Davis Cup Tennis - Great Britain vs. Croatia

26 September 2007

On Sunday we were back at Number One Court at Wimbledon to see the last two matches of Great Britain’s Davis Cup tie against Croatia. There was a packed crowd – primarily there to mark the retirement of Tim Henman. Unfortunately, for us, we picked the wrong day as Henman’s final volley in Saturday’s doubles match had won the tie for Britain – but it was still fun to experience the party atmosphere of the remaining singles matches and to give Henman and the team their final send-off. We saw Andy Murray win an exciting match against Roko Karanusic before another young Scottish player, Jamie Baker, put up a brave display in losing to the impressive Croatian teenager, Marin Cilic. And not a drop of rain …

Wester Ross

21 September 2007

We had a great week on the North West coast of Scotland last week. Wester Ross is a stunning area - just looking at the map was strangely compelling with masses of contour lines right down to the sea, large swathes of uninhabited land and few roads or tracks. The reality didn't disappoint - while it took a very long time to get there, it was well worth it. The sea lochs - Gairloch, Loch Ewe, Little Loch Broom and Loch Broom - are spectacular and the view from the road above Gairloch inland to the massive Loch Maree was amazing. We had mostly good weather with three very sunny days and managed lots of hill and coast walking. We stayed in a cottage at Sand, near Laide, overlooking Gruinard Bay and we enjoyed the little towns of Gairloch and Poolewe and got as far north as Ullapool. Our only real disappointment was not managing to see much of the promised marine wildlife - despite much binoculared-gazing from clifftops and a boat trip which only resulted in a distant glimpse of a pod of porpoises and a single friendly seal. I think all the local dolphins must have been holidaying elsewhere!

'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens - progress report

7 September 2007

I am about a third of the way through reading 'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens. I have to admit I've never read any Dickens but having relished the BBC TV adaptation of Bleak House last year (reviewed here in February 2006) I was persuaded to give it a go and I'm really enjoying it. It is, however, a very long book - at more than 900 pages quite a daunting prospect - and being familiar with the plot and characters from the TV version has definitely helped me to get going with it. I will report more fully when I finally get to the end but I thought I would mention it today because I notice that the BBC adaptation is being repeated on BBC4 - starting with two episodes tonight (Friday 7 September) at 7.30 pm and continuing on Monday. If you haven't seen it and you can get hold of BBC4 I would urge you to take a look. And then why not try the book itself …

‘Little Me’ by Neil Simon, Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman

30 August 2007

On Wednesday evening I was at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London to see the National Youth Music Theatre production of ‘Little Me’ by Neil Simon, Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman. This musical hasn’t been performed in London for over 20 years but it’s loads of fun – a highly silly cartoon saga telling the tale of Belle, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks striving, over four decades, to attain wealth, culture and social position in order to win the hand of the noble Noble Eggleston. This quest carries her through a host of familiar places and events (the First Word War trenches, the early Hollywood, the doomed ocean liner ‘SS Gigantic’ – you get the idea!) throughout which Belle manages to inadvertently steer the course of history in unfortunate directions and lose a remarkable number of husbands (there is a high fatality count!). Extremely silly, wonderfully funny and energetically performed by a high quality young (aged 10 – 19) cast of 35 actors and a 13-piece band. The two leads, Sarah Hagan and Dom Hodson were very good but there were show-stealing performances by Joe Mott, Alyn Hawke and Sam Hayward (including one of the funniest death bed scenes I can remember!) – all names to watch out for. NYMT is alive and well – I look forward to the next production.

‘The Bourne Ultimatum’

22 August 2007

We were at the cinema on Sunday to see ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ – the third adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novels, starring Matt Damon and directed by Paul Greengrass. It has been marketed as an ‘intelligent action movie’ and that’s probably a fair description. There is plenty of gritty realism and lots of all-too-believable violence. And it is good to see a Hollywood movie dealing with internal corruption rather than a cartoon-like evil villain. But there was still a fair amount of frustrating unbelievability: if CIA agent Jason Bourne has been trained to speak every European language, to know the layout of the backstreets of every major European city and has memorised all the world’s public transport timetables, how come his female colleague seems to have received no similar training and can only contribute worried looks? There is also something inherently ridiculous about any ‘control-room scene’ where ranks of computer operators tap away at their keyboards while the boss strides up and down looking at masses of text on large screens covering the walls and shouting things like “listen up”, “give me all you’ve got on Bourne”, “let’s get mobile” etc. I think all such scenes remind me too much of ‘Dr Strangelove’. Nevertheless ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ is fast-moving, exciting and clever. Good to see a blockbuster with a key role for a Guardian journalist – and a very tense early scene on the concourse at Waterloo station.

'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' by J K Rowling

13 August 2007

When I say I have just finished reading 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' by J K Rowling, I guess I am instantly going to divide you into those who groan out loud and those who wonder what took me so long. I've enjoyed all seven Harry Potter books. I can sympathise with those who say the quality of the writing leaves much to be desired and the settings, characters and magical creatures are incredibly derivative, but, by blatantly pinching some of the best elements of classic children's fiction, fantasy and mythology, Rowling has created a cracking good yarn. And I can forgive her much for the wonderful combination of both the broadest scope and the minutest detail in her plotting. It seems to me that the plot drives you through these weighty tomes at a rapid pace - both through the overall story arc of the seven books (written before starting the first novel, apparently) and through impressive attention to detail and consistency. Children can be the most obsessive of all readers and it can be incredibly irritating when the internal logic of a story is broken or an early passing reference is forgotten. I have found all the Harry Potter books incredibly satisfying in how they remember and refer back to the tiniest of details. And none has been so satisfying in this respect as the 'Deathly Hallows' which scrupulously ties up every possible loose end. I came to the book with my own mental checklist of unanswered questions and came away with all items ticked. (I daresay the massive obsessive attention to which this book will be subjected may unearth one or two mistakes or omissions but I was not disappointed.) My main problem with the 'Deathly Hallows' was trying not to read it too quickly. Having lived with these characters for so many years, like many others I was desperate to find out what happens to them - but worried about missing key clues and wanting to prolong the end as long as possible. So I took to reading two or three chapters at a time and then re-reading them before going on - meaning I have now read the whole book twice! (If any of the groaners were still with me I fear I have certainly lost them now!) I can highly recommend this technique: it is amazing how many seemingly insignificant references reveal themselves as invaluable pointers with the benefit of a little hindsight. (Slightly less obsessively, when I have finished a novel I have really enjoyed I am invariably sorry to leave it and sometimes go back and re-read the opening chapter. You would be amazed how fascinating this often proves - try it!) The 'Deathly Hallows' is definitely not a starting point for anyone who has not yet tried the Potter phenomenon: it would make little sense to those who haven't followed the previous books. But for those with at least a passing acquaintance with Harry, Ron, Hermione et al, it is a gripping ride. As with many of the books there are some passages which drag a bit, but when the action takes off it is thrilling - particularly this time as there is no guarantee who, if anyone, will survive. But that would be telling ...

'The Visit'

9 August 2007

I’ve been enjoying ‘The Visit’ – a new sitcom on BBC3 on Sunday evenings (though only a matter of time before it is repeated on BBC2, I would have thought). All the action takes place during visiting time at a prison with, each week, the same set of prisoners taking their seats at tables opposite the same family members and then sitting there staring at each other with very little to say! Sounds riveting, I know, but the small talk and inane banter is very very funny and there is plenty of gentle, gradual character development. There are no star names dominating – though many of the actors are reasonably familiar faces. The characters are all fairly exaggerated – this is quite an old fashioned sitcom – more ‘Phoenix Nights’ than the cringingly believable comedy of ‘The Office’. Extremely enjoyable and refreshingly subtle such as in its reverential nod to ‘Porridge’ in the use of theme music by Slade.

WOMAD 2007

1 August 2007

The WOMAD world music festival prides itself on remaining largely sponsor-free but this year you could have been forgiven for thinking a deal had been done with Dunlop - at least in terms of product placement: if there was anyone present not wearing wellingtons it was impossible to tell what, if anything, they did have on their feet, such was the amount of deep, liquid, mud covering the festival site! The unfortunate coincidence of the wettest summer on record combined with WOMAD's move to a new home at Charlton Park near Malmesbury in Wiltshire (after many years in Reading) made for a frustratingly difficult festival experience. First there were horrendous traffic problems on the small country roads around the park: it took me two and a half hours to travel the few miles from the motorway junction when I arrived on Friday afternoon. Then there was the mud: wellingtons were a necessity and walking was very difficult - though standing still had its problems too as you soon found yourself sinking! And just when you decided to give up and call it day there was chaos in the car park: on Saturday evening it took me two hours to get out as tractors towed cars one-by-one up an increasingly muddy slope to the road. By Saturday night I had had enough and opted to head home rather than struggle through Sunday. And I was fortunate not to have been camping: it was a great relief to get back to a comfortable hotel bed each night. I know many people went home before the festival even began and there has been much anger and vitriol on the message boards at www.womad.org - though it was good to see Viscount Andover (whose father owns the Charlton Park estate) going online to respond to comments. Nevertheless, as always, there was some great music. An obvious highlight was the first festival appearance for many years of WOMAD founder Peter Gabriel who played a great set on Friday evening with a host of guest stars. I also enjoyed the desert bagpipes of exuberant Algerian band Marzoug, the beautiful, other-worldly vocals of Norwegian Sami singer Mari Boine and the amazing virtuosity of Malian ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate. It is always nice to see the artists appreciating each other's work: it was lovely to see the mature gentlemen of El Tanbura (Egypt's answer to the Buena Vista Social Club) dancing in front of the stage during a performance by the Palestinian singer Reem Kelani. The Warsaw Village Band were late - a year and 45 minutes late: I had been looking forward to seeing them play at last year's festival when they didn't make it at all - and on Saturday (like many other bands this year) they got stuck in the traffic and the mud and arrived on stage three quarters of an hour later than scheduled. But I did enjoy their 'hardcore Polish folk' - particularly the strident three-part female vocal harmonies which emphasise their musical and geographic positioning somewhere between Bulgaria and Finland. As the rain started to fall on Saturday evening we were cheered up by an upbeat session from English folk star Seth Lakeman and the most energetic performance of the weekend from Asian Dub Foundation. I finished by watching the launch of Simon Emmerson's new project 'The Imagined Village' - a re-imagining of the English folk tradition for the 21st century featuring an all star cast including Martin Carthy, Eliza Carthy, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah, Johny Kalsi of the Dhol Foundation, Sheema Mukherjee of Transglobal Underground and British Asian singer Sheila Chandra. Fascinating to hear Billy Bragg talking about how it took two Jewish guys from Queens to make him feel English - when hearing Simon & Garfunkel's 'Scarborough Fair' for the first time - and then to realise he was telling us this while standing next to Martin Carthy - the man who taught Paul Simon the tune. There were some great performances at Charlton Park but it was hard work getting from one stage to another and it will be difficult not to remember this year's WOMAD festival primarily for the mud.

'Much Ado About Nothing' by William Shakespeare

25 July 2007

When your neighbours have got a troupe of travelling players performing Shakespeare in their back garden it would seem churlish not to support them – so on Sunday we made our way through the deer park to Woburn Abbey to watch the outdoor production of 'Much Ado About Nothing' by Chapterhouse theatre company. In this period of 'extreme weather' we expected the worst but, amazingly, the clouds cleared, the sun came out and we enjoyed a beautiful evening. There are quite a few companies touring open-air Shakespeare productions each summer and it always appears to be a very testing proving ground for young actors. Apart from coping with the full range of weather conditions, your projection has got to be very strong to reach the back of the audience and you have to be able to ignore numerous potential distractions – such as the flock of geese that flew across the Woburn Abbey gardens on Sunday, closely followed by a lone heron. The Chapterhouse cast coped well and gave a solid, engaging performance. Not quite as inventive in their use of the available space as the 'Romeo and Juliet' we saw last year but extremely enjoyable nonetheless – with particularly strong performances by Nicola Weeks and Simon Michael Morgan as Beatrice and Benedick. Their tour of England continues to the end of August - details at www.chapterhouse.org.

The Blockheads

23 July 2007

It's Easter 1992 and we're in the Swan Theatre in Stratford watching a great Royal Shakespeare Company production of John Gay's 'A Jovial Crew'. But we're distracted from the action by a small, stooped figure wandering around the back of the auditorium, selecting a series of vantage points. As he passes the back of our seats, Jeannie turns round and pointedly asks him to be quiet. We reach the interval and the lights go up and suddenly a queue is forming to shake hands with the small, restless man. If I had stopped to write a list of all the people he might have been (which I obviously didn't as I was in a hurry to get an ice cream) the list would have had to have been many pages long before it would have occurred to me that we were being disturbed by rock star and poet of punk, Ian Dury. (Though had I just spent the interval reading the programme I would have discovered that he and Mickey Gallagher had written the songs for this production of 'A Jovial Crew'.)

Fifteen years later Dury is sadly no longer with us but his band, The Blockheads, are celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. So, on Saturday evening, we made our way to The Pitz in Milton Keynes for an evening of 'Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll'. The remaining original Blockheads may have aged but showed no signs of losing their enthusiasm, musical skill or drive. Augmented by a couple of younger recruits they played a high-energy two hour set and were obviously really enjoying themselves. The Blockheads were one of those punk bands who weren't really punks - mixing a variety of musical styles including reggae (as did The Clash), Latin rhythms and funk. Their strolling bass lines sound a lot like their contemporaries Squeeze. The presence of the amazing saxophonist Gilad Atzmon took a lot of the numbers into the realms of jazz funk – at times The Blockheads sounded remarkably like Weather Report – not really my kind of thing but very impressive. Their unique selling point is still Ian Dury’s wonderful lyrics – witty, playful, hard-hitting, brutal and very funny. It was great to see a packed audience singing along to every word. Also interesting to reflect on Dury’s gentle, natural, rhythmic spoken delivery: he was rapping in 1977 – well before Mike Skinner of The Streets was born. On Saturday the Blockheads were joined for the last few numbers by the comedian Phil Jupitus. Almost unrecognisable (if it were not for his distinctive body shape!), clean-shaven and dressed in a giant red checked jacket and bowler hat (“sponsored by Home Pride”), Jupitus delivered the lead vocals with due reverence to his legendary colleagues – and was clearly a big fan. He is due to join The Blockheads for a full thirtieth anniversary tour later this year – well worth catching. And as we pogo-ed into the night shouting “hit me with your rhythm stick – hit me – hit me” I’m sure there was someone looking on from the back of the auditorium and smiling.

Boban Markovic Orkestar

17 July 2007

Since I first discovered the peerless Serbian brass band - the Boban Markovic Orkestar – after reading a review in Songlines magazine at the beginning of 2003 they have only played one UK date – in May 2003 which I missed as I was flying back from Italy at the time. So when I heard Boban was to play another one-off concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London last weekend I leapt at the chance to see the band live for the first time. They didn't disappoint. Dressed in white shoes, white trousers and round-necked, long-sleeved white t-shirts the 11 members of the Boban Markovic Orkestar looked like an unlikely collection of male nurses preparing to assist in complicated surgery on our eardrums. In front of the band, Boban and his son Marko were the epitome of cool on a sweltering evening. Marko – now in his early twenties – is a rock star with a trumpet. He stands with his feet firmly planted to the floor, his head bent forward to ensure his trumpet gets as close as possible to the microphone, his long black hair tied tightly back in a ponytail and his hips gyrating to the groove. His father constantly prowls the stage – directing the band, instructing the sound engineer and casually slipping into bursts of virtuoso trumpet solos. Boban's medium-length hair is tousled as if an elderly relative has playfully ruffled it. The back of his light blue shirt is soon drenched in sweat. His shoulders are permanently raised in a perpetual shrugging 'whatever' and a satisfied smile plays around his lips.

For me, the Boban Markovic Orkestar are the classiest, slickest, funkiest exponents of the Balkan Gypsy brass sound. They avoid the tendency of many similar bands to demonstrate their virtuosity by making everything extremely fast and frantic – preferring to vary their programme with stunning, unexpected changes of tempo and rhythm. And their rhythms are amazing – complex syncopations supported by five tuba players and three percussionists. There are no clarinets or saxophones here – just tubas (of varying sizes) and trumpets. The sound is absolutely deafening – and even louder when Boban and Marko come out from behind the microphones and play directly without amplification from the front of stage.

There is clearly a great mutual respect within the band. At the end of each number every player acknowledges the audience's acclaim by raising an arm to gesture across the stage towards one of their colleagues to suggest, modestly, where the applause ought to be directed. When the gesture is reciprocated each player turns to honour another member of the band, creating a series of white-clad musical statue tableaus with arms outstretched.

Balkan Gypsy brass is party music but with the Boban Markovic Orkestar it is a serious party. By the time they left the stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall – having over-run the scheduled finish by an hour! – everyone was on their feet: an unforgettable experience.

'The Magic Numbers' by The Magic Numbers

12 July 2007

Last weekend, our friends Jan and Dave suggested we go to see a band in a pub. Regular readers may have noticed that this is not something we do very often but the novelty of a smoke-free pub was quite appealing and Jan and Dave had seen the band before and recommended them. So on Saturday night we made for the Prince Albert in Bradwell Village, Milton Keynes, to see '1 Nite Stand'. Discovering that they were a 'covers band' eroded my enthusiasm as I anticipated an evening of the same old 1960s and 70s standards. When they started, however, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that their choice of covers was much more interesting and inventive. '1 Nite Stand' (www.1nitestand.co.uk) were really good. Most of their repertoire was from the 1990s (including songs by the likes of James and The Wonderstuff) or more recent (such as The Kaiser Chiefs and Nerina Pallot). I was particularly struck by a number of songs that were new to me, including one by The Magic Numbers. When I wrote here (in February 2006) of my enthusiasm for Arctic Monkeys, Sioned suggested I try The Magic Numbers but I'm sorry to say I hadn't got round to them. So this week I picked up a copy of their eponymous 2005 album (for just £6 - sometimes delaying your purchase pays off!). It's a 1960s West Coast sound (and I don't mean Aberystwyth!) - cheerful, toe-tapping, catchy tunes with strummed guitars and backing vocal harmonies - a soundtrack for summer.

Sardinia

28 June 2007

We had a great couple of weeks in Sardinia. It was very hot and we were staying in a fairly isolated hotel set in the middle of a pine forest near Arborea on the West coast – which allowed for plenty of relaxing days by the pool or on the beach. We also managed to explore quite a bit of the island including the main cities – Cagliari, Nuoro and Sassari – the picturesque towns of Bosa and Alghero (the only Catalan-speaking community outside Spain – Sardinia having been Spanish for three centuries), and several Roman and prehistoric (‘Nuraghi’) archeological sites. My highlight was the day we drove up a narrow winding road to the mountain village of Bitti, home to the famous singing shepherds, Tenores de Bitti. The Sardinian canto a tenore tradition is an amazing sound. For centuries shepherds have gathered in mountain huts at the end of the working day to sing to each other (and drink!) through the night. Standing in a circle facing each other, this is very much participatory music – not designed for an audience. The four-part unaccompanied close-harmony singing imitates natural sounds: the bass (‘bassu’) is the sound of a cow, the ‘contra’ is the sound of a sheep and the ‘mesu ‘oche’ is the sound of the wind. Above these the soloist (‘voche’ – the human voice) leads the song and carries the text. The result is harmonically scrunchy, with a very low growlly bass – hypnotically repetitive and remarkably catchy. After a lengthy search around the streets of Bitti we eventually found the tiny Museo Canto e Tenore and came away clutching heaps of CDs.

'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid' by Bill Bryson

25 June 2007

About 15 years ago, my cynical friend Tony was uncharacteristically enthusiastic about a travel book he was reading by a then little-known American author called Bill Bryson. This guy, said Tony, had taken a road-trip across America and had written a hilarious account of the small towns he had encountered and their peculiar inhabitants. Bill Bryson was the American who understood irony - he was more cynical than my cynical friend Tony. I didn't actually read 'The Lost Continent' until years later. Tony couldn't let me read his copy because, typically, he had borrowed it from a girl he had been seeing but was no longer seeing but hoped he might see again in which case he would need to be able to return her book. When I finally got to read 'The Lost Continent' I loved it too - everybody loves Bill Bryson don't they? He has a great knack of capturing the absurdities of the places he visits and marveling at the ridiculousness of the people he meets without ever ridiculing them, and maintaining his own likeable persona through a healthy dollop of self-deprecation. I've read quite a few Bill Bryson books now and they are all extremely entertaining. I think his style works best when his descriptions of places are sprinkled with chance encounters with the strangest of strangers - for me his least successful book was 'Neither Here Nor There', his European journey where language barriers restricted those chance conversations. He also has a tendency to wear his research on his sleeve - sometimes bombarding you with too many interesting facts and statistics. I found his science book 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' a little hard-going - not because it wasn't constantly fascinating but there just seemed to be too much to take in. You do feel, though, that this is because Bryson is himself utterly fascinated and dying to tell you - and it is this raw enthusiasm that makes him so appealing. I've just finished reading his childhood reminiscences 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid' which tells us what it was like growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, in the 1950s and thereby provides a comprehensive picture of fifties America. Extremely enjoyable and incredibly funny this was Bryson at his best - perhaps because this journey into the past covered a much longer period than his geographical journeys so there were many more bizarre encounters from which to cull his anecdotes - plus a highly entertaining new central character: the young Bill Bryson. Despite his familiarity with the territory, the usual Brysonic thoroughness of research is evident - with some great quotations from newspapers and magazines of the period opening each chapter. But above all you get a great sense of the affection Bryson feels for his family, friends and the place he grew up - despite, or perhaps because of, their baffling oddities.

'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini

25 June 2007

My knowledge of the recent history of Afghanistan was fairly limited before reading 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini - but I knew it hadn't been a good few decades. In Hosseini's impressive novel, the narrator looks back to his childhood in 1970s Kabul from the vantage point of present-day San Francisco. The early chapters, dealing with his privileged upbringing and his close friendship with his father's servant's son, have the same end-of-an-era feel as the Shanghai of JG Ballard's 'Empire of the Sun' or Kazuo Ishiguro's 'When We Were Orphans'. But here the comfortable childhood is shattered by the Russians rather than the Japanese and then things just get worse as the Russians are followed by the Northern Alliance and then the Taliban. 'The Kite Runner' is an old-fashioned epic novel - a family saga cataloguing dark years, tragedy and violence. It is a gripping, if sometimes disturbing, read - extremely well-written and intricately plotted with some great iconic characters. Occasionally Hosseini overdoes the neat little links - almost every significantly described item seems bound to make a crucial reappearance later in the story - but this is a minor criticism for a stunning debut novel which is crying out to be filmed.

'A Spot of Bother' by Mark Haddon

25 June 2007

It wasn't to everyone's liking and was sometimes painfully honest to read but, for me, one of the best novels of recent years was 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen. This tale of two aging parents and their grown-up children impressively showed you the irresolvably opposing points of view of each of the main characters in a way that made you simultaneously sympathise with all of them - painfully demonstrating the irreconcilable tensions within families. Mark Haddon's new novel 'A Spot of Bother' pulls off a similar trick in a much lighter vein. Haddon was, rightly, much praised for his previous novel 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time' - a highly distinctive, wonderful book - if you haven't read it please do so now! It was always going to be difficult for him to follow this success and 'A Spot of Bother' had mixed reviews but I really enjoyed it. Inevitably, it is a very different - and much more conventional, novel, but it is extremely enjoyable and very funny. Like 'The Corrections', 'A Spot of Bother' deals with aging parents and their grown-up children. It is written in the third person but each chapter takes the point of view of one of the four principal characters - often showing us the same events from a different angle. But this is 'The Corrections' as it might have been written by Nick Hornby - an entertaining, page-turning, easy read in an English middle-class setting with some great comic set-pieces. Like Hornby or David Lodge, Mark Haddon has the ability to address difficult and complex subjects through deceptively 'lightweight' prose - never feeling the need to show-off its cleverness and dealing with dark subjects without making them unbearably bleak. And on top of all this the book is set in what is, for me, familiar territory. With Marina Lewycka's 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian', are we seeing the beginning of a new genre of 'Peterborough fiction'?

Charles Hazlewood on BBC Radio 2

7 June 2007

I recently discovered the Charles Hazlewood show on BBC Radio 2 which is broadcast on Wednesday evenings at 10 pm. Hazlewood is a conductor and enthusiastic advocate of classical music. In his Radio 3 Saturday afternoon programme ‘Discovering Music’ he performs a fascinating and accessible dissection and analysis of popular orchestral works, finishing by conducting a full live performance of the work in question. Earlier this year his TV drama/documentaries on Tchaikowsky demonstrated his excitement and infectious enthusiasm in front of the camera. His weekly Radio 2 show is a wonderful example of breaking down genre barriers and appreciating good music without worrying about how it is labeled. From the barn at his home in Somerset he plays a variety of recordings from pop to country to contemporary classical to early music and discusses them with a guest musician. His guest then performs a couple of live numbers (often with Hazlewood accompanying or adding some percussion etc) before they improvise something completely new together. The result is intriguing, enjoyable and accessible whilst still resolutely musically serious – without a hint of ‘dumbing down’. Last week’s guest was Fyfe Dangerfield from The Guillemots – a band I’ve not listened to, but having heard his performances from Hazelwood’s barn I am keen to seek them out.

Fanfare Ciocarlia

31 May 2007

Regular readers will know about my enthusiasm for Balkan Gypsy brass music. 2007 looks like being a vintage year for British fans of Balkan brass with Kocani Orkestar, the Boban Markovic Orkestar and Fanfare Ciocarlia all visiting the UK. On Wednesday I was at the Barbican in London to see the award-winning Romanian Gypsy brass band, Fanfare Ciocarlia. Fanfare won a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music last year (reported here in April 2006) and are great friends of my former colleague at Making Music, Jackie Grant. Thankfully they had not brought a goat with them on this occasion but they did bring a host of guest performers that resembled a 'Who's Who' of Balkan Gypsy music.

In 2000 the Barbican held its first '1000 Year Journey' festival of Gypsy music and Fanfare Ciocarlia made their mark with an amazing performance on the free stage in the Barbican foyer that went on into the small hours of the following morning. Seven years later they were back - this time in the sold-out main Barbican Hall. There was a buzz around the building well before the performance started: this felt like a major 'event'. There was wonderful support from American duo 'A Hawk and a Hacksaw' creating their own blend of traditional Hungarian Gypsy music with their collaborators, Hungary's Hun Hangar Ensemble. Then Fanfare Ciocarlia and their guests commanded the stage for more than two hours. Wow! Never before have eleven mostly balding, middle-aged men, wearing their bright-coloured short-sleeved shirts outside their sensible slacks to disguise their widening midriffs, played so energetically, so frantically, so furiously and so loudly! Fanfare Ciocarlia play fast - very fast - no, really very fast! Fanfare Ciocarlia are 'The Flight of the Bumble Bee' on speed - going down a very steep hill - in a runaway train - with a strong tailwind. When they pause between pieces to gather their breath you wonder for a second whether the next tune might be a contrasting slow one - then the percussionist looks at his colleagues, raises his sticks and rapidly beats 'tap tap tap tap' and they're off again at breakneck speed. Exciting as this is it can get a little monotonous and I was grateful for the variety provided by a galaxy of co-stars.

Fanfare Ciocarlia's patriarch, Ioan Ivancea died late last year and their new CD 'Queens & Kings' is a tribute to him, featuring legendary Gypsy musicians from across Europe. At the Barbican this week Fanfare Ciocarlia were joined by the gorgeous Romanian singer Florentina Sandu, French trio Kaloome, Romanian dancers Aurelia and Tantzica and Bulgarian rocker Jony Iliev (who had hurt his back and had to be helped to hobble across the stage to take his place on a chair with microphone in hand - at which point he came alive and gave a lively, soulful performance). Also appearing was the amazing Hungarian Gypsy singer with the bizarre squeaky voice Mitsou (whose band Mitsoura were one of my highlights at last year's WOMAD festival - reviewed here in August 2006).

But the star of the show was undoubtedly the 'Queen of the Gypsies', the legendary Macedonian singer Esma Redzepova. Esma has had an amazing life - performing across the globe in front of adoring crowds and heads of state including Nehru and Tito, adopting 46 children from the streets of Macedonia, campaigning against poverty, and being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize - twice! She still has a wonderful voice and led a rousing finale with all the performers (and several members of the audience) returning to the stage to hop and spin to the frenetic beat. Fanfare Ciocarlia's CD 'Queens and Kings' is out now on Asphalt Tango Records - go on, you know you want to ...

'Romeo & Juliet' by Northern Ballet Theatre

29 May 2007

We've been meaning to get around to watching some ballet for ages. We finally took the plunge at Milton Keynes Theatre last Saturday where we saw Northern Ballet Theatre's 'Romeo & Juliet' and it was great! I think it helped that we had chosen a story we knew well, set to familiar music (by Prokofiev). Having played the concert suites I was intrigued to see how sections of the music were repeated throughout the ballet as 'motifs' for particular characters etc. It was also interesting to see how interpreting the plot through dance (choreography by Massimo Moricone and original direction by Christopher Gable) stretched time in different directions. Complex plot development scenes which are quite substantial in the Shakespeare play were over in the blink of an eye in the ballet, while the dance lingered understandably much longer on expressions of feelings between the characters. I am not convinced that I would have been able to follow all the intricacies of the plot without knowing the play well (I don't see how you could dance/mime Friar Laurence's explanation that the potion will only induce a death-like sleep - if you didn't already know this you would probably get quite a surprise when Juliet wakes up!). And I still think some of the 'silent movie' exaggerated mime moments sit uneasily within the seriousness of the story and the dance - there were too many 'silent scream' moments with dancers waving their hands in mock surprise! But the dancing was lovely and very moving. I particularly liked Pippa Moore's child-like Juliet and Hironao Takahashi's swaggering Mercutio. 'Romeo & Juliet' was definitely a hit and I think more ballet beckons ...

'Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus' by Mary Shelley

22 May 2007

'Frankenstein' seems such a familiar story but it's been fascinating to read Mary Shelley's original 1818 novel for the first time. I knew that most of the film versions took great liberties with the plot but it was interesting to discover how, in doing so, they really lost the point of the story. Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' (famously inspired by a 'waking dream' while staying with her husband and Byron at Lake Geneva) while pregnant and its main themes are to do with birth, creation and death. It is heavily influenced by Milton's 'Paradise Lost' (quoted on the title page) - the source of inspiration, more recently, for Philip Pulman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. The science of 'Frankenstein' is pretty shaky and largely glossed over. Mary Shelley is much more interested in the social interactions between the monster, his creator and other people. Much of the plot is, even within the fantastical world of the novel, remarkably implausible - teaching himself to talk, the monster becomes unbelievably articulate in a very short space of time - and Victor Frankenstein seems to come very much from the naive "hiding under the duvet should protect me from anything nasty" school of thought! Nevertheless the story's premise is powerful enough to allow you to overlook some of these imperfections. The narrative structure is quite complex, consisting of several 'nested narratives' - at one point we are reading the monster's story as told by the monster to Victor Frankenstein as told by Victor to Captain Walton as told by the Captain to his sister! But even this is symbolic - Captain Walton's sister is Margaret Walton Saville and it is no coincidence that she shares her initials with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, suggesting that the whole story is a found narrative discovered by Mary Shelley rather than her own creation. The edition of the novel I read included as an appendix an 1823 dramatisation called 'Presumption or The Fate of Frankenstein' by Richard Brinsley Peake which radically simplified the story, making the monster mute and removing all the complexities of his arguments with his creator. This play seems to have been the source for many of the later treatments including the Universal films that now form our main reference for the 'Frankenstein' story. The original novel, while not a great work, is much more thoughtful and thought-provoking than much that it inspired - and truly scary!