August in Greater Manchester moves at two speeds. In the city centre and around Salford Quays, summer holiday audiences fill family theatres and festival marquees, while out towards the Cheshire edge and the mill towns of Bolton, Oldham and Rochdale, quieter recitals and food festivals keep the cultural calendar ticking over. This year the month's most substantial classical fixture happens away from the school-holiday crowds, at Hunts Bank's Stoller Hall, where a piano summer school brings serious musicianship into a building that shares its site with Chetham's Library. Whether you're heading to a matinee at The Lowry or a masterclass in the city centre, here's what's confirmed for August 2026, along with some practical advice for anyone moving a piano this summer.

What's on this month

Piano at the centre of August

Chetham's International Piano Summer School 2026 runs at Stoller Hall from Wednesday 12 to Saturday 22 August, gathering pianists from across the country for masterclasses, tuition and public performances. It's worth hearing because the school draws advanced students and visiting tutors into daily recital slots, so the music on offer has been shaped by weeks of concentrated study rather than a single rehearsal. For anyone with an interest in piano technique or repertoire, it's the one fixed point of serious classical music in Manchester this August.

Family theatre takes over Salford's Lowry

The Lowry's Lyric Theatre hosts SIX from Thursday 6 to Saturday 15 August, the pop-concert retelling of Henry VIII's wives that has become a fixture of school-holiday programming. Younger audiences are catered for too: In The Night Garden runs at the Quays Theatre from Friday 7 to Sunday 9 August, and Dear Zoo follows from Tuesday 11 to Sunday 16 August. If you're travelling in from Trafford, Sale or Chorlton, allow extra time for parking, given how much this stretch of Salford's waterfront draws in during half-term. The programme continues later in the month with Disney's High School Musical opening on Saturday 22 August, Layton Williams performing on Sunday 23 August, and Cbeebies House Party Live filling the closing weekend of Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 August.

Live music and food beyond the city centre

Stockport Plaza's Green Room hosts singer-songwriter Lakshmi Hariprasad on Saturday 15 August at 7.30pm, part of the venue's smaller-scale live music programme that runs alongside its main stage bookings. It's a reminder that Stockport's 1930s art deco theatre offers more than the big touring shows for which it's best known. Further west, Albert Halls in Bolton turns its stage over to food rather than music at the end of the month, with James Martin, Marco Pierre White and Nisha Katona each giving cookery demonstrations as part of the Bolton Food and Drink Festival between 29 and 31 August. It's not a concert bill, but it shows how the hall's Victorian interior, built for civic assembly, still adapts to whatever the city asks of it.

What should I check before buying a second-hand piano?

Before paying for a second-hand piano, play every key and both pedals, check the soundboard for cracks, and measure your doorways, hallway and staircase, since an instrument that fits through the seller's door may not fit through yours. Private sales and auction rooms rarely come with any guarantee, so the checks fall entirely to the buyer. Sit at the piano and press each key firmly: sticking keys or an uneven touch across the register often point to worn hammers or a humidity-damaged action, both of which are costly to put right. Open the lid and look along the soundboard, the large wooden panel beneath the strings, for hairline cracks; a cracked soundboard doesn't always make a piano unplayable, but it does affect tone and resale value. Ask when it was last tuned, and if the seller can't say, assume it will need attention soon after it arrives, since a piano left untuned for years can take several visits to hold pitch. Then there's the move itself. An upright typically weighs between 180 and 250 kilograms, and a small grand can weigh considerably more, so measure every turn, threshold and step between the removal van and the piano's final position, not just the room itself. Terraced streets in Chorlton, split-level houses in Didsbury and the tight stairwells common in Victorian conversions across Oldham and Rochdale all call for a proper survey before moving day rather than a guess with a tape measure. This is exactly the assessment we carry out as part of our piano removal service, checking access at both ends before any van is booked, so a piano bought in good faith doesn't come unstuck on the doorstep.

Moving, storing or recycling a piano across Greater Manchester

We've been moving pianos across Greater Manchester since 1977, and since 2010 we've offered piano disposal through our sister company, Bellwoods Removals, an Environment Agency upper-tier registered waste carrier (licence CBDU133377) that dismantles every instrument by hand at our yard rather than in a customer's home, recycling as much of it as possible so that under 1% ends up in landfill. Piano removals start from £138 inc VAT and piano disposal from £174 inc VAT, and we cover everywhere from Altrincham and Trafford to Tameside and the Northern Quarter. If a piano needs to come out of a house before it can be sold, or simply needs somewhere secure to sit between moves, our piano storage service covers that gap too. Call us on 0161 806 1224 to talk through what you need, whether that's moving a grand piano across the city or clearing an upright that has reached the end of its working life.