London
Ellie Porter
"Would you mind if I jammed on my new... castanets?" We’re halfway through Eels’ triumphant set at Hammersmith's Eventim Apollo and this is the kind of question we’ve come to expect from frontman Mark Oliver Everett, AKA "E". Expect the unexpected, it appears, is the theme of the evening, which began with an entertaining set from the hilarious and hungover Robert Ellis, a deadpan Texan in white hat and tails who boasted a fine line in self-deprecation, heartbreak and comedy (remind you of anyone?).
Ellis warns the fully seated audience that Eels are going to shake the grand old Apollo up Read more ...
graham.rickson
Gounod: Symphonies 1 and 2 Iceland Symphony Orchestra/Yan Pascal Tortelier (Chandos)Roger Nichols’ lucid sleeve note underlines the point that Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique singularly failed to kick off a 19th century French symphonic tradition. Édouard Lalo complained that critics assumed that you only wrote symphonies if you weren't up to the challenge of composing operas. Saint-Saëns’ 3rd is the only French romantic symphony we get to hear nowadays, Franck’s sublime example having slipped through the cracks. Exactly when Gounod's two symphonies were written isn't clear, though it's Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
A clever programme, a vivid premiere, a Proms debut for an exciting young conductor and the first appearance there by Catriona Morison since she won the 2017 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World: all this provided grist to the mill for a sold-out Prom that was more than the sum of its impressive parts. Elim Chan, who won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition (the first woman to do so) in 2014, was on the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s podium for pieces themed around the sea and pictures. The 33-year-old conductor from Hong Kong is a tiny, pleasingly charismatic figure – offering ideas Read more ...
Tim Cumming
It’s been a period of upheaval and change for singer-songwriter, and compelling interpreter of traditional ballads, Josienne Clarke. These days she’s a Rough Trade artist, now sailing solo seas away from her long-time musical partner, producer and arranger Ben Walker. Together between 2010 and last year, they released two digital albums, Our Light is Gone and The Seas are Deep, three EPs and four exquisite CD/vinyl releases in 2013’s Fire & Fortune, the following year’s Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour, 2016’s Overnight and the final Seedlings All last year, the latter the first to be Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Ashley Joiner’s expansive documentary Are You Proud? opens with the testament of a redoubtable nonagenarian remembering his experiences as a gay man in World War II. Though followed by the admission that he had to live his later life as a lie, it’s told with considerable humour and concludes with a question – “How can you be criminalised for being born the way you are?” – to which the larger part of UK society would surely today reply with a degree of understanding.Whether it’s such tentative early moves towards reform – how good Fergus O’Brien’s 2017 film Against the Law was in bringing that Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales’ second consecutive night at the Proms, accompanied by their associated National Chorus, ventured further out of the classical mainstream than the first. Where Wednesday night had seen a solid Germanic programme of Brahms, Wagner and Mozart Thursday saw a British world premiere and some enchanting Japanese music, alongside two meaty Russian classics. By one classic test this was an engrossing concert: the time flew by and I barely looked at my watch.Tōru Takemitsu’s Twill by Twilight of 1988 is a favourite of the Prom’s conductor Takaaki Otaka, and he Read more ...
Ellie Porter
Nile Rodgers, the beaming, beret-sporting curator of this year’s splendidly eclectic Meltdown, strolls on to the Royal Festival Hall stage tonight to introduce his “dearest friend in the world”. The appearance of the CHIC maestro is not entirely unexpected given that he was, earlier this evening, at an event across the way in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, but it’s still a delight. And when Johnny Marr makes his entrance, he greets Rodgers with a powerful hug that shows the feeling’s mutual (he did name his son Nile in Rodgers’ honour, after all).A compact, tanned figure in black bomber jacket, Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Get those worksheets in by Monday or I will Brexit the lot of you,” says turbo-charged teacher Aine (Aisling Bea: The Fall, Gap Year) to her London TEFL class. Her students have just enjoyed a stimulating lesson built around the Kardashian family tree. “Kim is the…” Aine waits for the answer. “Yes, well done, the second eldest. And Khloé is the…yes, the middle one. She was the youngest until along came Kendall and Kylie.”Aisling Bea’s lovable new six-part comedy drama, co-starring Sharon Horgan as Aine’s older sister Shona (the two have worked together before, but this is the first script of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It was one of the great moments of Woodstock as Stephen Stills, amid the applause for “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, tells 400,000 muddy people: “This is the second time we’ve ever played in front of people, man. We’re scared shitless!”Crosby , Stills, Nash & Young, in all their shape-shifting configurations, remain one of the great supergroups. A few bars of their peerless harmonies on such classics as “Teach Your Children”, “Our House” and “Helpless”, not to mention Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”, and you’re transported back instantly to another time, another place. If only we could all “turn on Read more ...
joe.muggs
You can see why of all jazz acts, the indie-centric Domino label went for this one. In particular if you took the drums and guitar of Lizy Exell and Shirley Tetteh alone, at various points here you could be listening to post-rock, with hints of Sigur Rós or God Speed You! Black Emperor especially on the album's epic centrepiece “EU (Emotionally Unavailable)”.The production, too – from Kwes (Solange, Damon Albarn, Micachu) – is as hefty and sometimes experimental as you'd expect from a left of centre rock or electronica act. But crucially, these parts are just aspects of a larger whole. Once Read more ...
Kitty Finstad
What does one wear to watch a Fashion Freak Show, FFS? On the eve of London’s hottest day probably ever, the fashion faithful still turned out in sequins, PVC jackets, knee-high lace-up boots, turbans, wigs and floral headpieces, a skin-tight silver jumpsuit, full drag and even a white beret courtesy of Mr Nile Rodgers, who must have been blushing every time his disco anthem “Le Freak C’est Chic" erupted from the speakers. Such is the influence of fashion’s favourite bad boy (don’t make me say enfant terrible…) that not to make an effort for the UK premiere at the Southbank Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
By happenstance, this Prom was fully topical, with Debussy’s languorous Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune fitting for one of the hottest days in London’s history, and the “Infernal Dance” from Stravinsky’s Firebird mirroring the infernal political dance taking place simultaneously in Downing Street.The official connection between three of the four items was that they were introduced to British audiences by Henry Wood among the “Novelties” he threw at his audiences, between oodles of Beethoven and Brahms. In each case he spotted a winner, and last night they were presented in exemplary Read more ...