21st century
Gillam, Brodsky Quartet, Manchester Camerata, Buxton International Festival 2022 review - a freshness in classic ElgarWednesday, 20 July 2022
It’s an ill heatwave that brings nobody any good, and Buxton International Festival’s decision to move its highlight concert, by Manchester Camerata with Jess Gillam and the Brodsky Quartet as their guests, from the Buxton Octagon to St John’s... Read more... |
La donna del lago, Buxton International Festival 2022 review - Rossini’s romanticism for todayFriday, 15 July 2022
Buxton International Festival’s opera scene is clearly back on track for 2022, and its most substantial production a taut and tension-filled presentation of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago.Jacopo Spirei’s production, with design by Madeleine Boyd, has... Read more... |
The White Card, Soho Theatre review - expelling the audience from its comfort zoneFriday, 01 July 2022
We’re in New York City, in an upscale loft apartment, with that absence of stuff that speaks of a power to acquire anything. There are paintings on the walls, but we see only their descriptions: we learn that the owner (curator, in his word) really... Read more... |
Hughes, Manchester Collective, Hallé St Peter’s, Manchester review - new work and stunning singingFriday, 24 June 2022
Manchester Collective were back on home ground last night in the tour of a programme featuring the first performances of a new song cycle by Edmund Finnis, Out of the Dawn’s Mind. Soprano soloist was the amazing Ruby Hughes.It was home ground for... Read more... |
Album: Porcupine Tree - Closure/ContinuationWednesday, 22 June 2022
Porcupine Tree’s members have said they don’t know if their 11th album and this autumn’s North American–European tour will conclude their 35-year career. If it does, it would be typical of the progressive rock trio – as averse to standing still as... Read more... |
Album: Nick Cave - Seven PsalmsMonday, 06 June 2022
Nick Cave has always been a spoken-word man, and these seven short poems set to music with regular collaborator Warren Ellis are the latest in a genre he explores with exceptional talent. He is an artist driven by a need to create, constantly and in... Read more... |
Cornelia Parker, Tate Britain review – divine intelligenceMonday, 23 May 2022
Cornelia Parker’s early installations are as fresh and as thought provoking as when they were made. Her Tate Britain retrospective opens with Thirty Pieces of Silver (pictured below left: Detail). It’s more than 30 years since she ran over a... Read more... |
Album: Mavis Staples and Levon Helm - Carry Me HomeMonday, 16 May 2022
There is so much gospel out there that it’s not easy to stand out above the crowd. Mavis Staples, with a distinctive voice that has delivered a gritty contralto for many decades, never stops. This new release, a set of songs that were recorded in... Read more... |
The Misfortune of the English, Orange Tree Theatre review - don't fret, boys, it's only deathFriday, 06 May 2022
“We all make history, one way or another.” But some of us make more history than others, and a group of 27 English schoolboys who got lost in Southern Germany in 1936 haven’t made much, unfortunately. Scottish playwright Pamela Carter has brushed... Read more... |
Esfahani, CBSO, Morlot, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - ghostly enchantmentsFriday, 29 April 2022
Bent Sørensen has christened his new harpsichord concerto Sei Anime: “six souls”. The six concise movements, written for Mahan Esfahani and a chamber-sized orchestra, are modelled, apparently, on the dance movements of a Bach keyboard suite. But as... Read more... |
Album: Fontaines DC – Skinty FiaSunday, 24 April 2022
Incanting, declaiming, and growling, as if actual singing might prettify the Fontaines DC’s post-punk dirges, Grian Chatten has never sounded more aggrieved than he does on the Irish combo’s third album. Disarmingly, he also sounds younger on Skinty... Read more... |
Morbius review – not so superFriday, 01 April 2022
Following the much-maligned Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), the third film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe stars Jared Leto as Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr Michael Morbius. Suffering from a rare blood condition that threatens... Read more... |
