‘Jazz’s untamed spirit resonates in 2020’ Dipping my toes gingerly into the daunting world of jazz, I felt safe in the hands of Shabaka Hutchings and the Britten Sinfonia as they guide me through three pieces picked, in Hutchings’ own words, because they have “the energy of jazz”. Hutchings himself welcomes us to the concert, smiling as he emerges out ...
‘A concert for the modern world’ Trapped in the flat once again, the family unit settles down for possibly the classiest home cultural event you could imagine. The BBC Symphony Orchestra (SO) daaaarling. Pass the brie and crackers will you? What follows is a stormy event of clashing composers, political opera and divine music. Being the first completely live-streamed performance ...
‘An evening drenched in nostalgia’ Recently many of us have been lucky enough to sample the joys of restaurants and theatre, albeit tentatively. But the last bastion of normality has alluded us: the gig. Thanks to the Barbican’s brilliant Live from the Barbican – 12 shows, 12 hours, a shed-load of talent – we can return triumphant to this hallowed but very ...
‘A rare and wild talent’ An image that stays with me long into October’s biting night is Erland Cooper holding aloft an old-fashioned recording machine, with the hypnotic call of curlews blasting forth into the sparsely filled hall of the Barbican. Utter transportation occurred, shipping us out to the windswept islands of Orkney, Cooper’s home. The talented composer, pianist and ...
‘Gets lost in the music’ Traditional Irish dancing; the springing, the fiddling, the stiff upper bodies, and stony faces. As someone who knows very little about this cultural phenomenon, I jumped at the chance to watch Colin Dunne exploring Tommy Potts’s (one of Ireland’s cult fiddle players and composers) music. What I hoped for was a show that explained both ...