Reviews
Hanna Weibye
Stuttgart Ballet, one of Europe's most highly respected companies, is clearly determined to show London its best sides – all of them. Thirteen pieces in one performance is less a mixed bill than a tasting menu, and one that aims to impress: this smorgasbord of pieces were all choreographed for the company, and more than half have not been performed in the UK before.The menu proper is preceded by an amuse-bouche which sets the tone for the evening: John Cranko's short Hommage à Bolshoi (1964) is a velouté of classical loveliness (perfectly rendered by the stunning lines of Maria Eichwald) with Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Six years away from live comedy (save for a couple of outings as MC for mixed-bill shows) haven't blunted Frank Skinner's stand-up skills. He's still an accomplished gag writer and performer, and his quick-witted comic's brain is, as ever, much in evidence in Man in a Suit at Soho Theatre in London.He riffs on any number of things in a show of wide-ranging subject matter of observational comedy – everything from going grey to wearing brogues, relationships to the sexual semiotics of popcorn – and one that appears to have little by way of a narrative thread, but which however does have Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital is the place where both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald died and it serves as the central setting for the most recent film to investigate the assassination of the 35th President. Former journalist Peter Landesman directs and approaches this much pored-over incident with a fresh perspective by putting the doctor who operated on the President, the man who filmed the footage of the assassination, the brother of Lee Harvey Oswald and the special agent in charge of security under the microscope.Based on Vincent Bugliosi’s book Four Days in November, shot in just twenty Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Wayne Shorter’s Quartet were introduced as “the greatest jazz band on the planet”. It’s an unexceptional thing, like the Rolling Stones being introduced as “the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world”. But unlike the Stones, who really haven’t done anything new or vital since the 1970s, Wayne Shorter and his cohorts, pianist Damielo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, who have been with him for a decade or so, have relentlessly magicked wonderful new music out of the air. Now 80, he doesn’t seem to be running out of steam just yet.This concert was the proverbial game Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Hailed in some quarters as a wily and satirical retro-classic, Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess depends for its survival on threading its way through the eye of a tiny nostalgic needle. Bujalski's intention was to create a kind of hommage to the single-minded, possibly autistic computing pioneers of the early Eighties, often unsightly weirdos with hilarious hair and no clothes sense who nonetheless "saw this mountain and insisted on climbing it," as Bujalski puts it.After barely managing to sit through the first 10 minutes, in which creators of rival computer chess programs at a weekend Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Five minutes into this concert, at that stage a polite cello and piano duo, there was a raucous bellowing from the rear, so loud that the front stalls leapt. The delicate cello spiccato continued, despite the persistent bellowing. Gradually, the musicians adapted to the new sound, and to widespread astonishment, Senegalese singer Mola Sylla, chanting in Wolof, descended through the stalls onto the stage. It was shamelessly theatrical, but it set the tone for a highly original and technically skilful performance, if also self-consciously provocative, sometimes to the edge of self parody Read more ...
peter.quinn
In a fascinating interview with the singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, published in The Los Angeles Times in June 1979 around the release of Mingus, Mitchell signs off with the following aperçu. “You know, pigeonholes all seem funny to me. I feel like one of those lifer-educational types that just keep going for letters after their name. I want the full hyphenate – folk-rock-country-jazz-classic...so finally, when you get all the hyphens in, maybe they'll drop them all and get down to just some American music.”Playing her very first shows in the UK as part of this year's London Jazz Festival, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Sidse Babett Knudsen, alias the absurdly photogenic Danish Statsminister Birgitte Nyborg, provoked gasps at the Nordicana festival in London last June when she revealed that she was no longer Prime Minister in series three. And indeed, as the curtain rose on episode one, we could see that she was not.Instead, the ex-premier had cashed in her political prestige for one of those nebulous but lucrative roles as roving speech-maker, consultant and corporate board-member. We observed a svelte and designer-chic Nyborg helicoptering in to the Hong Kong headquarters of a pharmaceutical company to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: I am the Center – Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950–1990A landmark reissue either retells a familiar story in a new way or tells an unfamiliar story in a way that fascinates. In both cases, the annotation, packaging, sequencing and track list has to be exemplary. I am the Center succeeds on all counts.This beguiling, extraordinary, perception-altering two-CD set (also available as three albums) is the first widely available collection to assess and reassess the music which accompanied America’s espousal of a fresh form of spiritualty in the aftermath of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“Show Me Love” by Robin S was a monster pop-rave crossover hit in 1990. Most of the crowd at Chase & Status’s Brighton date would have either not been born or in nappies gnawing Duplo bricks when it had its moment in the sun, yet they sing along en masse and roar approval as the band’s female diva, Moko, belts it out, jumping around in precariously stacked heels.That she follows it with the band’s most recent hit, “Count On Me”, and it sounds as if both were recorded at the same time, drives home a point: on the radio, via their hits, Chase & Status could be perceived as a cheesy Read more ...
Mark Valencia
As farewell galas go it was less an obituary, more a celebration of an artist who has earned every whoop of the rock-star welcome she received from an adoring crowd. Dame Felicity Lott – "Flott" to her friends (i.e. pretty well everyone present) – was cheered to the echo by her fans and eulogised at either end of the evening by Wigmore Hall director John Gilhooly. The recital she gave in between defied criticism and made a nonsense of any attempt at an abbreviated star rating because (saving pianist Graham Johnson’s presence) this was a one-star event – and, like all astral bodies, Flott was Read more ...
peter.quinn
Harp glissandos, trilling flutes, the heft of a swinging brass section. Yes, last night's Jazz Voice once again kick-started the EFG London Jazz Festival in typically exuberant fashion. Arranged, scored and conducted by the indefatigable Guy Barker, its epoch-spanning celebration of jazz-related anniversaries, birthdays and milestones was hosted for the second time by Victoria Wood.First performed in the 1953 film Calamity Jane by Doris Day, Clare Teal's terrific interpretation of the much-recorded standard “Secret Love” provided a textbook lesson in phrasing and singing a legato melodic Read more ...