Reviews
Lizz Wright, Cadogan HallMonday, 14 November 2016
There are singers who can dazzle with their technical mastery, those who welcome you into their musical world through a special communicative gift, and those who can traverse genres with absolutely no artifice. Rarest of all are those singers who... Read more... |
My Mother and Other Strangers, BBC OneMonday, 14 November 2016
This new wartime drama launched on Remembrance Sunday is a curio. The setting of My Mother and Other Strangers is rural Northern Ireland in 1943, where it’s green and wet and a long way from the conflict. Into the midst of the fictional Moybeg on... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Zadie Smith - Swing TimeSunday, 13 November 2016
In his lovely memoir My Father’s Fortune, Michael Frayn dubs the Holloway and Caledonian Roads the “Tigris and Euphrates” of his family history. In that case, just a few pages west in the London A-Z (the mystic scripture that baffles an American... Read more... |
Deep Water, BBC FourSunday, 13 November 2016
Australian drama has come on in leaps and bounds since Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, The Sullivans and Prisoner: Cell Block H. While Neighbours and Home and Away continue to play in the sand, other shows – The Secret Life of Us, The Dr Blake Mysteries... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: REMSunday, 13 November 2016
Good grief, was Out of Time really 25 years ago? This was the seventh studio album from the li'l ole band from Athens, Georgia, and the one with which they finally cracked open the mainstream international market. This was when people still used to... Read more... |
Michael Wollny Trio + Andrew McCormack, Kings PlaceSunday, 13 November 2016
This rambunctious German-Swiss trio is used to selling out much larger venues at home. Their overdue EFG London Jazz Festival debut, in an enthusiastic but not full Kings Place, introduced British audiences to an exhilarating take on the acoustic... Read more... |
Jazz Voice, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 12 November 2016
Following the seismic events across the pond earlier this week, an outcome which has left the rest of the world blinking in disbelief, Guy Barker’s brilliant arrangements for this year’s Jazz Voice offered much needed balm for the soul. Creativity,... Read more... |
Billy Bragg & Joe Henry, St Georges Church, BrightonSaturday, 12 November 2016
The day after Trump won the US presidential election was always going to be an interesting day for a concert by Billy Bragg and his American cohort Joe Henry. Bragg’s 1986 song “Help Save the Youth of America” is, for instance, given added power by... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Jonathan Dove, Ayako Fujiki, Anne Sofie von OtterSaturday, 12 November 2016
Jonathan Dove: For an Unknown Soldier, An Airmail Letter from Mozart Nicky Spence (tenor), Melvyn Tan (piano), London Mozart Players/Nicholas Cleobury (Signum)Jonathan Dove originally wanted to use soldiers’ letters and diaries in his "cantata... Read more... |
American PastoralFriday, 11 November 2016
Ewan McGregor has been judged unworthy of adapting Philip Roth in the US. But his directorial debut is finely crafted, and powered by visceral emotion embodied in one of his best performances. As Seymour “Swede” Levov, he’s an All-Jewish-American... Read more... |
Ehnes, Hallé, Elder, Heyward, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterFriday, 11 November 2016
Two things to note in Thursday’s Hallé performance at the Bridgewater Hall: the debut in the Manchester main series of their highly talented new assistant conductor, Jonathon Heyward, and another stride along the road towards the Hallé/Elder... Read more... |
Close to the Enemy, BBC Two / Paranoid, Series Finale, ITVFriday, 11 November 2016
We last encountered Stephen Poliakoff on TV in 2013's Dancing on the Edge, which provoked mixed reactions (not least on theartsdesk). That was the story of a black jazz band in 1930s London, who played gigs at swanky hotels. Close to the Enemy (★)... Read more... |
