Music

Composer: Hilda Paredes Text: Lex Bohtmeijer/Mayra Santos-Febres Conductor: Manoj Kamps Director: Jean Lacornerie Video design: Miwa Matreyek Reviewer: Ron Simpson As with many performances at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Harriet is truly an international event, with a Mexican composer, a Sri Lankan conductor, a French director, the fearless American soprano Claron McFadden in the title role and co-production and ...

Performed by: BBC Philharmonic, Leeds Festival Chorus, City of Glasgow Chorus, Cantabile Choir Composed by: Benjamin Britten Reviewed by: Rich Jevons Some 40 years on from its original commission, Benjamin Britten's haunting, and at times harrowing, War Requeim still packs a powerful punch. Britten combines Wilfred Owen's war poetry with the Latin Missa pro defunctis to great effect. As Simon Lindley ...

Conductor: Richard Balcombe Reviewer: Selwyn Knight Today, Birmingham’s Symphony Hall pays tribute to the undisputed King of Swing, Frank Sinatra. And who better to lead that tribute than (probably) Britain’s finest crooner, Matt Ford, although, as Ford explains, this isn’t a tribute act, it’s a celebration of Sinatra’s sound – Ford doesn’t try to impersonate Sinatra’s voice or his quirks, ...

Conductor: Michael Seal  Reviewer: Selwyn Knight In an evening in the company of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), one is pretty much guaranteed superb musicianship from all, with the acoustics of Birmingham’s Symphony Hall ensuring that every element is audible. So what is it that takes a good concert and makes it great? One feature might be the ...

Musicians: David Greed (violin), Ian Buckle (piano) Reviewer: Ron Simpson The Dewsbury Lunchtime Concert Season is part of Kirklees Council and Opera North’s initiative to bring regular musical events to the area. Faced with continuing financial stringency, both the Huddersfield Concert Season and the Dewsbury lunchtime concerts rely ever more heavily on the host company, but this brings no reduction ...

Director: Dean Elliott Reviewer: Scott Matthewman The band-biography-as-jukebox-musical genre has, for the time being at least, receded from the West End. With so many proponents from Jersey Boysto Sunny Afternoonand Beautiful, it has often felt as if the book were an inconvenient interruption for wallowing in an artist or group’s back catalogue. No such pretence is in evidence for The ...

Musicians: Andrew Long (violin), Robert Ashworth (horn), Ian Buckle (piano) Reviewer: Ron Simpson The Cathedral Concert Society is clearly a lively and successful institution. Monthly concerts during the Winter draw more than sizeable audiences to the magnificent setting of the spacious Quire (the cathedral favours the old spelling) of Ripon Cathedral – and the acoustic’s excellent, too. The November guests ...

Reviewer: Peter Jacobs Drift is a Manchester-based collaborative collective bringing together Test Card, VAM and Meraki Collective that brings together local artists working in music, movement, performance, spoken word and digital art (mostly) to create opportunities to create and present multi-disciplinary mixed-genre events in a variety of platforms. Drift is several tranches Manchester’s underground arts scene getting organised and making ...