Last night Rebel Heart began to make sense. For over two hours, performing from the album, her back catalogue, and a couple of well-chosen covers, Madonna sustained both a diversity and intensity in her approach to singing about love and sex that probably no-one else could match. We all knew she could sing “Material Girl” or “Like A Prayer” till the lid came off the O2. When she followed those with Edith Piaf, sung to the ukelele, and held nearly 20,000 people in rapt silence, she gave us a much better idea of what makes her rebel heart beat.

It might sound hackneyed but Sculpture can only be described as truly psychedelic. They achieve this via a thoroughly original stage set-up. Dan Hayhurst, in a black tee-shirt and military cap, manipulates sounds on a laptop, with a rack of magnetic tape loops to his left which he carefully plucks up and sets on reels, but what makes the London duo a unique proposition is the zoetrope-style visuals of Reuben Sutherland.

In 1986, the Russian state honoured Mikael Tariverdiev with the People's Artist of Russia award, a mark of respect given to only the most significant figures in the arts. The Tbilisi-born composer was the head of the Composer’s Guild of the Soviet Cinematographer’s Union and had written concertos, operas, ballet music, song cycles (Russian poetry was a favourite), music for television and for 132 films. He was prolific, saw few boundaries and, in 1956, had set Shakespeare sonnets to music. The following year, he did the same for Japanese poetry.

James Morrison has spent several years out of the limelight, with family difficulties to attend to. Would age and experience give the gravelly soul-pop star’s soft-focus romantic ballads sharper edges on his return? The underwhelmed reviews of his recent fourth album, Higher Than Here, suggested not, but last night’s live show, in a swaying, crooning, heaving Shepherd’s Bush Empire, showed an astute, modestly charismatic performer, and a warm embrace of a gig.

The 100 Club is dark. Really dark. People are shrouded in the ink-light. I think it’s to save their embarrassment as they order a drink and realise they’ll have to either apply for a loan or sell a child in order to get drunk. In any case, the indoor gloaming provides the perfect setting for the opening act of the evening, Demian Castellanos. The creative helm of psych-rock act The Oscillation, he's on his own tonight with a wordless solo set showcasing new material.

In 1973, alone and with an acoustic guitar, Marc Bolan recorded the revealing “This Is My Life”. Over its five minutes, a strummed elegy akin to the T Rex B-side “Baby Strange” evolves from a finger-picked blues. The lyrics name-check B.B. King, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode” and mention a visit to New York State, playfully rhymed with steak. “Everything I did when I was going to school was just an imitation of Carl Perkins singing ‘Don’t be Cruel’,” he sings, no doubt well aware the Elvis Presley hit did not figure in Perkins’ usual repertoire.

How, exactly, are you supposed to review a Keith Jarrett concert – solo, completely improvised, just one man and his Steinway, audience on all sides, ushers walking up and down the aisles bearing signs forbidding any record of the evening's music?

From the second song, “Teenage Icon”, the Brighton Centre crowd are in the palms of Vaccines’ frontman Justin Young’s hands. It’s not a capacity crowd but they sing along to the perfectly crafted indie-pop stomper as if they were. “I’m nobody’s hero,” Young roars, clad in black, wearing his own band’s tee-shirt, but it’s not true, he’s clearly everybody’s hero here. His audience are mostly late teens and early twenties but there’s a hefty smattering of older faces and loads of women. The latter is striking as so often gigs are just hordes of men. The Vaccines clearly have a wider appeal.

Heading into the final straits of 2015, it’s pleasing to read announcements by the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Nielsen Soundscan that the year has been the biggest for vinyl sales this century. The sales figures are, respectively, a year-on-year rise of 35% and 56% in the US and the UK, with Europe following the pattern.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” said Cassandra Wilson to a half empty Royal Festival Hall, after a sulky rendition of “Don’t Explain”, the opening track from her Billie Holiday tribute album, Coming Forth By Day. It was an hour and fifteen minutes since the singer was due on stage and half an hour since the directors of concert promoter Serious had arrived in her stead – amidst boos and irate whistles – to tell us she was refusing to leave her hotel room.