Reviews
Sebastian Scotney
Whereas the more venerable European jazz festivals, founded from the 1960s onwards, are typically faced with challenges of mid- or later life, Montrachet Jazz is a newcomer and is different. 2026 was just its second edition, but its early steps are bold and impressive. Not only is a very clever artistic vision already in place, but it is also one which authentically complements and enhances the unique magic of its setting.Location is everything, and truly there is no place like Puligny-Montrachet. For lovers of dry white wine, this is, literally, hallowed ground. The village is within Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
South Korea’s soft power isn’t restricted to K-pop and K-drama. The latest Festival of Korean Dance, hosted by venues around the UK, is a demonstration that its contemporary dance scene is impressive too.Now in its ninth iteration, this year I caught two of the festival’s programmes, one indie, the other by the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company, who presented a piece on a double bill that was so good, I returned the next night to catch it again.The other offering from the KNCDC, Voyage, could have been from another planet. Indeed, it claims to be inspired by the Voyager spacecraft’s Read more ...
David Nice
Spirit of place first: Nevill Holt, which I was visiting for the first time, is a beauty. There's an Oxford college look about the facades, from 13th century to more recent additions, a lawn on the hill gives splendid views over the Welland Valley, while gardens and catering rival Glyndebourne and Garsington. Plus, most significantly, a purpose-built, RIBA award-winning 400-seater opera house in the handsome ironstone stable block (pictured below). All of these thanks to David Ross, an entrepreneur with a chequered history whose attention to detail is phenomenal. He bought the estate Read more ...
Guy Oddy
“Pruning, pruning, pruning, pruning, pruning” declaims a suited and booted Robin Dallaway into his microphone on stage at Birmingham’s Castle and Falcon on Sunday night, and it’s as if time falls away back to the mid-1980s. Suddenly, it’s a Friday evening. The Tube is on Channel 4 and an exceedingly strange black and white film that has been especially commissioned by the show is introduced by Max Headroom. “The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes” bursts forth as bells chime and a brain-scrambling groove takes hold, while suburbia is transformed into a very odd place indeed.The Very Things Read more ...
David Nice
If you find endless riches in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's words and Richard Strauss's score for their "Comedy for Music", as I do, you'll be very happy to catch Bruno Ravella's deliciously staged fantasy again. This was my third time. It had a difficult birth at Garsington during the Covid era - no touching for the 32-year-old Marschallin and her 17-year-old lover Octavian in the opening bedroom scene - then went to Dublin, where Irish National Opera had assembled a remarkable cast with three Irish leading ladies. A fourth, Niamh O'Sullivan, is central in making this Garsington revival a glowing Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Aptly scheduled for our Great British Heatwave, writer Catherine Shepherd’s eight-part drama whisks us away to a remote Greek island, where a band of friends (four of them having been at university together) have rented an aesthetically pleasing but somewhat decrepit house for the titular fortnight. Their Greek housekeeper patiently explains that the plumbing is dangerously ancient and would they please put used toilet paper in the bin rather than trying to flush it, which prompts a few aghast sideways glances. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t drink the water.History tells us that fictional Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Caution is evidently needed when moving around at a Pins gig. A woman who wandered off to the bar or the toilet returned and appeared slightly startled to realise the group's singer Faith Vern was now among the crowd, complete with microphone stand and considerable swagger. It wasn't even the first time the band had wandered among the faithful, as guitarist Lois MacDonald had gone for a stroll early on, taking care to not bump any punters with her guitar in the process.Such interaction is one of the advantages of being in a sweatbox like Nice N' Sleazy, a location that was fairly busy but is Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
There’s only one thing harder than trying to get to Kings Place to see a semi-staged Dido and Aeneas on the day of Arsenal’s victory parade through north London, and that’s trying to get home again afterwards. It took me longer to get from the venue to sitting on a tube than it did for Dido to go from being a happy singleton to tragically dead. As I battled closed stations and a wall of red shirts and a ticking clock, I experienced something of Dido’s despair, and felt similarly cursed.But it was worth the trip, for a beautifully played and sung performance of Purcell’s groundbreaking opera, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Promise me delight” is a tantalising entreaty. One which – in its particular way – this captivating 17-track compliation delivers on. Promise Me Delight - Italo Disco and European Pop from the Golden Age digs into what its title articulates, with the golden age in question spanning 1982 to 1988, with an emphasis on 1983 to 1986.A specific form of Continental European pop is celebrated. One which was dancefloor oriented, with electropop leanings and an emphasis on tunes as much as on atmosphere and rhythms designed to move body and feet. Not much of this pulse-quickening, often-fervid, almost Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Benvenuti a Napoli cries the huge corny poster of the blue bay and ominous Vesuvius that looms over Neil Irish’s sets for Così fan tutte. However, we’re no longer in the Enlightenment city of cynical male experiments in female psychology where Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera of 1790 first took place. Now, in the 1950s stage of post-1945 America’s forever wars, Naples-posted US Marines Guglielmo and Ferrando meet up with long-distance sweethearts Fiordiligi and Dorabella after a transatlantic flight. Elizabeth Karani’s multi-tasking Despina serves as runway signaller as the arriving passengers Read more ...
Gary Naylor
About two hours into this big, brash Beetlejuice, the door to Hell opens up, and I felt a sudden desire to rush the stage, dash through and take my chances. Well, perhaps not on press night, when it's poor form to leave before the end.Reflecting further (and this is one of those shows in which something is always happening, but everything is said at least twice, so you can take a time out) I realised that I was breaking one of my Golden Rules. This is a musical adaptation of an 80s blockbuster movie and has a wild-eyed, leering man with green hair as its marketing image, so what did I expect Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Yesterday I travelled through a sweltering London in shorts and sandals to go and hear Schubert’s Winterreise, about a bleak journey through a frozen landscape. It was quite the disjuncture, and a strange piece of seasonal programming. But I was glad to hear veteran baritone Thomas Hampson in fine voice in the Schubert, accompanied by Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova, even if the second half of Kurt Weill and Astor Piazzolla was less fulfilling.Singers eschewing the traditional pianist for the more unusual (in the classical concert hall) sounds of the accordion is all the rage at the Read more ...