Music Reviews
Queens Of The Stone Age, 100 Club, London
Published: 07 May 2007
"Let the music do the talking," seems to be the thinking behind Josh Homme's road-hardy Cali-rockers tonight. Designed to preview Queens of the Stone Age's new album, Era Vulgaris, this semi-secret comeback gig has no frills and none of the starry guest appearances they're famed for.
Maria Joao Pires And Friends, Wigmore Hall, London
Published: 07 May 2007
Great musical minds think alike: just as tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes release a CD combining Schubert's songs with his solo instrumental music, along comes pianist Maria Joao Pires with a singer and string quartet to do the same. While Bost-ridge and Andsnes bunged in uncompleted fragments - appropriate, given the uncompleted nature of the composer's life - Pires and co focus on his treatment of death, also sadly suitable. Overshadowed by Beet-hoven, knowing he wouldn't see his best work published, Schubert was the archetypal heroic failure.
Linkin Park, Astoria, London
Published: 07 May 2007
There's something faintly fascist about the black-and-white banners bearing Linkin Park's new, angular, insignia and the dedicated fervour of the Astoria audience, but the army of fans does go beyond the obvious demographic of darkly draped teenagers. There are some colourful shirts and balloons, and ages range from the boy who was barely old enough to get to the 42-year-old at his first gig in 15 years. And there's a sense of community.
Second Movement, The Old Film Studios, London
London Sinfonietta / Masson, Queen Elizabeth Hall London
Published: 06 May 2007
Now in its fourth year of staging rarely heard operas in unusual places, Second Movement has found its groove. The company's ambition is undimmed, its young stage and musical directors Oliver Mears and Nicholas Chalmers are displaying more confidence, the orchestra has new zing and bite, and although the cistern in the Old Film Studios is as intrusive as the peacocks in Holland Park, the programmes are bristling with glossy specialist travel, music festival and educational advertisements. This is good news. But whoever allowed last year's quarter-page funeral home advertisement to slip through the net missed a trick with this year's triple-bill of variously mad-cap or miserable death-obsessed one-act operas.
Bebel Gilberto/Kassin + 2, Roundhouse, London
Published: 06 May 2007
If I died tomorrow, rather than have the burnished baritone boom of a James Earl Jones God welcome me to through the pearly gates, I'd opt for the everything's-okay-really-it-is purr of a Bebel Gilberto God. Maybe this gives us a clue as to the secret of this Brazilian singer's huge success (her debut Tanto Tempo was the biggest Brazilian album ever in the USA.) It's a comfort thing: she's never in-your-face, just softly in your ear; she doesn't grab her material by the throat, she sidles up to it, throws an arm around its neck, and takes it for a stroll along the beach. But surely being carried on stage and carefully lowered onto a chaise longue is taking the whole laid-back thing a bit too far.
Calvin Harris, Neighbourhood, London
Published: 04 May 2007
"We're going to play you a few songs," says the gangly Scottish front man in skinny black jeans, white belt, white trainers, and a Pac-Man and mushroom-festooned long-sleeved T-shirt. If it was acceptable in the Eighties, it is doubly so in the world of Calvin Harris, the latest electro-pop revivalist to be plucked from MySpace and thrust into the mainstream.
First Night: From The Jam, The Zodiac, Oxford
Published: 03 May 2007
Cat Power, The Forum, London
Published: 03 May 2007
You're not quite sure what to expect at a Cat Power show. The Atlanta-born Chan Marshall has a reputation for disintegrating sets: songs abandoned midway, forgotten lyrics, and profuse apologies. Plagued by the distress of performing, she has even been known to break down in tears on stage, or play with the lights off. Tonight she enters with a casual wave and bows to her sold-out audience who, judging by the warm welcome and applause, are clearly not put off by her history.
London Schools SO/Vasary, Barbican, London
Published: 03 May 2007
Quirky, high-risk programmes give the London Schools SO its niche among youth orchestras. Not for them the usual popular romantics in which accident-proof scoring and bold emotions can cover a multitude of beginners' sins. This time it was the exposed lines and nerve-testing solos of Mozart and Bruckner, with a UK premiere thrown in for fun.
London Sinfonietta/ Masson, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester
Published: 02 May 2007
The landmark Imperial War Museum North, the first building in the UK to be designed by the accordion-playing architect Daniel Libeskind, came up with a novel idea to mark its fifth birthday. Along with the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (another Libeskind creation), it commissioned the British composer Simon Bainbridge to look at the ideas behind the architecture, to explore the connections between space and sound, and come up with a 25-minute piece of site-specific music. Music Space Reflection - Manchester, an aural reaction to Libeskind's aesthetic, for chamber orchestra and live electronics, was given two assured performances at its unveiling.
Razumovsky Ensemble, Wigmore Hall, London
Published: 02 May 2007
The Razumovsky Ensemble is not really a group with a fixed line-up but more a confederacy of virtuosi from which its artistic director, the distinguished Russian cellist Oleg Kogan, selects whoever he needs for specific programmes. For this Wigmore Hall bill, the Ensemble comprised just three: Kogan himself, Michael Whight, Principle Clarinet of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the concert pianist Ronan O'Hora. Yet there was no lack of power and variety in the music making.
Robert Gomez, Borderline, London
Published: 02 May 2007
Robert Gomez ran away from the circus to join a rock'n'roll band, but the change doesn't yet suit him. Gomez spent six months playing guitar for Barnum & Bailey's travelling US show, before returning to a more conventional musical trajectory, moving from jazz instrumentals to soft, complex songs, a shift inspired by seeing Norah Jones during her club-circuit days. Gomez is also part of the ongoing Denton invasion of Britain, following those increasingly revered inhabitants of the Texas town, Midlake. That band's singer Tim Smith is watching from the back tonight, and their rhythm section joins Gomez on stage.
LPO/Metzmacher/Hamelin, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Published: 01 May 2007
This latest London Philharmonic bill at the Queen Elizabeth Hall comprised a witty piece of programme planning: confronting Schöenberg at his most subjectively romantic with Stravinsky at his most objectively poker-faced, and then bringing in Beethoven to mediate with a symphony in which classic and romantic traits were perfectly poised.
Bebel Gilberto, Roundhouse, London
Published: 01 May 2007
The Roundhouse is a spectacular venue but it has its limitations. The sound of Bebel Gilberto, who made a name independent of her father, Joao, by blending his bossa nova rhythms with her sensuous vocals and some ice-cool electronica, is better suited to another setting - a smaller one, without acoustics that favour the crowd noise over the music.
Acis And Galatea, Christ Church Spitalfields, London
Published: 01 May 2007
Time was when a concert in Christ Church, Spitalfields, meant a grim trudge through mean streets to a drab architectural shell; now, it's hard to conceive of a nicer way of spending a warm spring evening than by strolling through precincts where Amsterdam meets the Punjab, to attend a concert by the resident ensemble in this superbly restored quasi-cathedral. And when the opera on offer is Handel's biggest hit in his own lifetime, what's not to like?
All Tomorrow's Parties, Butlins, Minehead
Published: 30 April 2007
James, Brixton Academy, London
Published: 30 April 2007
Even at their several commercial peaks, James never belonged. Singer Tim Booth was the problem, an over-serious, spiritual outsider in the Nineties, just as irony and laddishness swamped British pop. The biggest irony of all, though, was that James became masters of populist, literate rabble-rousers, "Sit Down" only the best of a dozen. And live, poor, pompous Booth was a seemingly possessed talisman. With an Eighties past as dour Peel session favourites, they were the most under-rated, massive cult band in Britain. Until Booth's austere personality got too much even for James's own guitarist, who quit. By 2001, drugs and disillusion had split them all.
Opera: Giulio Cesare, Barbican, London
Published: 30 April 2007
No one could accuse René Jacobs of selling Handel's Giulio Cesare short. Under his expert but fussy direction this already richly endowed score came with more adornments than the queen of Egypt herself.
Calvin Harris, Black Cap, London
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Underworld, London
Published: 29 April 2007
