GenFest 2025: Dorothy and Her Very Many Friends – by Jude Taylor

For this masterclass we'll be trying bottles from around the globe and seeing how the differences in grape, climate, terroir and method can impact the most important thing when it comes to wine - how it tastes

Following her sold out birthday show in March 2023 at London Lafayette, Beverley Knight has announced the details of her biggest ever UK tour to date. The Queen of British Soul will perform twenty very special headline dates across some of the UK’s major cities throughout October and November 2023. Beverley Knight has been one of the UK’s most consistent artists for almost three decades. Celebrating her incredible career over the years, the tour also marks her milestone 50th birthday. Back together with her live band expect a fun-filled night where she will perform all of her classic hits and fan favourites along with brand new songs. Beverley said “It’s been a minute! I am so looking forward to finally getting back on the road with my band again! There is nothing like the energy of a live audience showing love in return for you giving them everything you’ve got.”

John Law, a prize-winning classical prodigy on piano, turned away from classical piano studies to pursue jazz and improvised music when he was 23 and has been involved in, and acclaimed for, a wide variety of contemporary jazz and classical projects: from solo piano concerts and albums, through trio and quartet tours and recordings, right through to large scale works for his semi-classical ensemble Cornucopia. He has played at over fifty festivals worldwide including North Sea Jazz Festival (Rotterdam), Delhi International Jazz Festival and London Jazz Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and in clubs and concert halls all over the UK, mainland Europe, North America and beyond, working with musicians as diverse as Gwilym Simcock, Andy Sheppard, Jason Rebello, Tim Garland and Evan Parker. He has recorded over forty albums. John’s main projects currently are his acclaimed quartet Congregation, featuring Mercury Prize nominee James Mainwaring and playing John’s original music, bringing together acoustic and electronic music, his all-acoustic quartet Re-Creations, featuring Parliamentary Jazz Award winner Sam Crockatt, playing versions of tunes from jazz/pop/classical and Renaissance, an ambient, electronic keyboards project with saxophonist Jon Lloyd and visual artist from Tangerine Dream, Patrick Dunn, playing improvised music over samples created out of sacred vocal music...