Scotland
David Nice
When your special guest is a young soprano with all the world before her, the total artist already, your programme might seem to run itself. Yet the Dunedin Consort’s sequence seen and heard in Glasgow, Edinburgh and (last night) London followed a proper musical logic, running together an overture, a ballet and a cantata in the first half, and pulling focus on Handel’s early years in Rome, all supremely inventive music – though the later G minor Concerto Grosso which launched the second half is in a class of its own.The Dunedins are as classy as said guest, Nardus Williams: both are poised, Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Jessica Winter is clearly a hardy soul. The Portsmouth singer made a point of shedding her jacket and top as her support set went on, a bold choice given the typically unpredictable Glasgow weather was serving up freezing snow outside at the time.It was hard to decipher if her music was as adventurous, as it shifted from dance heavy bangers to melodramatic pop that thrived on theatrical gestures and movement, but was hindered by choppy sound that left her vocal inaudible entirely for one number. She did, however, handle proceedings with a flair that bodes well.There were moments when Lucia Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
This evening brought to mind those marathon 19th century concerts when Beethoven would unleash a handful of new symphonies and a couple of piano concertos on an unsuspecting public.The programme in Edinburgh's Usher Hall began at 6pm with a smorgasbord of delightful show pieces by the pupils of St Mary’s Music School, celebrating its 50th anniversary, and continued with a full programme from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, effortlessly squeezing in two diminutive saxophone concertos before the interval and Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition after – the latter embellished by a real Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Although We Are Scientists onstage chat is always delivered with a light touch, there is truth running through it as well. Early on at this set their singer and guitarist Keith Murray quipped that he wouldn’t be needing his lucky charm for the evening, and in a way he was right.If the UK has always been the New Yorkers' adopted home, then Glasgow in particular is a welcoming host, and by the end of this 90-minute performance the crowd was a bouncing, singing congregation, eagerly taking a trip down memory lane.However that doesn’t mean the actual show was a resounding success, even if Murray Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There is an endearing awkwardness with Dry Cleaning, despite steady success over the past three years. “Does anyone else want a wave?” asked their frontwoman Florence Shaw at one point, almost shyly, before proceeding to do just that in various directions.It was an intriguing contrast, between a group who seemed slightly taken aback by the size of venue they were playing, and the manner in which they emphatically delivered their material in that setting during this gig.Shaw herself rarely moved, instead pitching herself centre stage and providing her cut glass spoken word vocals from there, Read more ...
David Kettle
You’d hardly call a director particularly perceptive for highlighting Lady Macbeth as the true power behind the throne, scheming and cajoling her husband’s bloody ascent to the crown. In her audacious, provocative and thoroughly compelling Macbeth (an undoing), however, writer/director Zinnie Harris goes much, much further – so far, in fact, that a couple of her characters seem confused as to whether Lady Macbeth is herself the King.Harris modestly subtitles her rethink "after Shakespeare" – it’s the latest in her ongoing collection of rethinks of classic texts that have included This Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
In full force again for 2023, Scotland’s premier folk music festival Celtic Connections is back with its signature strand of blending and sharing musical traditions. On Saturday, emerging Scottish folk cellist Juliette Lemoine gave a superb early evening recital in Glasgow City Hall’s intimate recital room for what was the official launch of her debut album Soaring.Her band comprised pianist Fergus McCreadie – who was recently nominated for the Mercury Music Prize with his jazz album Forest Floor – saxophonist Matt Carmichael and award-winning fiddler and jazz bassist Charlie Stewart on Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
I’m struck by how many of my 2022 picks deal with relationships in extremis: a love story disguised as a Hitchcockian murder mystery, a long friendship gone suddenly surreally awry, an unlikely romance that unfolds on a sub-zero train journey, a married couple whose shared obsession with mortality is piqued by a toxic dust cloud, a father-daughter bond that’s finally understood through the prism of bitter-sweet memory.It’s as if all the conflict and uncertainty in the world is being reflected in these personal stories; there even seems a correspondence between a costume drama about a Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There was something devilish about Alex Kapranos at this homecoming gig, and not simply due to the blood red shirt the Franz Ferdinand frontman was wearing. Throughout the night the singer would cajole and conduct the crowd with finger-pointing flair, as if tempting them to join him on the dark side, and when he spoke it was to demand more from the audience like a preacher zealously seeking extra funding for a mega church.The response, inevitably, was warm and eager. The original line-up of Franz Ferdinand may have come from across Scotland, England and Germany, but they were forged in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Now into its fifth season, Netflix’s royal pageant is entering that danger zone where once-majestic TV series suddenly find they’re running out of steam. Perhaps Harry and Meghan’s publicity-hogging shenanigans and the real-life loss of the Queen and Prince Philip have somewhat overshadowed Netflix’s quasi-fictional drama. Perhaps everybody has become sick to death of rehashed versions of the life of Princess Diana.Whatever the reasons, The Crown now feels slightly jaded, re-running familiar themes and recycling whiffs of various historic scandals with yet another different cast. As ever, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Scottish playwright Rona Munro is both prolific and ambitious. After her trilogy of historical dramas, The James Plays, was staged in 2016, she continues to work on her cycle of seven works, covering the years from 1406 to 1625, which are designed to give today’s Scotland a contemporary equivalent of Shakespeare’s medieval history cycle.Her latest, Mary, opens at the Hampstead Theatre because this venue is run by her long-time collaborator, director Roxana Silbert. So who is it about, and how relevant is the play to a general audience?The title refers to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The British folk horror wave of the late Sixties and early Seventies wasn’t impervious to American influence. Though Roddy McDowall (1928-98), the director of The Ballad of Tam-Lin (1970), was born in Herne Hill, he was as Hollywood-steeped as its London-based star Ava Gardner.McDowall is best-known as a prolific actor (How Green Was My Valley, The Planet of the Apes films) and photographer than for his only foray into filmmaking. He can't be faulted for dynamism and sensitivity, even if some of the inexperienced actors needed more guidance.The medieval Scottish Border romance Tam Lin (Child Read more ...