Festival preview
Features
Bath Festival, Bath
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 17, 2008
Hip-hop preview
Features
Raekwon, London
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 17, 2008
Jazz preview
Features
Jason Moran, on tour
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 17, 2008
Pop preview
Features
Martha Wainwright, on tour
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 17, 2008
ASIMO conducts The Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Features
Classical goes electro as metal maestro leads a far from robotic performance.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 16, 2008
Anais Mitchell, Hymns for the Exiled
Features
It may sound worryingly pretentious for a singer-songwriter to provide footnotes for her lyrics, but Anais Mitchell is clever and original enough to get away with it. The daughter of an English Professor from Vermont, she has travelled widely in the Middle East, so it's perhaps to be expected that her references range from TS Eliot to Egyptian star Om Kalsoum. Her best songs match mature, carefully written lyrics with youthful-sounding vocals, and the two opening tracks are exceptional. Before the Eyes of Songwriting Girls is an evocative snapshot from the Middle East, with women on mobile phones watching the fall of Baghdad on television, while 1984 is a witty collision of George Orwell and Prince. I'm not sure why this is being promoted as her new album, as it was originally released in the US four years ago, but it's worth checking out ahead of her British tour.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 16, 2008
Brian Blade Fellowship Band, Season of Changes
Features
Drummer Brian Blade recently brought a London Barbican audience to whoops with the inspired ferocity of his interventions in Wayne Shorter's great quartet - but since a Shorter performance is also a delicate ensemble conversation, Blade's listening skills and technical depth are essential complements to that power. This two-sax sextet carefully avoids Shorter's idiosyncratic and melodically mysterious atmosphere, at times being closer to a rugged, anthemic postbop, and at others suggesting a surprisingly meditative and folksy ECM-like atmosphere. You might hear resemblances to Avishai Cohen's and Bill Frisell's compositional materials here too.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 16, 2008
