Reviews
Tom Birchenough
It’s a while since BBC One served us up for Sunday night primetime something with so much black humour as there is to enjoy in What Remains. The tone of the script from Tony Basgallop (Inside Men) is as sardonic as it comes, and the cast of characters he assembles around its south London location doesn’t look like it will be presenting the human race in its most redeeming light.David Threlfall as DI Len Harper isn't a detective with many illusions left about his job, or the people it brings him into contact with – we can see it in those tired eyes and stubbled cheeks. It’s Threfall’s Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Here's an association test - what's next in the sequence: flamenco, gypsy, soul? Yes, you win the free tourist trip to Andalucía along with writer Elizabeth Kinder, with whom you will almost certainly enjoy weak sangria and tapas while stumbling amusingly in bad Spanish, and you won't be troubled by a single unfamiliar thought about this alluring form of dance, music and poetic song.Flamenco is so hackneyed a part of the Spanish package that it's certainly time to chisel through the candy to seek the bitter heart of the real thing. But there's always something hokum when a presenter declares Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sly & the Family Stone: Higher!Sly & the Family Stone’s hits “Dance to the Music”, “I Want to Take You Higher” and “Stand!” delivered a sharp wake-up call to the American charts in a period when psychedelia meant new styles of pop were becoming less concise and the mellow vibes of Laurel Canyon were about to begin reducing energy levels. Sly Stone’s gang showed that music could go to fresh places without losing vitality and precision. The case doesn’t need to be made that Sly Stone – born Sylvester Stewart in 1943 – is one of America’s greats, but Higher! makes it anyway with Read more ...
Serena Kutchinsky
Dalston was the place on Friday night, as the Sun Ra Arkestra put on a trademark display of Afro-jazz excellence in the intimate surrounds of Café Oto. Jazz pioneer Sun Ra might have been dead since 1993, but his influential big band is very much alive and capable of puffing their way through marathon sets.Formed in the mid-1950s by Sun Ra, aka visionary pianist and composer Herman Poole, the Arkestra is currently led by the famed saxophonist Marshall Allen, 89. Frail-looking but authoritative, Allen worked with Sun Ra from 1958 until the latter's death and is often referred to as “the second Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The visits of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester are a regular Proms highlight, only preceded (for me) by the John Wilson Orchestra in the speed with which they go from announcement to diary. Last year’s concert under Gatti was a whirling celebration of dance – a beautifully programmed narrative that spun us from Wagner to Ravel and left us breathless. The year before Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov brought us passions from East and West, united by the precision of Sir Colin Davis. This year it was the turn of Shostakovich – that youth orchestra staple – and for the first time I was left a Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This was a somewhat nostalgic look at the rise of “World Music” as a genre, starting in the Eighties when the term was first used, essentially as a marketing tool. As the ever ebullient Andy Kershaw put it, the problem was where in record stores “you could put a choir of Bulgarian tractor drivers next to some hot shot guitar slinger from Guinea-Bissau". And as another talking head - and there lots of mainly good ones - pointed out, there was an urge for something a bit more real, more connected, more spiritual even, than either the gloss of Eighties mainstream pop or earnest indie-rock was Read more ...
fisun.guner
Face Value – heh, who’d have thought to come up with that title for an exhibition of portraits? Yeah, it’s not particularly clever, but there’s something of the contrarian mischief-maker in it all the same, for in the 50 years that Bob Dylan has been making music, giving interviews and being lionised as the son of God, there’s never been much danger of anyone taking him at face value. Or at least there shouldn’t be. And the same could be said of the 12 portraits that make up this exhibition.Who are they? We’re told they’re an amalgam of real people and fictive people, created, Dylan has said Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Reading through WH Auden’s libretto for Britten’s first stage work – the so-called operetta Paul Bunyan – it’s sometimes hard to decide whether the intention was to participate in the great American dream or to make fun of it. In 1941 both artists were living in the United States and writing for Americans, who famously didn’t take to the work’s blend of folksy condescension and sententious eloquence. The combination is still faintly queasy. Towards the end, a Disneyesque dog and two cats pray for deliverance “from a homespun humour manufactured in the city”, and the mind inevitably strays Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tig Notaro, Gilded Balloon ****“I've been busy. I've been growing my hair out.” Not the the most animated start to an hour of comedy, but that's how American Tig Notaro begins Boyish-Girl Interrupted, one of the most original 60 minutes I've seen at the Fringe, and certainly the most laidback.Those who are familiar with her personal story – she underwent a double mastectomy last year, spoke about it at the Largo comedy club in Los Angeles and it went viral after Louis C.K. tweeted about it – might have expected the growing-her-hair-out thing to be chemotherapy-related. But no, she's just Read more ...
graham.rickson
Rachmaninov: The Bells, Symphonic Dances Rundfunkchor Berlin, Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle (Warner Classics)The red spine on the jewel case and the typeface look familiar enough, though the top right hand corner of the CD cover shows Warner Classics’ logo. EMI Classics is no more. After more than 30 years, Sir Simon Rattle is no longer an EMI recording artist. His first release under the new regime has some sensational highspots – notably an exhilarating, colourful account of Rachmaninov’s choral symphony The Bells. Konstantin Balmont’s doomy Poe-inspired text proved an Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Why are the Malians always punching way above their weight in music? There may be some historical reasons. The French always were more welcoming to the culture of their empire than the Brits (and more used to foreign-language music), while Paris became a great centre of West African music, from where it was disseminated over Europe. It’s also true that some of the most influential gatekeepers here – such as Lucy Duran (who presented this concert and has been to Mali about 50 times) are ardent Mali-philes. But it’s probably as much to do with the richness of the music which seems so deeply Read more ...
David Nice
Prokofiev’s Fifth is a symphony for which the conductor’s setting tends to be turned to either bright and light or dark and heavy. Perhaps because of the composer’s perceived joker role as set against Shostakovich the symphonic chronicler of Soviet tragedy, Vassily Sinaisky at the 2005 Proms made a glib, glossy showpiece of it. Valery Gergiev has always veered to the black side. But last night Yannick Nézet-Séguin worked sympathetically with the humane inscaping of the orchestra Gergiev did so much to mould, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, to give the best of all possible worlds, emphasising the Read more ...