Edward Seckerson talks to actor/singer Nigel Richards about his new album A Shining Truth - a handsome compendium of 14 hitherto unrecorded musical theatre songs by major talents as Howard Goodall, Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, Conor Mitchell, Richard Taylor, and others no less significant. Musical Theatre aficionados will recall Nigel's unforgettable performance in the title role of Adam Guettel's masterpiece Floyd Collins at London's Bridewell Theatre and will know that few have done more to champion the cause of new writing than he has. This isn’t an album it’s a manifesto - and you can hear three complete performances before picking up your copy (obligatory!).
new music features
edward.seckerson
theartsdesk.com presents The Seckerson Tapes, a series of live and uncut audio interviews from acclaimed broadcaster Edward Seckerson. We start with Jamie Bernstein - Leonard Bernstein's eldest daughter - who has been in London launching the year-long Bernstein Project at the South Bank. Seckerson, a long-standing Bernstein devotee and disciple, sat down for a frank and open discussion about exactly who her "dad" was.
Peter Culshaw
I am not that objective about Magma. For one thing, when I saw them as a 16-year-old in the Seventies the intensity of the band caused me to have an out-of-body experience, something that has happened neither before or since. It’s the kind of thing you remember. It’s hard to formulate balanced critical opinions when you are floating up near the ceiling, looking down on your body. I met the leader and creative visionary behind the band, Christian Vander, a couple of weeks before last night’s Barbican concert, which was billed as a Celestial Mass. As someone more expressive than me put it, “Meeting Vander's gaze was like looking into the eyes of a super-intelligent Siberian husky."
robert.sandall
Reputations, it seems, can grow in ways that elude even their owners. When the original five members of Mott The Hoople finally decided to re-form, 35 years after they drifted apart, they booked two shows at the Hammersmith Apollo in October and crossed their fingers. According to their 70-year-old vocalist Ian Hunter, “we realised if we were ever going to do it, it was now or never, but we still thought we’d be lucky to fill the second night.”
tom.russell
To mark the release of Tom Russell's superb new album Blood and Candle Smoke this week, the cowboy singer-songwriter reports on his trip earlier this month to the Mexican city of Juarez, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, just over the border from where he lives in El Paso, Texas.
"Down below El Paso lies Juarez, / Mexico is different, like the travel poster says…"
Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard, "Mexican Divorce"