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Review – The Bonfire Radicals + Auriyga, Frederick’s Bar, Jewellery Quarter – 10 November 2011
I have to admit, I’m rather envious of Joe Broughton; when I first set up the Birmingham Conservatoire Folk Ensemble in 1993 it did OKish – we had did an internal concert every term, which was reasonably well received each time, but it never broke out beyond the Conservatoire itself. I formed a couple of [...] -
Belper Music Festival 2011 – Day 1 Review
With the help of the awesomeness that is modern mobile computing, I’m able to bring you this review direct from my tent on the campsite for this year’s Belper Music Festival, exiled as it has been a few miles up the road to Sabine Hay, in Darley Dale. I’m sure there’s a story behind this [...] -
Review – Ludovico Einaudi, 27 November 2010, Town Hall
I was listening to Radio 4 on the way to this concert, and heard someone say that asking a musician to describe the genre of their own music is like asking someone to bite their own teeth.That analogy stretches to third parties, too, and is pertinent when considering the music of Italy‘s Ludovico Einaudi. Is [...] -
Review – Salif Keita, 25 October, Town Hall
The question ‘who invented World Music, and when’ is, of course, a silly one – not least because I’ve often wondered if in record shops in Mali one finds albums by The Rolling Stones filed under World Music. That said, as a music student in the late 80s – when what we in the west [...] -
Review – Brian Eno’s Apollo + BCMG, Town Hall, 9 October 2010
Often, I go to a concert and think ‘yeah, that was OK, that was’; sometimes I go to a concert and am exceedingly impressed. And just occasionally I go to a concert and feel that it was just about as near to a life-changing experience as one can get in a concert hall. Brian Eno’s [...] -
Review – Gong + Nik Turner’s Space Ritual, hmvinstitute, 20 September 2010
A concert in which the lead singer of the headline band is 73 (and the female backing singer is 77), and the leader of the support band is 70, with in fact few – if any – of the performers on stage being younger than 50, could so easy have panned out to be an [...] -
Review – The Dream of Gerontius, Birmingham Town Hall, 18 September 2010
I sang in the Dream of Gerontius once myself – about twenty years ago, when I was a student at Birmingham Conservatoire and anybody not in the orchestra was expected to be in the choir; my memory’s not that great, but I’m assuming it was for the 90th anniversary celebration because we too performed it [...] -
Review – Tin Tin Chinese Restaurant, BrindleyPlace
I can’t remember what year it was I first went to Tin Tin‘s restaurant; it was the mid-90s for sure, so it can’t have been long after it first opened. A friend was taking me out for my birthday, and when I said I didn’t particularly like Chinese food, she replied “trust me – you’ll [...]
