Music (UK) SCO/Christophers review – premiere of James MacMillan's ecstatic Fifth SymphonyThe Guardian - Rowena SmithScotland’s pre-eminent composer, Sir James MacMillan, turns 60 this year, a landmark celebrated by the Edinburgh international festival with a series of concerts culminating in the premiere of a major
Music (UK) We Out Here festival review – a new jazz generation is bornThe Guardian - Ammar KaliaA festival curated by DJ Gilles Peterson, named after the UK jazz compilation his label Brownswood Recordings released in 2018, and featuring almost all of the artists on their roster, might seem like
Music (UK) 'It's an act of defiance': the rise of all-female festival lineupsThe Guardian - Sarah MarshIn 2015, music blog Crack in the Road tweeted a doctored image of the poster for the Reading and Leeds festival, erasing all acts that didn’t include a female performer. Only 10 groups remained. It started
Music (UK) Beyond the 'dead white dudes': how to solve the gender problem in Australian classical musicThe Guardian - Clarissa Sebag-MontefioreIf you have never seen a woman conduct or lead an orchestra, do you imagine that that could be your future? Hilary Kleinig, artistic director of Zephyr Quartet Western Sydney composer Holly Harrison grew
Play buttonMusic (UK) How we made Everything I Own: Ken Boothe and David Gates on their shared hitThe Guardian - Interviews by Dave SimpsonI was staying with a friend in Canada. He played me Andy Williams’s version of Everything I Own, and said: “Ken, when you get back home to Jamaica, make sure you do this song.” In those days, you needed
Pigs Green Man festival review – mesmerising and otherworldlyThe Guardian - Sophie WilliamsAt Green Man, the bucolic grounds unfurl to reveal a multisensory playground of literature, visual art and performance. You can find eclectic delights in every corner, and BBC Radio 6 Music-friendly fortysomethings
Music (UK) Jaden review – rap enigma reaches an energetic frenzyThe Guardian - Al HornerO2 Forum Kentish Town Thrashing around, the artist shooting for the sad-rap stars lets his lighter side shine with summer singalongs alongside melodic trap meditations ‘Batman, Batman, Batman, please the
Play buttonMusic (UK) 'If Israeli soldiers start shooting, we won't stop the interview': Palestinian hip-hop crew BLTNMThe Guardian - Tom FaberBefore I meet Palestinian hip-hop’s new wave, I hear them everywhere. Al Nather’s sleek productions pump out of car speakers in the Jordanian desert, and Shabjdeed’s raps tumble from the bars of Haifa
Music (UK) Prom 41: LPO/Jurowski review – Russian novelties surprise and delightThe Guardian - Andrew ClementsRussian nights at the Proms generally include at least one very familiar, often all too familiar, warhorse. But there was nothing hackneyed in Vladimir Jurowski’s programme from his homeland. It was made
Play buttonChopin Home listening: Scriabin, Chopin and Liszt piano worksThe Guardian - Fiona Maddocks• The Chinese pianist Chen Yunjie, now reaching mid-career having had a prodigious start, is among the few players in the world to have performed the 10 sonatas of Scriabin in one concert. That may sound
Leonard Bernstein Passionate, tender, heartbreaking … letters reveal Leonard Bernstein’s 10-year secret affairThe Guardian - Dalya AlbergeOne was among the most brilliant composers and conductors of the 20th century, a sexagenarian who brought the world one of the great love stories of musical theatre. The other was a 26-year-old who worked
Play buttonMusic (UK) Bat for Lashes: ‘I didn’t know if I was going to make an album again’The Guardian - Killian FoxBat for Lashes is the stage name of Natasha Khan, who was born in London in 1979 to an English mother and a Pakistani father. Raised in Hertfordshire, she studied music and visual arts at the University
Queen Victoria Prom 40: OAE/Hough review – a riot of orchestral colourThe Guardian - Flora WillsonFrom sewers to Christmas trees, we owe a lot to the Victorians. But music has always been a moot point, the dearth of great homegrown composers obscuring 19th-century Britain’s energetic musical life.
Ariana Grande Ariana Grande review – crowd-pleasing anthems of female resilienceThe Guardian - Alexis PetridisAriana Grande first appears at the centre of a tableau of dancers based on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper – albeit a last supper at which the diners suddenly start climbing on the table, waving their
Proms The week in classical: Proms 32, 34 & 35; Rinaldo review – happy returns all roundThe Guardian - Fiona MaddocksWho can tire of the sight of two world-class musicians, friends since childhood in Buenos Aires, parading round the Royal Albert Hall stage in their own victory lap, he holding up her hand as if leading
Play buttonMusic (UK) Shura: Forevher review – airy summer jamsThe Guardian - Damien MorrisAs with Shura’s debut, Nothing’s Real, her second album is front-loaded. After a brief intro come Forevher’s three best songs, followed by a slump it never quite recovers from. Side Effects is the clear
Play buttonSleater-Kinney Sleater-Kinney: The Center Won’t Hold review – trying too hard?The Guardian - Kate HutchinsonSleater-Kinney were never going to go for the pop jugular half-arsed. In fact it’s been very much full-arsed, with Carrie Brownstein flashing her bare bum in the trio’s latest press shots. Their ninth
Play buttonMusic (UK) Blanck Mass: Animated Violence Mild review – Power reins in the cacophonyThe Guardian - Phil MongredienWith the unlikely Olympian duo Fuck Buttons having largely been on the back burner since 2013, Benjamin John Power has had plenty of time to concentrate on his side project, Blanck Mass. Not surprisingly,
Play buttonMusic (UK) Leslie Stevens: Sinner review – potent ‘cosmic country’The Guardian - Neil SpencerRaised in Missouri, Leslie Stevens has spent her professional life in Los Angeles fronting a country rock band. Much loved by LA’s Americana crowd, and with a couple of decent albums to her name, she perpetually
Play buttonMusic (UK) One to watch: Snoh AalegraThe Guardian - Tara JoshiWith her honey-sweet vocals and twinkling R&B production, Swedish singer-songwriter Snoh Aalegra has been in the music game since 2001, when she signed an artist development deal with Sony Sweden aged
Play buttonLewis Capaldi Lewis Capaldi review – an ecstatic sense of homecomingThe Guardian - Dorian LynskeyClaiming his budget doesn’t stretch to fireworks, he plans to piggyback the efforts of the military tattoo up the hill Lewis Capaldi wants to make very clear how this is going to go down. “I’m going to
Play buttonWoodstock 50 'In many ways, it was a miracle': looking back at Woodstock at 50The Guardian - Rob LeDonne“Woodstock was a just few hours in my 60-plus-year-long career,” says Leo Lyons, the bassist for blues rock band Ten Years After, who performed on the final day of the festival in the summer of 1969. I
Music (UK) Missy Mazzoli: 'Breaking the Waves deals with big ideas. Opera is a place for big ideas'The Guardian - Kate MollesonBreaking the Waves is one of the most brutal, probing and provocative films ever made about Scotland. It is also one of the most impressively silent. Lars von Trier’s 1996 breakthrough portrays an insular
Play buttonMusic (UK) Eugene Onegin review – Grigorian's riveting Tatyana steals the showThe Guardian - Rowena SmithNature is given star billing in Barrie Kosky’s staging of Eugene Onegin for Komische Oper Berlin. Designer Rebecca Ringst’s set is a swath of grass so luxuriantly verdant it drips over the edge of the
Mick Fleetwood ‘It’s a love story really’: Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks on wooing Neil FinnThe Guardian - Steph HarmonMick Fleetwood described Crowded House frontman Neil Finn as a “secret weapon” he held onto for two decades, before asking him to fly to Hawaii to audition for Fleetwood Mac. In April 2018, it was announced
Play buttonMusic (UK) Is AJ Tracey ushering in a UK garage revival?The Guardian - Hannah J DaviesBack in June, rapper AJ Tracey released Ladbroke Grove, a paean to estate life in his west London home. While it didn’t make a splash as an album track, it went on to become a major chart hit, peaking
Play buttonLana Del Rey Tracks of the week reviewed: Normani, Katy Perry, Lana Del ReyThe Guardian - Michael CraggShe’s by far the best thing about sporadically average girl band Fifth Harmony, and Normani’s solo career has so far involved being the best thing about songs by the sporadically average Khalid and Sam
Music (UK) Blanck Mass: Animated Violence Mild review – grief, rage and transcendent electronicaThe Guardian - Aimee CliffBack in 2012, Blanck Mass sounded optimistic. Ben Power’s one-man electro-noise project (distinct from his work as part of the duo Fuck Buttons) was best known for his ambient headrush of a composition,
Music (UK) The Hold Steady: Thrashing Thru the Passion review – chancers and chasers in fist-punching gloryThe Guardian - Al HornerYou don’t listen to Hold Steady albums – you live in them. Craig Finn’s barstool-rock raconteurs’ six albums so far have been engrossing adventures through an America full of delinquents and dreamers,
