London
Matthew Wright
In the 1960s and early 70s drummer Jack DeJohnette, now 71, was learning his craft with nearly everyone who was anyone, including Coltrane, Monk, Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis. Last night at the Barbican, he was the presiding spirit (if not, technically, leader) in a new multi-generational “supergroup”, the Spring Quartet, alongside Blue Note’s star saxophonist Joe Lovano (61), and two thirtysomethings, pianist Leo Genovese, and the winner of the 2011 best new artist Grammy Esperanza Spalding. It was like watching spring in slow motion: the new shoots are vigorous, but there’s still plenty of Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Can there be a conductor with a clearer and more affirming beat than Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw Orchestra when they're at their best? The listener can just marvel at his capacity to work in partnership with this fine orchestra, to underline and reinforce everything they do, to enable them to land cleanly, decisively and unanimously, to introduce new ideas with care, precision and beauty, to treat the end of phrases with respect, love and punctiliousnes.Jansons can make the Concertgebouw sound in every respect and in every department a marvellous orchestra, even in a hall like the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Perhaps the BBC didn't need to make W1A, its new self-satirising sitcom. In the clerical comedy Rev, the Church of England could be considered a very serviceable metaphor for the Corporation, with its unfathomable layers of bureaucracy, well-meaning but slightly pitiable niceness, a self-image that belongs to a forgotten century, and self-flagellation before other cultures. Though the BBC does have rather more money to spend.In this series three opener, the Rev Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander) became a new father, after his wife Alex (Olivia Colman) had very nearly given birth in the back of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In the same week that ITV was rounding up Britain's dangerous dogs, the Beeb aired Louis Theroux's report [****] on the unwanted canines roaming the streets of gang-infested South Los Angeles. LA has six dog pounds (we learned), through which 35,000 ownerless dogs pass annually. A lot of them, even healthy ones, end up being euthanised because it's impossible to find homes for them all.However, Theroux's film suggested that this wasn't for lack of trying on the part of the city's dog-lovers, who appeared in many colourful guises. Louis spent some time riding around the sullen, menacing Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Revelling in the acoustic precision of the recently opened Milton Court concert hall last night, Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen showed once more why his quartet’s combination of tersely lyrical melodies and syncopated rhythms is so appealing. For his new album, some of which was played here, his typically European, restrained sound was, to a greater extent than previously, augmented by some distinctly funky passages, which were drawn out with immense skill and sensitivity from what had gone before. Several pieces shared both an extraordinary variety of style, and a seamlessly smooth Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Gabriela Montero stands out as different. She is an American-based improvising classical pianist of real quality. She has a courageous civil rights message to convey about the tragedy of unseen arrests and murders in her native Venezuela, but is nonetheless happy to take her curtain call draped in the colourful Venezuelan flag. That sense of difference is reinforced by the staid context of the Southbank Centre's International Piano Series: concerts which almost all start at 7.30 pm, with roughly half on Wednesdays. There's nothing inherently wrong with that predictability, given the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
If it's possible to have rather too much of a frolicsome thing, consider by way of example The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a giddily self-conscious 1607 romp from Francis Beaumont that would be more fun if it were at least a full scene or two shorter. Following on from The Duchess of Malfi as the second proper production to occupy the newly built Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (Eileen Atkins's sublime solo essay in Shakespeare came in between), Pestle proves that the candlelit venue can accommodate knockabout theatrics just as fully as it can sotto voce villainy.The problem lies not in the space Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In between the second series of Silk and this new one, Peter Moffat took time out to write his rural-misery-and-cannon-fodder dirge, The Village. Having off-roaded so far from his usual track, perhaps it's no wonder that his return to the world of wigs, hypocrisy and legal sophistry felt a fraction off the pace.Last time we were loitering with intent around the nooks and corridors of Shoe Lane Chambers, we were sucked into a dystopian vortex of corruption and venality where just about everybody seemed to be compromised or on the take. Not least the legal system itself, with the noble Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's hard to countenance sometimes that there was an era where Marc Almond could have been a bona fide, chart-smashing pop star. His ability to parlay the archest of high camp and the most grotesque of low life into something digestible by genuine mass culture was, from the very beginning, quite uncanny.There was always a sulphurous whiff of something downright Luciferian about him, yet enough fragility to make the act seem all too real – an infinitely more convincing and intriguing character than more recent more self-conscious attempts at “transgressive” pop like the gallumphing vaudeville Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There really was astonishing talent on display in The Brits Who Built the Modern World (*****), as full a television panorama of the work of the five architects whose careers were under examination – Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, Michael Hopkins and Terry Farrell – as we’re ever likely to get. Peter Sweasey’s three-film series, fascinatingly rich in archive footage, was supported by the Open University and produced in partnership with the Royal Institute of British Architects (which has published an accompanying book), emphasising that it’s once-in-a-lifetime project.The Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A new series about a team of London firefighters? Probably a bit like Casualty meets The Bill, with added smoke and cats stuck in trees. But no - writer Lucy Kirkwood (of Skins fame) has created a raw chunk of contemporary drama which isn't afraid to rip up a few preconceptions.The scene you're likely to remember most vividly from this opener was the bit where Kev Allison, the hero-fireman back at work after a long recuperation from injuries, pulled his trousers down at an official Fire Brigade awards ceremony to reveal the full extent of his burns. He'd had more than a few drinks and was ( Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The emergence of artists’ collectives, bristling with idealism and wacky manifestoes, is usually a sign of a vigorous cultural scene. London’s new improvised music scene enjoys several successful examples, of which Loop is perhaps the most prominent. Last night’s Loop club night at the Vortex showed the idea at its best, combining new and established acts across a range of genres.There was - in homage to Valentine’s Day? - something old, something new, plenty that was borrowed, and even something blue. The new act was the band of percussionist Bex Burch, who plays the gyilli, a Ghanaian Read more ...