particular. Both American and British rock ’n’ roll will be explored, featuring a live band of the Bill Smarme...
William Beckford (1760 - 1844) is not only remembered as the builder of the remarkable, now lost, Fonthill Abbey and Beckford’s Tower, Bath, but also for his influential art collection. Throughout his lifetime he created one of the greatest collections of European and East Asian Art, funded through his wealth from the transatlantic slave...
This event is organised by an external group, for further details please email BSA directly. A documentary on the artist Saied Dai, in conversation with the filmmaker and writer Jonathan Stedall, whilst sitting for his portrait. Filled with observation and insight, their dialogue explores the joys, vicissitudes, and paradoxes of the creative process. With contributions...
Kevin Brown is one of the country’s leading slide guitarists, as well as a singer and songwriter of note. In performance and with the aid of recordings, film and photography, he will tell the story of his falling in love with the blues, making music through the decades, battling the music business, and releasing Mohave...
Monday 21 November, 10am - this talk has been POSTPONED and a new date will be announced soon. Please join us for wine & soft drinks from 7pm! American Museum and Gardens founder Dallas Pratt had a personal love of folk art - everyday art made by artists without formal academic training. It is unsurprising that...
A talk linked to the exhibition of fine art ceramics by Jan Byrne and paintings by Mark Thomas showing at BRLSI from 19 November until 1 December. Come and listen to both artists discuss what inspires their creativity and process during their exhibition. Jan Byrne’s work is mainly ceramic with many layers of decoration. In her...
This talk is organised by an external group, please email them directly for further details. Art critic Hettie Judah (The i, The Guardian, Apollo) presents a richly illustrated talk based on three essays from her new book Lapidarium. Through the realms of art, myth, geology, philosophy and power, the story of humanity can be told...
Join us for an exclusive evening of Christmas carols, fun festive readings & warming mulled wine (or mulled apple juice) in our candle-lit venue within the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution. Music will be provided by Tim Snowden’s Bath Celebration Choir and friends. Tim Snowden is the Music Convenor for BRLSI. He is a...
Late eighteenth-century Bath was a hotbed of more than fashion. Beau Nash set the rules, and the Linleys brought music, glamour and drama. Handsome Thomas Linley, harpsichordist, singer and voice coach, raised nine musical children at homes in Abbey Green, then Old Orchard Street and finally Royal Crescent. Five were prodigies, painted by Gainsborough. The eldest...
This heart-warming seasonal concert brings together the Bath Folk Singers and the Somerset Russets for a lively evening of pre-Victorian Christmas music. Between the mid seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries there was a great flourishing of vernacular religious music in England. In churches this took the form of a village band accompanying a choir. These...
The pottery figures known as “Staffordshire” have little to do with the fine china and porcelain that made the six smoky towns of Stoke on Trent famous throughout the world. Seen on their own, many of the coloured Staffordshire figures are primitive, clumsily modelled and crudely coloured. Seen together they make an alluring Dickensian universe,...
In 1651, John Playford published The English Dancing Master, a collection of around one hundred tunes and figures for social dance, which immediately became one of the most important and influential collections of popular music of the seventeenth century. It remained in print until 1728, with eighteen editions, and the music presented spans the Tudor...
This talk is organised by an external group, please see the BSA website for further details. All welcome, entry £5 for non-members (cash only). Robin Sewell was born and educated in Leeds, Yorkshire, then Cardiff and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He was a Senior Lecturer in BA Fine Art between 1980 and...
This talk by James Cassidy will explore the origins and the development of Cubist art throughout its early years from 1907 to 1910. Cubism overturned many conventions of western art and is widely regarded as by far the most significant art movement of 20th Century European Modernism. The art itself however, is often misunderstood or...
The blues emerged sometime in the late 19th century, before the age of recorded music, and before any detailed written record of the music sung in the black communities in Mississippi and the surrounding states. This talk will trace the tale of how the blues found its way onto record, and the emergence of Charley...
James McNeill Whistler is often described as a Dandy, but is it an accurate or fair image, given the often unflattering connotations of the word? Admittedly, many of Whistler’s biographers have accepted it. More damagingly, they have perpetuated it by characterizing him variously as an “eccentric dandy,” “an aggressive dandy,” or a “provocative dandy.” Yet,...
Three MA music students at Bath Spa University bring their research interests to life with performance. Nineteenth Century Opera: Culture and Influence - Alex Pinkstone This talk centres around composers of nineteenth century opera, drawing on cultural themes/messages in their work. Alex will perform a selection of associated repertoire, including Donizetti's 'Una Furtiva Lagrima'. Beethoven Sonata Form:...
Edinburgh trained painter printmaker Fiona McIntyre recently finished a six month residency at the Sidney Nolan Trust and a solo exhibition at The Rodd called Dreaming The Land. Fiona will talk about her residency and the inspiration behind this unique body of work which includes Sidney Nolan's paintings, the bleak landscape of borderland Wales and...
To kick off the Bath Festival, the annual Party in the City sees hundreds of music and spoken word acts take over venues all around the city centre for a free live music extravaganza! Join us any time from 5pm at 16 Queen Square - it’s free and no booking required! Lineup: 5pm - Now &...
Ragtime produces hysteria, insanity. This ragtime-era headline celebrated the world’s first global pop music craze. Scott Joplin, the son of a slave, became the greatest of ragtime composers. Now a legend, in his lifetime it took nearly 50 years to reach the kind of audiences he deserved, and the Oscar winning sound-track of The Sting. Mike...
If you have ever paid a visit to the Botanic Gardens in Kew, did you remember to make time for The Marianne North Gallery? Those with a passion for art can lose themselves in the amazing array of botanic oil paintings, completed by Marianne North, who defied Victorian convention to travel for fourteen years around...
FROM THE PYTHIAN GAMES 586BC TO WEELEY FESTIVAL 1971 Glastonbury Festival attracts more than 200,000 each year to the small town in Somerset and millions of people attend the many dozens of music festivals around the UK each year. How did these festivals originate? How did they develop? And why is it that one of...
Bath Society of Artists event - please see below for admission details and ticket prices Bombed out of its Bath home, the local School of Art reformed as The Bath Academy of Art at Corsham Court under the leadership of Clifford Ellis. For 40 years it acted as a magnet for many of the biggest names...
A free exhibition by Bath Textile Artists showcasing a range of textile techniques alongside key BRLSI key collection items that inspired each piece. Open Monday to Saturday 10am - 4pm. More details about Bath Textile Artists can be found here
Dave Merrick joins BRLSI to speak about the history and origins of the Native American flute and his journey of discovery with it. Dave received awards from the Native American Flute Awards Organization (NASFA), USA, in 2020 and 2021 for his playing and compositions on an instrument he discovered ten years ago whilst traveling in...
In this concert and talk, poet and harpist Francesco Benozzo will perform traditional music originating from differing territories focusing on the intertwined essence of world music. He will portray a dimension where life and music are suspended between reality and dream, artistic imagination and the creativeness of tradition. Francesco Benozzo is Associate Professor of Romance...
Join us for an exclusive evening of Christmas carols, fun festive readings & warming mulled wine or mulled apple juice in our candle-lit venue within the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution. Music will be provided by Tim Snowden’s Bath Celebration Choir and friends. Tim Snowden is a composer and conductor, and is Musical Director...
An interactive workshop for readers and writers, led by Sue Boyle & Ann Cullis. Inspired by the recent Face to Face exhibition at the Museum of Bath at Work, the workshop will include visual images, performance readings and discussion to celebrate the arts of portraiture and fine writing, both for their own sakes and as...
Many of you will have attended the recent BRLSI exhibition, Home & Away Panoramas, by Bath-based photographer John Law. For lovers of photography, John Law now gives a follow up talk to the exhibition which includes static and 360 immersive imagery, historical and contemporary, combined with equipment & technical demonstrations, and attendees will be offered...
This is the third and final talk in our Extraordinary Women series (three evening talks plus an all-day symposium). To find out more and to buy tickets for the whole series (whole series tickets only available before 7.30pm, Friday 1 March), please see our News item here. Working Women in Music: Dolly Parton & Clara...
What was the political impact of one of Puccini's most popular operas? At the time he wrote Madama Butterfly, Japan was seen as an emerging power. Modern sensibilities might question the setting and the political message; thus this exquisite score and deeply tragic opera from 100 years ago, (Puccini died in 1924) must be viewed...
Andrew Lawrence’s recent book, Bath – I Walked Every Street, will provide the inspiration for us to share our own special landscapes through words and images. There will be a range of writing prompts to take away and powerful readings from some of the great landscape writers of the past. The morning will begin with...
A concert of readings and presentations inspired by the February morning workshop, The Story Behind the Face. With the help of Ann Cullis from The Museum of Bath at Work and Ingrid Johannesson from the Somerset Guild of Craftsmen, our February workshop explored a wide range of possibilities for creating compelling portraits and suggested many...
Where do songs come from? What triggers the muse? And how are songs influenced by the places they are born? Jennifer Crook will explore these questions in an evening of words and music, tracing the birth of a selection of her songs back to the places and stories which inspired them. Jennifer Crook is a...