Manchester
Nick Hasted
Johnny Marr’s second single as a solo artist, New Town Velocity, describes his youthful propulsion by pop music in grey late Seventies Manchester towards a bright, boundless future he duly reached with The Smiths. It surely also describes the renewed energy he’s drawn from being back in his home city after five years in Portland, Oregon. Manchester certainly inspired this year’s debut solo album The Messenger, with its resourcefully melodic rock rooted in local inspirations such as Magazine and his own past with The Smiths, so often disavowed till now.Born in Manchester in 1963, the teenage Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It’s a shame God is dead” sings Jamie Lee on “So Long”, the opening track of his band Money’s debut album The Shadow of Heaven. With a melody rooted in gospel and a musical backdrop ecstatically imbued with the grace of the devotional rather than the level-headedness of the non-spiritual, it’s hard not to wonder whose God he’s singing of. The Shadow of Heaven feels reverential – the band have played in churches – but it’s an adoration fashioned on their own terms.The Shadow of Heaven also feels important, yet it’s an album where statements are made so elegantly that it's only when it’s over Read more ...
joe.muggs
When I used to work for the much-missed Face magazine, there was a phrase regularly used, only half in jest: “three things is a trend”. Which means that, unlikely though it might sound, hip hop marching bands are now a trend in leftfield club music. First came the Hot 8 Brass Band, then the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, both from the projects of New Orleans, and both bringing a hip hop and funk sensibility to the generations-old brass tradition of that city – and now come the “peace-lovin' aggro dance” Riot Jazz Brass Band from Manchester, who regularly perform on stage with popular local rap/ Read more ...
philip radcliffe
You know it must be the holiday season when comic caper-loving Told by an Idiot run riot in the Royal Exchange. Expect the theatre of the absurd, with glimpses of Keystone Kops and Marx Brothers-style zaniness. This time, director Paul Hunter has delved into 19th-century Russia and come up with Alexandr Ostrovsky’s self-styled “savagely funny comedy” Too Clever By Half, in the late Rodney Ackland’s adaptation.With its “gallery of grotesques”, as Ostrovsky called them, led or rather duped by the likeable rogue Gloumov, there’s plenty to go at. And you can rely on Hunter and his company to go Read more ...
philip radcliffe
It isn’t so much man versus machine as man versus the man behind the machine. Famously, in 1997 the Russian chess grandmaster and world champion Garry Kasparov faced IBM's supercomputer RS/600SP, known as Deep Blue, in New York City. But behind the faceless machine was another genius, its Taiwan-born architect Dr Fen Hsiung Hsu. Both had much at stake – and not just a game of chess. Kasparov sought undisputed supremacy in the face of an opponent programmed – and reprogrammed between games – by a team of scientists and chess experts. Hsu sought to fulfil a computer scientist’s dream. And IBM Read more ...
philip radcliffe
It is nearly 50 years since Martha Argerich played in Manchester. She performed with the Hallé Orchestra and the conductor was Claudio Abbado, making his UK debut. That was in 1965 and a year later they repeated their double act. Thanks to the Manchester International Festival and her special working relationship with conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, music director of the Manchester Camerata, she bridged that gap last night.I must admit to a sense of some disappointment when she decided to replace the work advertised, Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto, with Beethoven’s First. However, she gave Read more ...
Hadley Fraser
The Machine by Matt Charman is about the famous chess match between the then world champion Garry Kasparov and the chess computer, Deep Blue, which took place in New York City in 1997. The match captured the imagination of the general public at the time as perhaps no other chess match has before or since. Kasparov's face was hanging in Times Square and the New York Stock Exchange had the match on its screens.Our play uses this iconic moment to look at the stories of the main protagonists of the match, Kasparov and Deep Blue's inventor Feng-Hsiung Hsu. Both, it would be fair to say, are Read more ...
simon.broughton
It was wonderful watching and listening to Abida Parveen through the sculptural arms of a girl sitting a few rows in front. As Abida began, with a rich, clarinet-like voice, the woman raised her arms as if to bathe in or caress the sound, elegantly turning and twisting her fingers and hands to the music. Parveen is the greatest Sufi singer in Pakistan and is a very rare visitor to the UK, so it was something of a coup for the Manchester International Festival to get her, not just for her own show, but also to take part in John Tavener’s remarkable composition Mahámátar, for a Werner Herzog Read more ...
philip radcliffe
It was an inspired Manchester International Festival initiative to devote a concert to the work of Sir John Tavener as he approaches his 70th birthday. Not only that, but the programme featured three world premieres, including a choral piece specially commissioned for the MIF Sacred Voices, made up of 70 women from all faiths and none. Leading it all with the BBC Philharmonic was conductor Tecwyn Evans.The starting point was the first performance of “Love Duet”, written as the central “still point” of Tavener’s pantomime The Play of Krishna. Inspired by The Magic Flute, where Papageno and Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Talk about absence making the heart grow fonder! I'm referring not simply to the news value of Kenneth Branagh making one of his comparatively rare returns to the theatre, this from an actor (now a knight) who in his early years popped up regularly on stage. But the more important reawakening of affection is the palpable one expressed between this protean talent and Shakespeare, his long-standing playwright of choice. There's much to admire in the Manchester International Festival Macbeth staged in a deconsecrated church and with Branagh as both co-director and star, but nothing more so Read more ...
fisun.guner
I’m watching someone with a mic pacing the linking bridge on the second floor of the Arndale Shopping Centre. He’s repeating the same phrase over and over again, which he’ll do for the next 20 or so minutes. “We’re souls refreshed,” I think it is. Nearby, sitting cross-legged, Lotus fashion, is a girl who, like the man with the mic, is wearing white cotton gloves. In front of her are three stones, painted white, on a white handkerchief, and two hymnals. These props play a small part in the action, such as it is.Watching him, pacing, intoning imperfectly, catching his breath and Read more ...
fisun.guner
It’s part of the Lowry myth – the myth of many famous artists, in fact, whether or not it actually happens to be true – that he’s never been taken seriously as an artist by critics or by cognoscenti. Even the co-curator of this exhibition, T.J Clark says more or less the same. Lowry isn’t taken seriously, Clark has said, because anyone dealing with working-class life in class-ridden Britain can’t be taken seriously. Perhaps we might qualify this by adding that anyone dealing with working-class life from within it can’t be taken that seriously. Perhaps.Throughout the Twenties and Thirties Read more ...