Minimalism
Terry Riley Celebration, St George's Bristol & Bristol Old VicSaturday, 06 November 2010
Terry Riley is one of the great unsung heroes of contemporary music, the ur-minimalist who shaped the creative paths of John Adams, Peter Townshend, Mike Oldfield and Philip Glass, to name just a sample of the wide range of musicians who have been... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Conductor Stephen LaytonSaturday, 16 October 2010
Conductor and choral scholar Stephen Layton once said that he often wondered what happened to the little boy at his primary school who he thought sang better than he did. The discovering and nurturing of raw talent is an issue very close to his... Read more... |
In The Penal Colony, Music Theatre Wales, Linbury Studio TheatreThursday, 16 September 2010
The pairing of Philip Glass and Franz Kafka is a natural one. A shared fascination with obsession, with developing a simple premise to its most densely worked-out, most logical conclusion is evident in both, and it is only perhaps surprising that it... Read more... |
Tilbury, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Volkov, Royal Albert HallSunday, 22 August 2010
A metallic shower rained down upon us as five percussionists of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's percussion sextet unleashed the meteoric potential of five huge metal thundersheets on our unsuspecting ears, and percussionist number six, a... Read more... |
LPO, David Murphy, Royal Festival HallFriday, 02 July 2010
A packed Festival Hall and a cheering, stamping, standing ovation – hardly the usual welcome for an evening of contemporary music. Sitting, wizened and waistcoat-clad, at the centre of the front row was the reason: Ravi Shankar. Framed by the... Read more... |
Angela de la Cruz/ Anna Maria Maiolino, Camden Arts CentreFriday, 02 April 2010
Acts of wanton destruction appear to have taken place at Camden Arts Centre, as canvases lie crushed, ripped, crumpled and broken. Monochrome and minimalist works have had their stretchers, their very backbones, ripped and cracked in two, and their... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallFriday, 12 March 2010
Adams began with two Debussy preludes swept by a different kind of wind in Colin Matthews's ingenious, luminous orchestrations. Well, windswept was the idea, but there was no more elemental scouring here than by all accounts there had been in the... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallMonday, 08 March 2010
What would you imagine the composer John Adams might choose to conduct – apart, that is, from a little something he himself made earlier? Well, the first of two London Symphony Orchestra concerts this week brought no big surprises: Sibelius’ Sixth... Read more... |
Richard Alston Dance Company, Sadler's Wells and touringWednesday, 03 March 2010
Tim Henman - brilliant and unfairly treated, or... not? Even when John McEnroe passionately enumerates Henman’s qualities, do you both nod hopefully and realistically shake your head? Because, yes, our lad may be a rare craftsman of the grass court... Read more... |
Philip Glass: Satyagraha, ENO/ LSO, Alsop, BarbicanThursday, 25 February 2010
It has always been a cornerstone of my personal philosophy that beauty and insight can be found in the very lowest of common denominators. That Big Brother, Friends, Love It magazine or Paris Hilton provide revelations about life that are of as much... Read more... |
Nico Muhly & the Britten Sinfonia, The RoundhouseMonday, 25 January 2010
Nico Muhly didn't have to work much to puncture any atmosphere of classical recital formality at the Roundhouse: he only needed to be himself. Young, slightly dorky and very camp, wearing a black garment that blurred the boundaries between cardigan... Read more... |
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