Scotland
Lammermuir Festival 2018 review - a bigger buzzMonday, 24 September 2018![]() There’s always been something of a buzz in the air at East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival. It’s the feeling that it’s somehow a special privilege to discover its performances – whether they’re from international names or emerging artists, challenging... Read more... |
CD: Malcolm Middleton - BananasMonday, 17 September 2018![]() Bananas is Malcolm Middleton’s first solo album to be built around guitar, bass, drums and all that stuff since 2009’s gorgeous Waxing Gibbous. Like any great artist, he soon became bored with pursuing the classic formulation that made his name (... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Home / The PrisonerMonday, 27 August 2018![]() Home ★★★★ Philadelphia-based theatre artist Geoff Sobelle has scored highly with two previous Edinburgh Fringe shows. Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl, way back in 2010, imagined the natural world wreaking ruthless... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Benedetti, Baltimore SO, Alsop - puzzlingly tameMonday, 27 August 2018![]() The Edinburgh International Festival scored quite a coup in securing the services of Bernstein protégée Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on the very day of the great composer/conductor’s centenary – and for the festival’s penultimate... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Aimard, SCO, Pintscher - psychedelic visionsSaturday, 25 August 2018![]() There were two immediate casualties at Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s high-energy account of Messiaen’s monumental Des canyons aux étoiles… with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival.First was one of the strings in the... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: La maladie de la mort / The End of EddyWednesday, 22 August 2018![]() La maladie de la mort ★★★ Toxic masculinity in all its appalling variety is a hot topic across Edinburgh’s festivals this year – just check out Daughter at CanadaHub and even Ulster American at the Traverse for two particularly... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Teenage FanclubSunday, 19 August 2018![]() The cover images of the four albums Teenage Fanclub issued on Creation Records suggest ambivalence. While Bandwagonesque’s title acknowledges the hopping onto trends endemic in pop, the graphic of a bag with a dollar sign recognises the related... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Orpheus / Bottom / BackupFriday, 17 August 2018![]() Orpheus ★★★★ This unashamedly sentimental storytelling show got its premiere a couple of years back in the back garden of a cheese shop in Cromarty, before touring the Scottish Highlands, we’re told. With its lo-fi, minimalist... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Nigel Slater's Toast / StatusTuesday, 14 August 2018![]() Nigel Slater's Toast ★★★★ “It’s impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you,” says Sam Newton’s eager, nine-year-old Nigel, in Henry Filloux-Bennett’s fluent stage adaptation of Nigel Slater’s 2003 memoir. And in... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Daughter / Huff / First Snow/Première NeigeMonday, 13 August 2018![]() Launched just last year to celebrate the country’s 150th anniversary, CanadaHub has quickly become one of the Edinburgh Fringe’s most exciting and intriguing venues, presenting a small but richly provocative programme of work from across that vast... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Zimerman, LSO, Rattle - fizzing chemistrySaturday, 11 August 2018![]() It was Simon Rattle’s first visit to the Edinburgh International Festival for – well, really quite a few years. And the first of his two concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra drew, perhaps predictably, a capacity crowd in the Usher Hall, for... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Underground Railroad Game / On the ExhaleFriday, 10 August 2018![]() Underground Railroad Game ★★★★★ The game of the show’s title is a fun educational exercise on the US Civil War devised by Teacher Caroline and Teacher Stuart at Hanover Middle School, with the aim of bringing alive the flight of... Read more... |
