London
Liz Thomson
In one of the award-winning club’s forays from its Camden Town home, Green Note welcomed International Women’s Day with a special one-off concert exploring and celebrating the many ages and stages of being a woman. Three generations of musicians were on stage at North London’s JW3. The youngest, The Rosellas, an a cappella trio who met at school and who are now making quite a name for themselves, before shortly dispersing (temporarily one hopes) across the country to uni.It was a life-affirming evening enjoyed by an audience that included a healthy Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Jason Mraz… How can someone so big slip under so many radars. Mine, the muso with whom I trek to all sorts of gigs, and that of a wide range of friends, most of whom are pretty au courant with the scene.Then you hear it. Of course, the big hit – probably on all our mental juke boxes – “I’m Yours”, which has clocked up sales of around 1.4 million, and which comes from his third album, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things (2008). The single set what was then a record of 76 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at number six, going on to win a Grammy and to be named ASCAP Song of the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
What’s the one thing everyone knows about Robin Hood? That he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. So it was quite a brave decision to re-cast Robin as a rapacious Tory shires MP, doing his best to stop the poor becoming rich. At least, I think that was what happened: in much of the story is opaque, even having read the synopsis carefully. But this new new opera by composer Dani Howard has some striking passages, both of excellent singing and beautiful scoring.The Opera Story is a young company in only its third season, but already onto its third new piece. It doesn’t lack ambition: Read more ...
howard.male
Was that "A waltz is a beat not a march" being hollered through what sounds like a megaphone on “Three Steps to a Development”? Sometimes it’s tricky to make out what vocalist Austin is on about, as he strains to be heard above the dazzling organised noise: such perversity and archness is pure art-school. But in this instance it also places focus on the relentless forward thrust and throbbing physical heft of the music itself. Snapped Ankles (great name, gentlemen) offer up a shiny new take on the post-punk aesthetic epitomised by bands as diverse as Devo, the B-52’s, Magazine and early Read more ...
David Nice
In a way, he was a second Bernstein. Only 11 years Lenny's junior, and living to the much riper age of 89 – his 90th birthday would have been on 6 April – André Previn was a film composer and arranger at the start of his 70-plus-year career, a jazz pianist in a class of his own, and another fine conductor who also took his mission to educate seriously (and to entertain not so seriously, as underlined by that appearance on The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special, destined to be endlessly recycled now).Something of the fire had gone out of his conducting by the time I met him in his Reigate Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
"It's gonna be the best golf course in the world," a man in an Aertex shirt and a bright red baseball cap is assuring us. "The best. I guarantee it." You can tell he's the kind of person who thinks talking quickly and loudly is the same thing as being right.If this sounds vaguely familiar, that's because Hannah Patterson's new play Eden, staged at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs by Matthew Xia, is based on a true story, that of Donald Trump's luxury golf course in Aberdeenshire and the backlash it faced from local residents. Patterson transports the action to the fictional village of Eden, Read more ...
Heather Neill
Here's a recipe for a successful National Theatre production: take a well-loved classical comedy, employ an outstanding young director and a talented writer (so much the better if they have a proven track record together) and cast gold-standard actors, including, if possible, someone with a screen presence. What could possibly go wrong? Well, unfortunately, just such a promising mix fails to gel in Tartuffe. Director Blanche McIntyre and John Donnelly were responsible for a well-regarded tour of The Seagull in 2013, while favourite actors Olivia Williams, Kevin Doyle and Susan Engel are among Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was TV gold-dust. The original seven series of Only Fools and Horses were broadcast on BBC One from 1981-1991, and a string of Christmas specials kept the show running until 2003. It was showered with awards and critical acclaim, and in 1996 the episode "Time on Our Hands" drew a record-breaking 24.3 million viewers.This musical version at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, authored by Paul Whitehouse and Jim Sullivan (son of the show’s creator John Sullivan, who died in 2011), whisks us back to 1989, and deftly recreates the dodgy Peckham milieu of the Trotter family. This consists largely of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s 1945 and World War Two is nearly over. Somewhere in England, Fiona Symonds (“Feef” to her friends) is training to be a spy and be dropped behind enemy lines. Her training involves such amusements as being woken in the night by having a bucket of water chucked over her, then being interrogated by two fake German officers.But the end of the war in Europe brings Feef’s dreams of covert derring-do to a sudden halt. Wrapped in the arms of her American lover Peter McCormick (Matt Lauria), she wistfully laments that she now won’t be able to parachute into Germany and blow up bridges. Perhaps Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The Venezuelan pianist and composer Gabriela Montero is an outspoken advocate for political change in her country, using her musical standing as a platform from which to highlight Venezuela’s "hijacking" by "forces of criminality, barbarism and nihilism". She also seeks to express this struggle through her own music and indeed, in this case, through the programming and staging of a whole concert. In this, she was broadly successful, although not unreservedly so.This concert, with the strings of the Scottish Ensemble, was centred around Montero’s 2018 quasi-piano concerto Babel, surrounded by Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Imagine for a moment that you are at, say, the Derby. It’s pretty good. But then in flies Pegasus, the mythical winged horse. What happens?We need to talk about these rare moments of almost inexplicable magic in concerts, because unless I’m massively mistaken, that is one crucial factor that keeps us going to them. Perhaps you’ve witnessed one. Something happens. Some might say that a spirit descends. An atmosphere comes to surround us and we all sense it, musicians and audience alike, and we lose ourselves in it together. Welcome to Milton Court’s evening with the Doric String Quartet and Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“No one wants a pervert for a daughter,” thinks Marnie (delightful TV newcomer Charly Clive), a 24-year-old from the Scottish Borders, who has intrusive thoughts. Don’t we all? But relentless graphic images about “fucked-up sex” have been messing with Marnie’s head since the age of 14, most recently featuring her mum (Arabella Weir) and dad, which rather puts her off her stride when she’s trying to give a nice speech at their anniversary party.It’s like The Sixth Sense, she says, but instead of seeing dead people she sees naked ones, usually having sex, occasionally involving animals. This Read more ...