Reviews & features: Music
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Programme for the Edinburgh International Festival 2013 puts artists and technology centre-stage
12 Mar 2013
Tod Machover, the Wooster Group and Oper Frankfurt among the EIF programme highlights
A crowd sourced orchestral work by boundary breaker Tod Machover is just one of the many highlights of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival programme. Set over three weeks this August, the EIF’s line-up includes an homage to Allen Ginsberg with…
Well, It's Woody
30 Aug 2012
Seamless cabaret night with a programme to savour
Edinburgh legend BBC Pink Tent guest while singing aficionado Woodstock Taylor lures you into a packed piano bar to enjoy an eclectic mix of song, instrumental music, spoken word and comedy. This rather enigmatic lady arrives in dark glasses and hat…
Hey, Piano Bar Lady!
29 Aug 2012
Musical comedy taking it back to 80s New York via New Zealand
New Zealand singer Linn Lorkin is perched at her keyboard, tousled red hair, whimsical expression and billowing patchwork dress suggesting she’s quite the eccentric dame. Now in its second year at the Fringe, her one-woman biographical show is a…
The Les Cloechards – Dirty But Nice
28 Aug 2012
Part-time hobos rock the stage with bizarre but brilliant takes on old classics
These jokers, who seem French but are actually German, apparently – (their name is an amalgamation of three languages, but essentially means ‘The Tramps’) - have got their show’s subtitle just about right: They are very dirty, and they’re also quite…
David et Jonathas, Festival Theatre, Mon 20 Aug
28 Aug 2012
Psychological complexities of OT story brought to the fore in Andreas Homoki's musical feast of a pr
Musically, Les Arts Florissants’ David et Jonathas is a feast. French Baroque opera at its finest, Charpentier’s moving retelling of the biblical tragedy about two men who love each other - however that might be interpreted – is rooted in the most…
Folk at the Pleasance
24 Aug 2012
An enjoyable variety of folk music in a relaxed and intimate setting
This folk session is led by a tentative, yet somehow regal Sophie Ramsay, who in her flowing red dress and tumbling brown hair resembles a folky Kate Bush. After a soft introduction the Scottish songstress performs two songs, the first a melancholic…
Lady Rizo
23 Aug 2012
New York singer works Neil Gaiman, Dolly Parton and Edith Piaf into her hyper-feminine set
‘I was raised by hippies and rebelled with glamour,’ purrs Lady Rizo, a diva oozing old-school charisma. The New Yorker’s Fringe show is a riotous shindig squeezed into a ‘tiny Dutch circus tent’, her Grammy winning pipes swirling around retro, soulful…
Zoe Strachan on The Lady from the Sea - interview
22 Aug 2012
The playwright is collaborating with Craig Armstrong on the production for Scottish Opera
Five years ago, Scottish Opera embarked on a brave new venture called Five:15. The plan was to put together contemporary Scottish writers and composers and commission them to come up with five new 15 minute long operas. Altogether, 15 short operas were…
The Lost Fingers - Lost in the 80s
22 Aug 2012
Skillful gypsy jazz paired up with an inspired choice of cover versions
‘We’re kinda known for taking cheese and making it better,’ declares one of Québécoise gypsy-folk interpretation trio The Lost Fingers (they’re named after Django Reinhardt’s disappeared digits), although not everyone might go along with their…
Fork - Electro Vocal Circus
22 Aug 2012
PVC-clad a capella group covering pop classics
The four-piece a cappella group from Finland return. Fork’s look and repertoire is much more glam rock than Glee, with one member being labelled as the ‘Legolas from hell’. They have an ever so slightly intimidating presence, but this only adds to their…
Virginia Gay - Dirty, Pretty Songs
21 Aug 2012
Husky voiced soap star lacks plot but brings cabaret showtunes instead
As Virginia Gay’s cabaret commences it’s easy to get the jist: she prowls through the audience, belts out a shiny tune and ends up writhing atop her band’s grand piano. The Australian actress recounts a self-deprecating ‘back story’, referencing a…
Out of the Blue
20 Aug 2012
All-male a cappella group radiate charm with formidable vocals and infectious stage presence
Before a 500-strong, sold-out Saturday house, 15 young men shimmy onto a lights-down, mist-shrouded stage, to be greeted thunderously from what seems to be most of the visiting female population of Edinburgh. Out of the Blue is back. In their…
La Clique Royale - The Queen’s Selection
19 Aug 2012
A night out with the bawdy and the beautiful
Meet the cast of freaks and uniques who gather nightly inside the wooden walls of the Spiegeltent, bathed in red lamplight, for a cabaret show with a couple of dark twists. There’s Agent Lynch – doing a sort of ‘Heidi does Carry On’ turn involving tiny…
Trad on the Tyne 31 Aug - 2 Sept features Daimh, Siobhan Miller and Wendy Stewart
16 Aug 2012
2012 Trad on the Tyne will Steele the Show on the small festival circuit
Recently shortlisted for the Scottish Event Awards - BestSmall Festival, Trad on the Tyne (31 August - 2 September 2012) is a festival of music and plenty more! A festival feast in more ways than one; the programme includes last year’s Celtic…
Blurt - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Sun Jul 29 2012
15 Aug 2012
Poet, puppeteer and post-punk provocateur
In the silence, Ted Milton sits behind a microphone centre-stage and blows up a balloon he ties and places at his feet. With a set of carefully placed clips, Milton hangs up a piece of white material too big to be a handkerchief, too small to be a…
Archie Shepp - Summerhall, Edinburgh, 1 Aug 2012
15 Aug 2012
Avant-garde fire may be toned down, but 75-year-old Shepp still honks a mighty blues
'I continue to listen gamely to Archie Shepp (who is wearing a beard now) in the hope that one day it will all cease to sound like 'Flight of the Bumble Bee' scored for bagpipes and concrete-mixer' wrote Philip Larkin in 1966. One can relish the poet…
Peter Straker’s Brel
15 Aug 2012
Belgian chanteur Brel’s life explored in song, costumes and storytelling
Jamaican born Peter Straker has been involved in British TV, music, and theatre for decades – he’s been in Doctor Who, collaborated with Freddie Mercury and starred in Hair and Phantom of the Opera amongst other things. In this latest show however, he…
I Am, I Am
15 Aug 2012
Highly entertaining slapstick minstrelry from promising troubadour comedy duo
For ones so young it's obscene how much confidence these duelling acoustic troubadours from Cambridge have. With their genre shifting ditties and punning rhymes I Am, I Am are most obviously comparable to The Flight of the Conchords but their very…
Temper Temper: The Pain of Desire
12 Aug 2012
Weimar rock ‘n’ roll from an unforgettable performer
The edges between live concert and theatrical performance bleed together in this full band show instigated by creative director Wendy Bevan. It begins as we await outside, the sound of piano flourishes being prepared echoing through the…
Lach: Up The Anti!
12 Aug 2012
Witty rock and roll renditions from the legendary NY anti-folker
Think of one man. Add in that he’s masterfully strumming a guitar, singing with a deep, gravelly vocal or producing a commendable Bob Dylan impression. Then factor in that, despite an on stage humility, he’s kind of a New York legend. Enigmatic…
Chris Difford and Norman Lovett: It's All About Me!
12 Aug 2012
Squeeze singer and Red Dwarf comedian in inexplicable team-up
Quite why Chris Difford of highly-successful 70s and 80s pop group Squeeze has chosen to embellish his partial spoken word life story with the presence of miserablist comedian and former Red Dwarf actor Norman Lovett is never explained here, so we can…
Gagaku, the ancient music of Japan, comes to the Edinburgh International Festival
11 Aug 2012
One-off performance to showcase the world's oldest orchestra tradition
If you think Western classical music is ancient – and let’s face it, even Bach dates back over 300 years – it’s a mere youngster compared with gagaku. The music of the Japanese imperial court, which gets a very rare British outing as part of the…
Eat, sleep and breathe: The Vocal Orchestra
11 Aug 2012
The beatboxing group's Robin Bailey shares their touring habits
What time is breakfast? Normally around 10am as we tend to have gigs that go on quite late into the evenings, but earlier brekkie in rehearsal periods. Tea or coffee? Coffee for sure, preferably latte. Smoking or non-smoking? Non-smoking…
My Robot Heart
10 Aug 2012
Stylish, likeable one-woman show with live band
This charming one-woman show slathered with well-observed social satire about wardrobes, Morrissey, and the rules of the playground asks an important question: ‘If it’s only physiologically possible to be in love for 12-18 months, then what on earth…
Five reasons we love Temper, Temper
8 Aug 2012
Wendy Bevan and her Lynchian, Weimar-esque compatriots performing at Fringe 2012
1. Should Marlene Dietrich, Scott Walker, Antony Hegarty, Laurie Anderson and Nick Cave ever cross space and time to meet at a gig it would be this one. Temper Temper’s sound fuses muscular, glittering blues with old, dusty jazz. 2. More than a gig…
