Making Music Virtual Concerts
24 June 2020
This week saw the third fortnightly Making Music Virtual Concert, digitally showcasing Making Music members – leisure-time music groups from across the UK. I’ve really been enjoying these video compilations of both archive performances and online collaborations made during lockdown. It was great to see 2014 Epic Award winners Pandemonium Drummers closing the second concert (9 June) with a typically exuberant performance! This week’s concert features groups including Lofthouse Brass Band, 5Ways Chorus, London Oriana Choir and Suffolk Sinfonia. But the standout performance for me was Stockport Ukulele Players playing 'Psycho Killer' by Talking Heads - who were clearly having great fun! The concerts are free for anyone to view on the Making Music YouTube channel, and remain available to watch after each premiere:
https://www.makingmusic.org.uk/news/come-our-making-music-virtual-concert Labels: Concerts, Music
Cristian Grajner de Sa
18 June 2020
Cristian Grajner de Sa is a young professional violinist, born in 1994 to Italian and Portuguese parents, who is beginning to make a name for himself. I came across Cristian because he happens to live next door to some good friends of ours who have now been listening to him practice for years and have been incredibly impressed by how his playing as developed. Cristian was a BBC Young Musician string finalist in 2012 and has won several international prizes. Last year he made his debut at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and this month he has launched his first recording – an EP featuring pieces by Kreisler and Sarasate. His playing has a lovely tone and a playful delicacy. Listen at:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6v7KjTBOcwrxoKtaqvyZh6 Labels: Albums, Music
Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake - BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert
10 June 2020
Live music returned to BBC Radio 3 last week with the start of a new series of daily lunchtime concerts broadcast live from an empty Wigmore Hall in London. I enjoyed listening to the recital by Nicholas Daniel (oboe) and Julius Drake (piano) last Thursday, which included works by the English composer and actress Madeleine Dring as well as premieres of pieces written during the lockdown by Huw Watkins and Michael Berkeley, alongside music by Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and Gerald Finzi. Andrew McGregor’s introductions to the pieces very effectively set them in context and it is great to be able to watch the concerts (live or later as recordings) on the Wigmore Hall website:
https://wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/live-music-returns-to-wigmore-hall-in-new-broadcast-series You can also listen again on BBC Sounds at:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jnm1 Labels: Concerts, Music, Radio
'Olive Kitteridge' by Elizabeth Strout
4 June 2020
Lots of people I know have raved about Elizabeth Strout’s novel ‘Olive Kitteridge’ so I was keen to read it for myself. It’s a structurally interesting book, consisting of self-contained chapters that feel like complete short stories, each focussing on different residents of the coastal town of Crosby, Maine. The main characters from one chapter sometimes appear again in the background of later stories but the eponymous Olive Kitteridge is almost omnipresent – though often playing a supporting role in someone else’s tale. Olive is a retired maths teacher who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Initially a difficult person to like, it is a measure of the author’s skill that you gradually warm to Olive while still appreciating the reasons why others don’t. The stories of ordinary people whose lives have been changed by some momentous event reminded me of the novels of Anne Tyler and the short stories of Raymond Carver. Elizabeth Strout paints an evocative picture of this small town and it’s fun guessing where each chapter is going as she tends only gradual to reveal the particular trauma that has led a character to where they are now. But this makes for a fairly unremittingly melancholy collection of stories. There is plenty of gentle humour but ‘Olive Kitteridge’ is a sad set of reflections on ageing and the human experience.
Labels: Books
