Live reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] Traditional folk tunes have long leached into classical composition. In Central Europe in the times before many nations gained independence, music stoked senses of cultural identity and aspirations of nationhood. The polyvalent artist Iva Bittová came out of the Communist-era, Czechoslovak alternative theatre scene. She is a violin-vocal virtuosa, a Bachelor of Music, and an acclaimed film actor. She is of mixed Moravian, Slovak, Hungarian and Roma stock. The Mucha Quartet came together at the Conservatory in Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, in 2003.
This bespoke Rudolstadt Festival performance took place in the Stadtkirche, the town’s baroque church and the programme of mixed Moravian and Slovak folksongs for voice and string quartet.
23. 11. 2024 |
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[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. Performance venues are spread out all over town, in and around commercial and residential zones, in small theatres, even smaller cafés, and in large tents wherever an empty square allows.
There are many performing dancers on stages, but the music inspires visitors to just spontaneously break into action on the street.
17. 10. 2023 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Even as she juggles an extensive repertoire and audience expectations, Eddi Reader is the sort of performer who gives one-off performances. The concert tour celebrated four decades as a professional musician. Reeling back the years the concert focused on her time as solo headliner and years as the lead vocalist in the successful Scottish group Fairground Attraction. (Even further back she sang for her supper singing with the Eurythmics (check out the YouTube footage singing ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)’ on Top of the Pops) with fellow Scot Annie Lennox) and as a session singers in the London studios
18. 11. 2021 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London]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.
Watching how they have developed their unique blend of north-western Indian and Anglo-Scottish literary and musical traditions, with a strong jazz bass underpinning, has proved delightful. They appeared on the bill on the Rudolstadt Festival in 2017 confirmed how promising they were
24. 10. 2021 |
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[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.
Two days before Berlin, „I Exist“ had premiered at Dresden’s Festspielhaus Hellerau. Like any good touring production, straightaway a process of assessment and fine-tuning started. Dresden w
25. 8. 2017 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] The Sage is the hub of so much arts-related activity on Tyneside and the wider 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, the frame drum player and violinist Mauro Durante from Italy’s Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, and the Finnish group Värttinä’s core vocal trio of Susan Aho, Mari Kaasinen and Karoliina Kantelinen. A scaled-back Wayward Band acted as house musicians. K
9. 11. 2016 |
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[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. Even with the sun shining outside, it suited Portman’s songs from the womb to the tomb and their proclivity for seeking out dark spaces. In a real sense rather than touring the new album they were touring a triptych of The Glamoury (2010), Hatchling (2012) and Coracle
19. 8. 2015 |
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[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 North Sea Jazz Club, where I heard them. The North Sea Jazz Club is licensed to use the name of the sprawling North Sea Jazz Festival – both maintain a programming policy of jazz with a broad range, including Latin, African, funk, soul and more. The Club prides itself on giving big names the opportunity to perform in a small venue.
Roberto Fonseca and Fatoumata Diawara are well-matched to carry their musical roots forward, both having played with hometown greats
8. 6. 2015 |
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[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. Frankly, today’s Indo-Jazz Fusions excels its Sixties namesake – undoubtably helped by today’s availability of information but also because Harriott’s ensemble probably never got raag.
14. 3. 2015 |
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[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. Those latter roles granted her access to the Soviet Union.
Ergo the album Chants des prisonniers sibériens d’aujourd’hui (‘Songs of Siberian Prisoners of Today’) eventually released in 1975 on Pathé Marconi in France.
21. 10. 2013 |
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