London Athletics Meet
25 July 2023
On Sunday we were back at the London Stadium in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London for the Diamond League London Athletics Meet. This was billed as the biggest one-day athletics meeting in the world and we were part of a crowd of 50,000 watching an impressive line-up of Olympic and World Champions from across the globe. We didn’t move from our seats for just over four hours of gripping competition. With continuously overlapping track and field events coming thick and fast there is always something to watch - often too much happening at the same time! It was great to see some familiar British athletes competing - including Dina Asher-Smith, Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Hannah Cockcroft. We enjoyed a very entertaining Women’s Pole Vault competition, won by Wilma Murto of Finland. It was great to be there to see Zharnel Hughes beat the British record in the Men’s 200m set by John Regis in 1993. Femke Bol from the Netherlands looked outstanding in beating the European record for the Women's 400m Hurdles, with the third-fastest time ever. And there was an incredibly exciting finale to the afternoon as Scotland’s Jemma Reekie came from third place on the final bend to win the Women's 800m.
Labels: Sport
‘Groundhog Day’ by Tim Minchin and Danny Rubin
21 July 2023
Last Wednesday we were at the Old Vic in London to see the stage musical version of ‘Groundhog Day’, with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and book by the screenwriter of the 1993 film, Danny Rubin. ‘Groundhog Day’ was originally produced at the Old Vic seven years ago, reuniting Minchin with Director Matthew Warchus, who had worked together on ‘Matilda’. Now, appropriately enough, ‘Groundhog Day is back at the Old Vic, in a revised version. In comparison to the film, the stage version has more time to explore the premise of what you would do if you were condemned to repeat the same day over and over again. The first half is fun but a little inconsequential. But after the interval the production becomes darker, more morally complex and much more interesting. Andy Karl’s performance as TV weatherman Phil Connors is a tour de force. He is hardly off stage throughout the show and the sleight of hand needed to ensure he is always ready to emerge from the bed in his B&B as the day starts again - despite having just been somewhere else on stage in a completely different costume - is brilliantly done.
Labels: Musicals, Theatre
Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
21 July 2023
On Sunday 9 July I played in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s annual Friends Concert - a Sunday afternoon bonus concert for the Friends of the Orchestra which provides an opportunity for us to play a range of shorter and lighter pieces. This year’s programme included ‘The Gold and Silver Waltz’ by Franz Lehár, Franz von Suppè’s ‘Isabella Overture’ and the musical joke ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ by Johann Strauss II. We also featured a young clarinet soloist from Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts trust playing the first movement of Weber’s ‘Clarinet Concerto No 2’ and NSO leader Emily Groom played the beautiful ‘Romance for violin and orchestra No. 2 in F major’ by Beethoven. The strings of the orchestra played Elgar’s ‘Serenade For Strings’ and we performed the ever popular ‘Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave)’ by Mendelssohn. It was a lovely way to end our 2022-23 concert season.
Labels: Concerts, Music
Wimbledon 2023
21 July 2023
On the middle Saturday of the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament we were very lucky to have tickets for No 1 Court where the roof was shut for most of the afternoon as rain came and went outside. We saw the men’s 3rd seed Daniil Medvedev lose the first set to Marton Fucsovics of Hungary before going on to win in four very competitive sets. Secondly we watched the women’s 2nd seed Aryna Sabalenka beat Anna Blinkova in straight sets. Finally we enjoyed an entertaining heavyweight contest between Alexander Zverev and Matteo Berrettini with Berrettini winning in three sets but needing two tie breaks to do so.
Labels: Sport
'Much Ado About Nothing' by William Shakespeare
21 July 2023
On Friday 7 July we were back at the Roman Theatre of Verulamium in St Albans to see the Ovo Theatre production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. It was a beautiful evening for an outdoor performance (though we struggled at first as the sun was directly in our eyes!). It was a typical Ovo production - an irreverent take on Shakespeare complete with 1980s pop music, audience participation and a small cast playing multiple parts (occasionally confusingly!). Great fun.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
'Terminal World' by Alastair Reynolds
7 July 2023
Having really enjoyed Alastair Reynolds’ incredibly clever and satisfying genre-crossing novel 'Eversion' (reviewed here in June 2023) I was keen to read something else by him. ‘Terminal World’, published in 2010, is a more conventional science fiction novel, set in a far future, dystopian, steampunk Earth. It’s a thrilling chase adventure which takes us through a variety of places and encounters. I liked that the reader has to work quite hard to understand how this future world works: there is very little exposition - you just gradually piece together what is going on. But the plot constantly drives you forward and it’s a bewildering but enjoyable ride.
Labels: Books
'Anomaly' by Jasdeep Singh Degun
30 June 2023
Jasdeep Singh Degun is a young sitarist and composer from Leeds who combines classical music traditions from across India with European orchestral music, jazz and 1990s Asian underground. His debut album ‘Anomaly’ (released by Real World Records in 2022) is a beautiful gentle collection of tracks across a range of styles, featuring other young British Asian musicians and string chamber orchestra. Jasdeep Singh Degun was mentored by Nitin Sawhney on the 2016 Sky Academy Arts Scholarship and he honours his mentor on the album with a version of Sawhney’s classic song ‘Nadia’. It’s a lovely album: you can listen to it all on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kujeSGIWXpkUwkUEt3mSrSQCBb3tdJ89A
Labels: Albums, Music
