Clubs/societies

The Old Speech Room Gallery Arts Society are holding a Japanese Prints Exhibition from 19th January 0 27th June 2010.

Harrow School are displaying great works from the past. The displays will be available to see from 19th January - 27th June 2010.

Come and join our Christmas Celebration on Saturday 12th December at Harrow School Speech Room, Harrow on the Hill starting at 7.30pm.

PINNER'S latest season of jazz is expected to end in style next month - with the popular Dave Newton Trio closing out the event.
For years Dave was fully occupied as accompanist to singer Stacey Kent but now he's back on the freelance trail.
He has consistently been rated among the genres top brass in recent years and has been lauded for his work with US tenor star Johnny Griffin.
Accompanied by his regular companions, bassist Andy Cleyndert and Steve Brown on the drums, the trio will take to the stage at Pinner Parish Church, Church Lane, on Saturday, April 4.
The concert begins at 8pm and doors open at 7:20pm.
Tickets start from £9 - if booked in advance - and the box office information line is 020 8429 1260.
For more information visit www.pinnerjazz.org.uk

Thespians from Harrow used an audience with the Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey to get tips for their third ever production.

About 20 members of The Hill Players, a year-old amateur dramatic group, chatted to the superstar after a performance at The Old Vic theatre in central London, where Spacey is artistic director.

Along with two other theatrical companies, they quizzed the actor - who directed the play Complicit they had just watched - in the hope of picking up hints and ideas.

But Spacey turned the tables to gather feedback about the work-in-progress show during the informal hour-long meeting.

The Hill Players' Alisun Brennan said: "The group found him inspiring, honest and very charming, and he ended the evening with an amusing impression of Katherine Hepburn.

"The group left with extra enthusiasm for their next production on May 29 and 30. It may not be a world premiere but as Kevin said - make it authentic and enjoy."

Those performances comprise back-to-back one-act plays 'The Reading Group' by Fay Weldon and 'Departure' by Stephen Smith, and will be staged at The Ryan Theatre at Harrow School in High Street, Harrow on the Hill.

A charity representing the borough's 5,000-strong Russian community is inviting residents to take part in two new cultural projects.

The Russian Immigrants' Association, based at the Community Premises in Northolt Road, South Harrow, will run activities to preserve members' memories and to explore Russian literature in the hope of breaking down the barriers between English and Russian neighbours.

In the first project Natalia Kharina, a student at Swiss Cottage's Central School of Speech and Drama, whose mother Natalia Nikolaeva runs the association, is to host a programme of drama workshops.

The 19-year-old, from Kenton, said: "It will be a series of workshops based on the themes of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, one of my favourite books.

"It's based in Communist Russia and explores whether human flaws exist, and what was banned back in Russia."

Weekly one-hour workshops will be held to develop ideas into a script, not necessarily a direct adaptation of the novel, and a performance staged in May.

The second project will be a heritage club set up for 10 to 15 Russian pensioners to socialise and record their memories of Russia and Britain, and take photographs of their communities.

Exhibitions will be held twice a year to teach other residents about the culture and history of life of people from the former Soviet state.

Natalia said: "Elderly Russian people do not have a lot of things to focus their minds on and feel their heritage is being threatened.

"We want to bring older people together and share stories, and interest English people as well."

Harrow's Trinity Orchestra presents an afternoon of story-telling through music at its annual family concert on Saturday, January 31.

The orchestra will play classics that will appeal to children such as Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, a tale about a boy who is attacked by a wolf in a forest.

Michael Murray, the orchestra's director who plays the French horn in the BBC Symphony Orchestra, will conduct.

The children's entertainer, Mike Hadjipateras, will narrate.

In the finale, the audience can join in and help "raise the roof" by singing along to Johann Strauss' "Radetsky March".

The annual concert has been a popular event since 1980, when the group of talented professional and amateur Harrow musicians was founded.

The concert starts at 4.30pm at Trinity Church in Hindes Road, Harrow. Tickets cost £6 and can be booked in advance by calling 020 8428 5924.

An historical tour about Harrow on the Hill's former hostelries, entitled Forgotten Pubs, is taking place on Sunday, led by local resident Jonathan Edwards.

The Harrow Hill Trust-organised walk will last roughly 75 minutes and cost £3.50 (£2.50 concessions), and participants should gather at 2.15pm outside King Henry Mews (the former King's Head Hotel) in High Street.

Tickets to Harrow-based Hill players latest production, Stepping Out!, are now on sale.

The play, by Richard Harris, billed as a heart-warming comedy about a group of amateur tap dancers who get to know each other at a weekly class, is being performed at Ryan Theatre, Harrow School, on December 19 (7.30pm), and December 20 (2.30pm and 7.30pm).

Tickets cost £7, concessions £3.

To find out more email tickets@hillplayers.co.uk or visit www.hillplayers.co.uk