Manchester
philip radcliffe
The creative seed, once planted, can take a long time to germinate and come into bloom – in this case 37 years. For Victoria Wood, 1974 was a seminal year – she turned 21, she won New Faces and she saw a Thames TV documentary about the Manchester Children’s Choir who famously sang Purcell’s "Nymphs and Shepherds" with the Halle under Sir Hamilton Harty in the Free Trade Hall. That recording, featuring 250 children from 50 Manchester schools, was in 1929 and the resulting 78rpm Columbia record became an unexpected hit, selling a million copies. The documentary which left such an impression on Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Americans have form when it comes to creating superior remakes of British TV shows. Life on Mars with Michael Imperioli? You gotta love it. The Office without Ricky Gervais? We are eternally in their debt.
Now they've taken Paul Abbott's Shameless in for a full engine re-bore and respray, with Abbott himself on board as writer and executive producer. The formaggio grandissimo of the Stateside version, though, is John Wells, of ER and The West Wing fame, and it's the rather imperial-looking John Wells Productions logo that you see at the conclusion of each programme.
It's bound to take a Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The Meltdown Festival's tribute to Tony Wilson was a lot like the charismatic post-punk legend himself: funny, eccentric, obscure, populist; all over the place but never dull. Wilson died in August 2007 and this event was a reminder of his reputation as one of music's most fascinating post-punk provocateurs, giving the world Joy Division, Happy Mondays and more. It was also a reminder of his reputation, as poet Mike Garry put it, as a "knobhead". As someone who appeared on regional news programmes quoting Wordsworth while hang-gliding, Wilson could be spectacularly uncool.Proceedings, hosted Read more ...
philip radcliffe
Dickens wasn’t wrong – hard times they were. Around 1300 men, women and children worked at the Murrays’ Mills complex in the Ancoats area of Manchester in its mid-19th-century heyday (if you can call it that). Arrive a minute later than 7am and you were locked out, without pay. Now that actors are treading those same worn and oil-stained boards with an imaginative new version of Hard Times, you won’t get in after 7pm (and you’re the one paying, of course).In wide bays, where the machines (Dickens’s “mad elephants”) used to clatter and spew out cotton like confetti, on a mill floor 100 Read more ...
philip radcliffe
However, to begin at the beginning – the First Symphony in D major, first performed in 1889 in Budapest, with the composer conducting. There’s a lot to be said for giving Manchester its scoop (naturally, we don’t regard it as a dress rehearsal for the Royal Festival Hall performance tonight). In any case, Manchester had its big Mahler feast last year, when the Halle and the BBC Philharmonic joined forces to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. Birth, death, any excuse for more Mahler. Yet Manchester audiences are clearly not satiated, judging by the turn out last night and the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Of all the unlikely musical pairings in recent times, Jesca Hoop and Guy Garvey deserve special mention. The genial Elbow frontman, all northern charm and indie anthems, is like a favourite bitter. Hoop, on the other hand, former nanny to Tom Waits's children, is more like something Lewis Carroll's Alice might have drunk. Since she moved from California to Manchester, Garvey has been mentoring Hoop, and appeared on her best-known song. But last night’s gig was all her, with a little help from four friends.And the packed London bar was also shown why, in a scene saturated with high-quality Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A sliderule of 11-15 per cent reductions in annual grants by 2015, compared with this year, has been applied to Britain's major orchestras, opera, dance, theatre and music organisations. One major gainer is London's Barbican Centre - one major loser is the now world-famous Almeida Theatre, which loses almost 40 per cent of its current annual subsidy despite its reputation for innovation and discovery. However, the Arcola Theatre, another small innovative theatre, gets a big boost. Companies to lose all their grant from next year include Hammersmith's Riverside Studios and Derby Theatre. Read more ...
david.cheal
Is Guy Garvey really as lovely as he seems? I hope so. Last night, on the first of two nights for the Bury band at the O2 Arena, their lead singer, this big bearded bear of a man, came across as clever, funny, confident, warm, positive and inspirational. He can sing a bit, too, possessing a voice of uncommon sweetness and purity and unerring accuracy, slipping effortlessly into falsetto and back when required. Really, unless you happen to be the kind of person who likes to swim through seas of cynicism, what’s not to like?And blowing away cynicism was what this gig was all about: shamelessly Read more ...
david.cheal
There’s a gorgeous song on this album called “With Love”, on which singer Guy Garvey rhymes “dentures” with “adventures”. And there, in a nutshell, you have Elbow: juxtaposing grubby, prosaic earthbound reality with soaring romance, finding magic in the everyday. And what accentuates this gift of theirs is Garvey’s habit of singing in his native Lancastrian vernacular (why, apart from the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner, don’t more English singers sound like English singers?); his accent summons up images of mottled northern townscapes and lowering skies, while lyrical flourishes such as the “ Read more ...
Joe Muggs
This isn't an awful album. It even starts really well. The opener, “Four Letter Word”, comes pounding in with the sort of jackbooted psychedelic rock attitude that Oasis always promised and so rarely delivered. Add a swooshy noise and it could almost be early Hawkwind, so fried-synapse rock'n'roll is it. Then comes “Millionaire”, which if you heard it blind you might accept as a lost track by The La's, so timelessly, northernly tuneful is it. But sadly, inevitably, comes “The Roller”, with all its excruciating Lennonisms leaking all over the place: a track that slams the face of creativity Read more ...
aleks.sierz
In contemporary British drama, kids are usually either suffering or doomed innocents. But Winterlong's Oscar is different. He is a loner who was abandoned by his schoolgirl mum and his scary dad at the age of four years old, and tries to make his way in a chilly world armed only with his small but powerful reserves of love. The writing throbs like an infected wound, so you can see why actor Andrew Sheridan’s debut play was joint winner of the 2008 Bruntwood Prize for playwriting, receiving its premiere at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester earlier this month, and now visiting the Soho Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When theartsdesk asked Simply Red’s PR company for some pictures of the band to accompany this review, the images sent were of Mick Hucknall – alone. Which is probably all you need to know about who Simply Red are. Last night’s audience at this, Simply Red’s final ever live show, needed no reminding that it was all about Hucknall, however he’s billed. For them, his arrival on stage after the band had set the groove drew more applause than the music.What’s been billed as Simply Red Farewell, The Final Tour began in April in Brazil. Since then, it has wound intermittently through Britain, the Read more ...