Fira Manresa 2023: Old Alleys, New Sounds
[by Martha Hawley, Haarlem] The Fira Mediterrània was held in October 2023 for the 26th time, in celebration of Catalan traditional and popular culture, accompanied by performance and artistic contributions from around and across the Mediterranean. The pace of the festival is determined by the topography of its base in the hills north of Barcelona, in Manresa, all on an incline, very appealing to this visitor from the Lowlands.
17. 10. 2023 | read more...
Even as she juggles an extensive repertoire and audience expectations, Eddi Reader is the sort of performer who gives one-off performances. Celebrating four decades as a professional musician whether as a name soloist, the lead vocalist in the successful group Fairground Attraction or going back to singing, apparently, with the likes of the Eurythmics and The Waterboys, what she delivers is bespoke and draws on an astoundingly impressive trove of material, traditional, original and covers.
What was the last live gig you saw before Covid-19 brought live music in front of audiences juddering to a standstill? Mine was Yorkston Thorne Khan’s London concert on 11 March 2020. It was the start of their tour promoting their third album, Navarasa: Nine Emotions. YTK are James Yorkston on nyckelharpa (Swedish keyed fiddle), 6-string guitar and vocals, Jon Thorne on double-bass, 6-string guitar and vocals, and Suhail Yusuf Khan on sarangi and vocals.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Regardless which of the nine Mousai (Greek mythology’s Muses of the arts), their descendants or their modern-day mutant offspring anyone evokes, the ways of presenting Art remain ever-changing and ever-evolving. That’s the nerve the German Jewish philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin exposed. It is in live performance and especially ones with extemporisation that a special kind of magic can occur. A cultural and multi-media extravaganza, “I Exist” – nach Rajasthan (‘.to(wards) Rajasthan’), as the cliché goes, it ticks many boxes.
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Sage is the hub of so much arts-related activity on Tyneside and the north-east England region. It was meet and right for the venue to host this much anticipated project. Its promotional literature described Eliza Carthy bringing together second-generation folk artists, like herself, from across Europe. Her accomplices were the genre-stretching Czech vocalist-violinist Iva Bittová, the Greek singer and lute player Martha Mavroidi,
[by Ken Hunt, London] One day before her third album Coracle‘s official release the Emily Portman Trio performed much of it a good number of songs at a Sunday lunchtime concert at the Riverhouse Arts Centre in Walton-on-Thames. A splendid, characterful venue yards away from the Thames, its barn-like interior is all wooden beams and half-timbered decorations. It made for a stark backdrop for the Trio. 
[by Martha Hawley, Amsterdam] Roberto Fonseca and Fatoumata Diawara passed through the Netherlands in May 2015, in the company of musicians from Mali and Cuba, stopping at the Music Meeting in Nijmegen, and in Amsterdam’s 
[by Ken Hunt, London] John Mayer’s impact on hyphenated fusion exceeds calculability. Though the Jazz Café’s ‘Events Brochure’ rebirthed him as Bombayite, Mayer is Calcutta-born. In the 1960s when he and the Jamaican-born saxophonist Joe Harriott combi-doubled their quintets, even more than Don Ellis, they were the defining ensemble shaking (up) the raag and jazz cocktail. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] Noëmi Waysfeld & Blik’s Kalyma is an anthology of songs driven by enforced exile. Kalyma‘s springboard was a vinyl LP of songs derived from prisoners in the Siberian gulags in her parents’ record collection. Dina Vierny, the muse and model of the sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944), whom he appointed executor of his estate, became a wealthy art dealer and patron of the arts. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] Imagine an ideal world in which no two concerts by a principal song-delivering vocalist were ever the same. That would mean repertoire, in fact an extraordinary breadth of song repertoire and, naturally, the interaction between composed and spontaneous composition – not just jamming or busking it.