The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
What with one thing and another, I had rather lost track of what Sting was up to. Still on the lute? Moved on to nose flutes? Thrash metal rereadings of back catalogue? It turns out that he has taken to the road with an orchestra, in a heroic stand against the bitter frugality of these
The human voice has always been celebrated as one of the most direct forms of musical and personal expression. This is especially true in jazz, where improvisation is such a key element. We so often listen to singers ‘baring their soul’, revealing something ‘deep within’. The human voice has always been celebrated as one of
Well, after the sodding rugby* I think it is time for some George Jones and Things Have Gone to Pieces: *Well done England.
Before Stephen Fry walked on to the stage at the Barbican on Monday to take part in a discussion on the place of classical music in today’s society, he asked his Twitter followers to suggest new names for what he sees as an off-putting label, ‘classical’. The replies that flowed in were typically informed and
Teenage obsessions are a strange and terrible thing. How, exactly, does an album – which is, after all, nothing more than a recording of some music – seem to embed itself so completely into our identity? How does it become something so crucially important that we can’t imagine our world without it? With hindsight I
What was it Sir Thomas Beecham said about Stockhausen? ‘I’ve never conducted any of his music, but I once trod in some.’ So far as I know, Beecham never commented on the work of Pierre Boulez, but I’m sure his verdict would have been the same. Both composers adopted a modernist language that is politely
CNN recently referred to Birmingham as ‘the unlikely birthplace of heavy metal’. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition entitled Home of Metal (until 25 September). All the gnarly-mouthed, guitar-thrashing kings of metal hail from the Black Country: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Napalm Death. Walsall boy Noddy Holder, lead singer of semi-metal
Here’s an improbably, even impossibly, young Steve Earle jamming with a bunch of great old boys at Guy Clark’s place way back in the day. It’s a groovy side of country and, you’ll observe, one fuelled by ample quantities of booze, tobacco and dope. Quality all the way. And, blimey, Steve’s just a kid singing
Actually, this is in memory of the Man in Black’s life-support machine Marshall Grant who died this week. But here are the boys at San quentin with I Walk the Line, a tune Cash wrote in 1956 that, it is said, was inspired by Grant:
I love the story of Jane Eyre more than life itself, which has never been much cop but, infuriatingly, I could not love this adaptation. I say ‘infuriating’ because what it does right it does very right. It is stunningly mounted, for example, with ferocious landscapes and howling winds and the sort of storms that
I have just finished a book (writing one, not reading one, you fool) and, as ever, I am hoping that it’s good enough and people will like it. Can you ever know? In this respect, and in quite a few others, it’s a little like a band putting out a new album, which they may
The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra will be giving the concluding two concerts of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival under its chief conductor Jonathan Nott. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra will be giving the concluding two concerts of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival under its chief conductor Jonathan Nott. The programmes aren’t what you might expect from one
This year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose work, as I have written before, I consider to be the most moving High Renaissance music there is. This year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose work, as I have written before, I
You’ll notice that the great man has some good friends helping out on this version of Riding That Midnight Train. Among them: Tony Rice and Ricky Skaggs. All good, rollicking stuff.
Is it true that Bob Dylan is 70? I would never have guessed: there has been so little about it in the newspapers. No doubt he is out on the road right now, on his never-ending tour, murdering his old tunes with a relentless indifference, unbothered by what his fans might think. But you have
Sure, you don’t necessarily think of Elvis as a country singer. But then you remember his gospel roots and the rockabilly and it all makes sense. How could such a great American ever escape the greatest American musical genre of them all? He never did. Or, if you prefer, he just often returned to it.
They’re back. In August the capital fills with bored, dim-witted, half-naked semi-vagrants who have nothing to do here but get in the way of Londoners who do have things to do here. Tourism is an invitation to robbery. If you aren’t going to a place to work, you’re going there to get worked over. The
In honour of the debt-ceiling fiasco currently crippling Washington George Jones’s Things Have Gone To Pieces seems rather appropriate. Happily, it’s also a great song.
Who was Carlos Kleiber, and why has he been voted the best conductor of all time? Carlos Kleiber — the name evokes both Hispanic and German spheres — cancelled performances, never gave interviews, claimed he only conducted when the fridge was empty, and told Placido Domingo he’d prefer to devote his time to drinking wine
American trio Low are what you get when a band evolves far from the established music scenes of laidback California and buzzing NYC. Fronted by husband and wife Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, their sound evokes the relative isolation and five-month winters of their native Duluth, Minnesota, with glacial tempos and minimal arrangements, laced with
Everyone needs to return to the Carter Family from time to time. It’s a country pilgrimage. Here the ladies perform My Clinch Mountain Home and Foggy Mountain Top. Class all the way and forever.
When one thinks of Tim Rice, one doesn’t exactly picture a man who has had a tremendous struggle to make it to the top. When one thinks of Tim Rice, one doesn’t exactly picture a man who has had a tremendous struggle to make it to the top. He met Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1965,
Handel’s Rinaldo, the product of a composer of 25, we should remind ourselves, is not thought, nowadays, to be a masterpiece even by the most fervent Handelians, though when it was first produced in 1711 it was wildly successful, thanks to acres of coloratura and some very elaborate scenic effects. Handel’s Rinaldo, the product of
Nashville is a fun town and there’s a heck of a lot of good stuff that’s come from Tennessee but Texas is the other great home of country music and the Texas singer-songwriter tradition is maintained by Robert Earl Keen (among many others). Here he is with The Road Goes on Forever (And the Party
There has been much to celebrate in Barcelona this week for musicians of a certain bent. The Medieval and Renaissance Music Society held its annual international conference there, which gave the delegates the opportunity to celebrate the musicologist Bruno Turner’s 80th birthday, as well as the 20th anniversary of the foundation of Musica Reservata Barcelona
Sorry for the lack of posts here lately. That’s what a trip to London, an 11 hour journey home and a weekend of cricket will do. Anyway, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have a new album out and it is as good as you might expect. Here’s a bootlegged clip from a recent gig that
Been a while since the standard-bearer of the modern Bakersfield sound was featured here. Time to make amends for that prolonged absence. So here’s the man himself with a fine rendition of his lovely, mournful song I Sang Dixie. Pure class.
It has to be Glen Campbell this week what with the announcement that, on account of Alzheimer’s, his forthcoming tour will be his last. So here he is with a lovely stripped-down (no bloody strings!) version of Wichita Lineman. Jimmy Webb’s song is still a mighty one and Campbell does it justice here: [This post
It’s so rare I want to shout about anything from the rooftops but I do want to shout from the rooftops about The Ruby Dolls and their latest show, Rubies in the Attic, which takes cabaret and shapes it into something so original that if you can catch it you must. It’s so rare I