'The Body Lies' by Jo Baker
29 January 2020
Jo Baker’s wonderful novel ‘Longbourn’ (reviewed here in April 2014), which revisits characters and scenes from 'Pride and Prejudice' from the point of view of the Bennetts' servants, was beautifully written and cleverly constructed. Although her new novel ‘The Body Lies’ (which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book narrated by Julie Maisey, Deborah McBride, Sam Woolf, Simon Ludders and Imogen Church) has a completely different setting and theme, it similarly demonstrates her skill and craft as a writer. ‘The Body Lies’ is a contemporary story which uses the ‘campus novel’ approach to address some dark subjects, with a focus on violence against women. The book’s (unnamed) first-person narrator teaches a creative writing course and her story is interspersed with excerpts from her students’ work – often giving a variety of different perspectives on events they have all witnessed. Much of the book has the feel of a comic novel by David Lodge, but the underlying threat of sexual violence is carefully and sensitively handled. The novel is also about the act of writing, so the way it is written is an essential component of what it is saying. There’s a very clever, meta-textual strand running through the book but this never detracts from the way it works as an incredibly scary thriller.
Labels: Books
‘Back to Bacharach’
29 January 2020
Burt Bacharach must rate amongst the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. Now 91 years old – and still going strong – his catalogue of hit songs over more than 50 years is amazing. Last Saturday we were at The Stables in Milton Keynes to see ‘Back to Bacharach’ - a touring show that celebrates his music. An excellent band, featuring three singers who share the lead role, play songs originally made famous by Dionne Warwick, Perry Como, Gene Pitney, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones, Jack Jones, Herb Alpert, The Carpenters, Christopher Cross, Elvis Presley and many others. Much of this amazing back catalogue reflects Burt Bacharach’s long partnership with lyricist Hal David, but he also wrote some great songs with Carole Bayer Sager (who became his third wife). I’m not usually a fan of tribute bands, but ‘Back to Bacharach’ celebrate the composer, rather than imitating a particular artist. I always like a band that dances to its own music and ‘Back to Bacharach’ looked like they were having great fun on Saturday. And all their concerts raise money for the Breast Cancer Now charity.
Labels: Concerts, Music
NMPAT Sinfonietta concert
23 January 2020
I
last played in one of Trevor Dyson’s charity orchestral concerts in
Northampton two years ago when we performed the Tchaikovsky Violin
Concerto and Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No 3 (Eroica)’ (reviewed
here in February 2017). On Saturday I was delighted to be asked again
to join the NMPAT Sinfonietta – a scratch orchestra made up mostly
of instrumental music teachers from Northamptonshire Music and
Performing Arts Trust and conducted by Trevor – to raise funds for
the Spinal Injuries Association. Like last time, the afternoon
rehearsal was fairly worrying as we struggled to pull together a
substantial and challenging programme in a very limited time. But
this resulted in extreme levels of concentration in the evening
performance which went really well and was great fun. We opened with
the ‘Roman Carnival Overture’ by Berlioz – a thrilling piece
that is rarely played as fast as should be in my opinion, but we
managed to maintain an impressive pace! We followed this with ‘Peter
and the Wolf’ by Prokofiev, narrated by Alan Bell, which featured
stunning performances by the four woodwind soloists: Graham Tear on
flute, Peter Dunkley on clarinet, Frank Jordan on bassoon and Iona
Walker on oboe (who also played the lovely cor anglais solo in the
Roman Carnival overture beautifully). The concert closed with the
epic ‘Symphony No 6 (Pathétique)’ by Tchaikovsky. This was an
ambitious undertaking on a single rehearsal but I think our
performance was pretty impressive (if a little unrestrained in the
faster, louder sections!). Usually when you play the Pathétique
Symphony the triumphant march of the third movement fools anyone who
hasn’t heard the piece before into thinking it has finished, and
it’s not uncommon to get applause at this false ending, before the
sting-in-the-tail of the angst-laden final slow movement. On Saturday
our breathtaking romp through the third movement was greeted by a
stunned silence punctuated simply by someone on the front row of the
audience spontaneously and gloriously shouting ‘wow!’.
Thankfully, the devastating ending of the final movement also
elicited an enthusiastic reaction: it was an exciting and
entertaining concert which managed to raise a substantial amount of
money for the SIA.
Labels: Concerts, Music
'This Classical Life'
17 January 2020
I first encountered the brilliant young saxophonist Jess Gillam (who comes from Ulverston in Cumbria) through the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition (reviewed here in May 2016). In 2017 I was lucky enough to play in two concerts with Jess with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra (reviewed here in March and July 2017). As well as developing into an outstanding musician Jess Gillam is proving herself to be a consummate broadcaster: in 2018 she presented the BBC Young Musician podcast (reviewed here in April 2018). And now I have (slightly belatedly) discovered her wonderful BBC Radio 3 programme and podcast ‘This Classical Life’. Each week Jess welcomes a different guest – usually another young professional musician – and they take turns to share pieces of music with each other. The music is mostly classical, with some jazz and pop. In the manner of BBC Radio 4’s ‘A Good Read’ they politely comment on each other’s choices – only occasionally admitting that they really don’t like something the other person has chosen. Jess is a very natural interviewer and is very good at teasing out what it is about each piece of music that makes it enticing. Her approach is very accessible and unpretentious. The show is great fun in itself but it has also sent me to listen to loads of great music I was previously unaware of. Each weekly episode is less than half an hour, and there is now a back catalogue of 32 episodes to catch up with. Subscribe to ‘This Classical Life’ wherever you get your podcasts or find it on BBC Radio 3, on BBC Sounds or at:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00040ch Labels: Music, Radio
‘Mame’ by Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee and Jerry Herman
10 January 2020
I’ve only ever played in the band for a handful of stage musicals. It’s an odd experience being part of the orchestra in the pit: by the end of the run you know the show off-by-heart (both the music and most of the dialogue!) but, having never actually seen what is happening on the stage, my grasp of the plot of most of the musicals I have played in remains rather vague. One of my rare appearances in the orchestra pit was for a production of ‘Mame’ by the excellent amateur Westwood Musical Society at the Key Theatre in Peterborough in 1992. This production was particularly memorable as the actor playing Auntie Mame fell on stage during the second performance and broke her leg. That evening’s performance was abandoned but, after some hasty adjustments to the script, our star returned the following night – with leg in plaster – to complete the run. The Peterborough Evening Telegraph headline for these dramatic events was, somewhat inevitably, ‘Mamed!’. So it was great, nearly 30 years later, to finally get the chance to see ‘Mame’ at the Royal Theatre in Northampton on Thursday in a new production from Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester. ‘Mame’ has a book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, based on the novel by Patrick Dennis and the play ‘Auntie Mame’ by Lawrence and Lee. It’s set in Jazz Age New York, with the flimsiest of plots (and some dated sexual politics) providing an excuse for a joyous feel-good dance musical. This is the first professional staging of ‘Mame’ in the UK since the original 1969 West End production, which starred Ginger Rogers. Director and Choreographer Nick Winston has ingeniously compressed the action for the tiny Hope Mill Theatre, squeezing a cast of 18 onto a small stage without losing any of the big dance numbers. The music was arranged by Jason Carr who did the amazing four-piano arrangement of ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ for the Young Vic production starring Jane Horrocks (reviewed here in December 2009). Tracie Bennett (who we last saw singing ‘I’m Still Here’ in the National Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Follies’, reviewed here in November 2017) is wonderful as Mame. Her singing is impressive but her dancing is really outstanding – as is that of the whole cast. ‘Mame’ is a dancers’ musical and the Hope Mill Theatre production boasts a stunning ensemble of dancers. Harriet Thorpe almost steals the show as Mame’s wise-cracking, permanently inebriated, best friend, Vera. And Lochlan White is amazing as the young Patrick (one of three boys alternating the role). But ‘Mame’ is Tracie Bennett’s show and it is hard now to imagine anyone else in the role. It’s a brilliant production that left me beaming. You can get a flavour of the show from this trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nQjDMsx5xY Labels: Musicals, Theatre
‘The Cthulhu Casebooks: Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows’ by James Lovegrove
3 January 2020
New Year is traditionally a time for revelations as previously secret government documents are released under the thirty-year rule. So it felt seasonally appropriate this week to be discovering hitherto undisclosed shocking secrets about the life and work of Sherlock Holmes that suggest everything you thought you knew about the great consulting detective was actually a fiction. ‘The Cthulhu Casebooks: Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows’ by James Lovegrove (which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Dennis Kleinman) is the first of three novels apparently written by Dr John Watson in 1928. The three books depict events 15 years apart – in 1880, 1895 and 1910 respectively – starting with the first meeting between Holmes and Watson, which the Doctor reveals did not happen as he had previously recounted it in print. ‘The Cthulhu Casebooks’ are a mashup of Conan Doyle and the fantastical science fiction horror of H.P. Lovecraft (who was also the inspiration for Ned Beauman’s wonderful novel 'The Teleportation Accident', reviewed here in July 2013). In ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows’ Watson explains how a young Holmes was drawn into a world of magic, monsters, aliens and gods – and how he carefully obscured this side of the detective’s character in his original accounts in The Strand Magazine. James Lovegrove has produced a painstakingly meticulous recreation of Conan Doyle’s style – homage rather than pastiche. It’s very engaging but less schlocky fun than I had expected: I had anticipated something more like the steampunk aesthetic of George Mann’s Victorian detective/fantasy/science fiction novel ‘The Affinity Bridge’ (reviewed here in June 2019). This is a much more serious tale and feels closer to ‘The House of Silk’ by Anthony Horowitz (reviewed here in January 2012) which was also supposed to be written an elderly Dr Watson, many years after Holmes himself has passed away. Both books are are lovingly reverential to the original Sherlock Holmes stories and knowingly playful with the genre – though the Shadwell Shadows has more lizard-men!
Labels: Books
