Glasgow
Christopher Lambton
For its latest production, unveiled on Sunday evening but recorded in November, Scottish Opera toys playfully with the absurdities of Covid-compliant performance practice. But maybe sensing our weariness with the whole business, it is not overdone. In fact this is a relatively straightforward concert staging of Mozart’s dark and unsettling comedy.The orchestra is on a darkened stage, behind the proscenium arch, ghostly masked figures barely visible behind a multitude of flexible perspex screens. The stage is extended over the orchestra pit and lightly furnished with a table, two chairs and a Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Picture the scene. A vast steel gazebo covers a nondescript parking lot next to an industrial unit in Glasgow. With a clear plastic covering, it is the most rudimentary of shelters, sides open to admit the roar of the M8 and the wailing of sirens, carried on a keen autumnal breeze. About 100 people, all wearing masks, are seated at a random scattering of mismatched but carefully distanced chairs and tables, loosely grouped around a central stage. Around the perimeter, a scattering of tents, shipping containers, and flatbed lorry trailers, one of which is furnished to look like a dilapidated Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Although Metallica are screening a freshly recorded concert across America’s drive-in cinemas at the end of the month, we’re no nearer to actual gigs anywhere, especially the UK. Hold tight. We’ll get there. In the meantime, here are three events worth taking a look at.AIM Music AwardsTonight (Wednesday 12th August), the annual AIM Music Awards will occur online here from 7.00 PM. The event features performances by two leading names in UK hip hop, Little Simz and AJ Tracey, as well as a tribute to the late great Afro-beat drumming legend Tony Allen by Femi Koleoso from UK jazz unit the Ezra Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
After the success of BBC Radio 3’s live lunchtime broadcasts from the Wigmore Hall, live music is now kicking off again north of the border, with four concerts broadcast from City Halls, Glasgow, presented by Kate Molleson. Sadly, due to "unforeseen circumstances" the recitals were not filmed and streamed as originally planned – something which does take away from the overall audience experience – but it’s still thrilling to know that City Halls is once again ringing with music.Starting the series was a recital from the young Glasgow-born bass-baritone Michael Mofidian and pianist Julia Lynch Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Steve Martin and Martin Short first met in 1986 on the set of The Three Amigos (in which they co-starred with Chevy Chase), became fast friends and have since worked on a few projects together. In what was quite a coup for the Glasgow Comedy Festival, the first night of their UK tour was a starry curtain-raiser to the festival proper, which starts on Thursday.The Funniest Show in Town at the Moment is a mix of stand-up, reminiscences and musical interludes (provided by pianist Michael Farrell and bluegrass band The Steep Canyon Rangers, while Martin gets out his banjo for a couple of tunes), Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There is something enjoyably spikey about Halsey, even when she is adhering to pop convention. At one stage she told the crowd how good they looked, before dryly adding it was praise they wouldn’t have heard before. These are brave words when playing to a Glasgow audience. She is a pop performer possessing an actual personality, one that has survived the step up to playing arenas, and when she spoke during the encore of how her fans had helped keep her alive during tough times, it came with a raw emotion rarely present in big gigs.The New Jersey native was also very much the show here. Her Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Critical and commercial success haven’t gone to the head of Lewis Capaldi. The 23-year-old opened his first of two sold-out nights at Glasgow’s 14,000-capacity enormodrome – booked when he was yet to release his debut album – with a video montage poking fun of his po-faced reaction to Billie Eilish beating him to Song of the Year at the Grammys in January.Coming mere weeks after his double win at the Brit Awards, the show had the feel of a triumphant homecoming – albeit one in for which the vanquishing hero was constantly rewarding the crowd with profanity-laden gratitude. Almost exactly Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As Gaz Coombes noted around the halfway point of Supergrass’s Barrowland set “the last time we were here it was to say goodbye”. That was a decade ago, when one of Britpop’s most enduring acts finally headed into the sunset. Nothing lasts forever in pop though, and here were Oxford’s finest, back onstage, and looking in fine fettle.They opened with “Caught By The Fuzz”, and it sounded as breathlessly exciting as ever, an under three minute blast of punky pop dynamism. That was a common theme throughout the set, and one that not all nostalgia tours like this can always offer, in that music Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Matt Shultz was clearly taking no chances. The Cage the Elephant frontman appeared onstage underneath a large umbrella, presumably bought to cope with the day’s deluge of rain. In the ever effervescent Shultz’s hands it was swiftly used as a prop, kickstarting a lively evening of old fashioned rock 'n’ roll.These are heady times for the Kentucky outfit, who arrived fresh from winning their second Grammy for fifth album, Social Cues. It provided the backbone of a lengthy set that suggested they have outlasted many of their contemporaries by serving up invigorating versions of classic styles, Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It might have been 24 hours after Valentine’s Day, but James McGovern still seemed to have a touch of romance in his head. At one stage during the Murder Capital’s bruising set he referenced his floral-patterned shirt as evidence that he was feeling the spirit of the previous day, and perhaps that should not surprise, for the Murder Capital are a band with plenty of heart.They are also an outfit with intelligence, both in their songs and in the clever way the Dublin fivesome structured this gig. The first half possessed intensity but mostly of the slow burning sort, a tension that you felt Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
No matter how much the Jonas Brothers try, they can’t totally escape the mouse. Commercials for new Disney TV shows flashed up onscreen not long before the siblings took to the stage, and although the trio’s days of appearing in such fare are long gone, it offered a brief reminder of where they began. Ironically though, this was a forward thinking pop show that worked best when focused on the future, rather than indulging in nostalgia.It was also a performance that spared no expense. If the trappings were familiar, from the group appearing on a platform being lowered from the ceiling before Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
While there’s usually something for everybody on the Celtic Connections festival programme, where Glasgow’s midwinter festival tends to shine is in its collaborations and special events. Over the past 18 days the city has hosted folk icon Peggy Seeger on a cross-generational bill with her songs Calum and Neill MacColll; Glasgow singer-songwriter Beerjacket performing with the Cairn String Quartet; a new orchestral symphony inspired by the Declaration of Arbroath in its 700th anniversary year; and the annual Transatlantic Sessions shows, featuring lovingly curated lineups of musicians from Read more ...