Music

Libretto: William Schwenk Gilbert Composer: Arthur Sullivan Director: Andrew Nicklin Musical Director: Timothy Burke Reviewer: Ron Simpson The Yeomen of the Guard is an oddity in the Gilbert and Sullivan canon and, partly because of that, has enjoyed a fluctuating reputation, at times over-rated (perhaps by Sullivan himself), at others unreasonably neglected. Often thought of a G&S take on grand ...

Composer/Pianist: Tomson Highway Vocals: Patricia Cano Saxophone: Marcus Ali Reviewer: Gareth Davies The Cree language and culture belongs to one of the Indigenous populations of Canada, and playwright Tomson Highway focuses his work and his songs in the people, places and themes of this community. Last appearing at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1988, Highway now brings a short song ...

Reviewer: C L Delft Before he became the defining producer of the 80s, Trevor Horn had served an apprenticeship as a performer, topping the charts in 1979 as part of The Buggles with Video Killed The Radio Star and going on from there to front a later incarnation of the progressive rock band Yes, before settling for a life mostly ...

Reviewer: Gemma Fincher Theatrical powerhouse and Broadway icon Lea Salonga is currently headlining her first set of UK concerts, bringing her one-woman show to the beautiful Birmingham Symphony Hall as part of her tour. The concert was rescheduled from February due to Salonga breaking her leg on a family skiing holiday; however, the postponement scarcely matters as she delivers a ...

Reviewer: John Kennedy From Cape Town to Cape Cornwall – courtesy of a personal invitation and introduction by Glastonbury beard-confused guru, Michael Eavis, together with Reverend Mbuso Kubone and St Just Methodist Miners’ Chapel’s David James, Cornwall hosts the most deliriously stealth-Christian evangelism ever set in song – possibly. Or at least since the hypnotic 1958 recording of Missa Luba ...

Conductor: Frederick Brown  Reviewer: Tim Harding Only four weeks left until the summer holiday starts.  And it turns out that it’s not just school children (and teachers!) who are getting ready for the break; orchestral musicians, it turns out, are already packing up ready for some summer sun.   Fortunately for us, before they fly off the members of the Welsh ...

Composer: Hector Berlioz Conductor: Edward Gardner Reviewer: Tim Harding The Damnation of Faust is a curious beast; a “dramatic legend” conceived by the composer as a piece for the concert hall, not the opera house, and yet requiring fully realized dramatic performances from singers and orchestra. Under the baton of Edward Gardner, the familiar story of the scientist Faust who ...

Conductor: Pete Harrison Reviewer: Selwyn Knight ‘In space, no one can hear you scream’ was the tagline to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien. Of course, with no air to carry sound, no-one can hear anything else either, which is a problem for film and tv franchises that have at their heart wars between opposing regimes set in space – explosions ...