Edinburgh
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Underground Railroad Game / On the ExhaleFriday, 10 August 2018
Underground Railroad Game ★★★★★ The game of the show’s title is a fun educational exercise on the US Civil War devised by Teacher Caroline and Teacher Stuart at Hanover Middle School, with the aim of bringing alive the flight of... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Ulster American / Cold BloodMonday, 06 August 2018
Ulster American ★★★★★ David Ireland’s brand new, brutally incendiary black comedy gleefully tosses a grenade into any lazy liberal sensibilities at the festival (and, let’s face it, there are plenty of those). Race, gender, rape, prejudice... Read more... |
CD: The Proclaimers - Angry CyclistThursday, 02 August 2018
A sight every music fan should see and hear once is The Proclaimers playing Scotland. Around 18 years ago I saw them play a giant marquee at the T In The Park Festival. It was like a rally, a roaring wall of joyful fanaticism (on which note, their... Read more... |
Hidden Door Festival, Edinburgh - transforming spacesThursday, 07 June 2018
In just five years, what the team behind Hidden Door Festival has achieved is quite remarkable. Having sprung up in 2014, taking over a group of disused vaults behind Waverley train station, the festival’s mission to transform redundant spaces in... Read more... |
RSNO, Oundjian, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - ending on a high in MahlerMonday, 04 June 2018
Marking his departure as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's Music Director after six years, Peter Oundjian definitely left on a high, conducting a gripping, visceral performance of Mahler’s last completed symphony. Its beginnings were glassy... Read more... |
Robin Ticciati on conducting Brahms: 'trying to understand the man through his music'Monday, 09 April 2018
Edinburgh, October 2015. Robin Ticciati is still flying high from a remarkable performance of Brahms's First Symphony, the start of an intended cycle with his Scottish Chamber Orchestra in his seventh season as principal conductor. After a... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Kraków - Easter music with a British focusTuesday, 03 April 2018
Held annually every Holy Week, Kraków’s Misteria Paschalia is one of the continent’s most vibrant early music festivals. With an increasing focus on international collaborations, the 2018 edition welcomed Edinburgh’s Dunedin Consort as artists in... Read more... |
Irvine Welsh: Dead Men's Trousers review - Renton and Begbie make it safely to middle ageSunday, 01 April 2018
When it came out in 1993, Trainspotting was probably the most shocking novel since Lady Chatterley's Lover. It’s rumoured to have missed out on a Booker shortlisting because it offended the judges. Certainly, for your reviewer, a Surrey teenager at... Read more... |
Martín, SCO, Ticciati, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - farewell to the best of chief conductorsSaturday, 24 March 2018
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s final season concert conducted by Robin Ticciati, who leaves his post as chief conductor of the SCO for the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, was bound to be an emotional occasion. Spanning a decade, the... Read more... |
Tabula Rasa, Traverse Theatre review - honest, compassionate, but not always convincingFriday, 10 November 2017
Collaboration and collegiality are becoming ever more important across the Scottish arts scene, it seems. Glasgow theatre company Vanishing Point teamed up with Scottish Opera earlier this year for a double-bill based around Bartók’s Bluebeard’s... Read more... |
Uchida, SCO, Ticciati, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - Berlioz steals the showFriday, 13 October 2017
"Mitsuko Uchida plays Mozart" might have been the marketing tag to sell out this first concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's 2017-18 season (despite student and free under-18s take-up, the Usher Hall still wasn't full). "Dvořák Symphony No. 8... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Journey to the Centre of the EarthThursday, 21 September 2017
Oh dear. I thought that this was going to be one of those exciting fantasy films that livened up TV on weekend afternoons in my childhood, and that there would be kitschy special effects and ludicrous dialogue. But no, it's not 20,00 Leagues under... Read more... |
