tue 19/03/2024

New Music Books

Album: Dolly Parton - Run Rose Run

Tim Cumming

I tried, I really did. Took a shot at my best, and fell short, Yup, I couldn’t get beyond the opening chapters of Dolly Parton’s first novel, written with that veteran of popular page-turnin’, James Patterson. The best bit for me was on the first page, and it was pure Dolly, but in 22 little words, not 80,000. “Is it easy? No it ain’t.

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Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric Muses

Tim Cumming

It won’t be long now before concert halls and back rooms, arts centres and festival grounds fill with people again, and live music, undistanced, unmasked, and in your face, comes back to us.

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CD - The Lost Words: Spell Songs

Tim Cumming

Earlier this year, eight musicians – Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Kerry Andrew, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux – set about working with the ‘spell songs’ of nature writer Robert Macfarlane and the images from nature of artist Jackie...

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Peggy Seeger: First Time Ever - A Memoir, review - a remarkable life

Liz Thomson

Seeger. A name to strike sparks with almost anyone, whether or not they have an interest in folk music, a catch-all term about which Peggy Seeger and her creative and life partner Ewan MacColl (they didn’t actually marry until a decade before his death) had strong feelings.

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latest in today

St Mary's Music School, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, E...

For the second year in a row the Royal Scottish National...

Manhunt, Apple TV+ review - all the President's men

President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on 14 April 1865, five days after General Robert E Lee’s surrender at Appomatox signalled the end of...

Blu-ray: Beautiful Thing

Beautiful Thing’s opening scene plays out like a sweary take on Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl, Meera Syal’s potty-mouthed PE...

Bevan, Williams, BBCSO, MacMillan, Barbican review - inspira...

It began with the tolling of a lone bell and ended in a transcendent blaze of golden light. The UK premiere of James MacMillan’s Fiat Lux...

Salome, Irish National Opera review - imaginatively charted...

“Based on the play by Oscar Wilde,” declared publicity on Dublin buses and buildings, reminding opera-cautious citizens that the poet whose text...

Album: Elbow - Audio Vertigo

On this, their 10th album, the melodious...

First Person: conductor Peter Whelan on coming full circle w...

There's something undeniable about the way music can weave itself into the fabric of our lives, shaping our passions and leaving an indelible...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Mystic Tide - Frustration

Crashing chords are followed by a spindly, untrammelled solo guitar. After this subsides, the singer lays out the issue: “I try, I cry, I just can...

Hughes, SCO, Kuusisto, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh review - Clyn...

Most concert promoters will tell you that contemporary music tends to be, to put it politely, a tricky sell, which is one of the reasons why it’s...

The New Boy review - a mystical take on Australia's tre...

This is writer-director Warwick Thornton’s third...