Category Archive: MUSIC
The Bad and the Beautiful
ASO at Adelaide Town Hall, 4 July 2025 A mixed night at the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s programme entitled “Mythic”, featuring a piece of that name by someone from Tashkent named Elena Kats-Chernin. Described as conjuring “the atmosphere of a mystical cave…where shadowy strings and twinkling winds reflect the faint glimmer of light in a cavernous realm“, it is a mess, frankly, like some cacophonous tune from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon meeting the score from “Out of Africa.” But it had pleasant things within what we might loosely call its structure, which is more than we can say for the drivel that…
Continue Reading →An Evening Without Kate Bush
(Adelaide Fringe, Garden of Unearthly Delights, 13 March 2025) Kate Bush, is, like one of her influencers Emily Bronte, both genius and mystic. Her look, her voice, her entire unique and brilliant oeuvre, have entranced us ever since her debut in 1978, aged 19. Sarah-Louise Young is clearly a Kate obsessive, and her show, a dizzy mash-note, is clearly for fans (we mean that in a good way), the Fish People, but it is witty and vibrant enough to please those ignorant of Kate-World. Whilst the music is pre-recorded, Young is not: her voice is strong and she inhabits the…
Continue Reading →What the World Needs Now
A celebration of Burt Bacharach (Festival Theatre, 22 November 2024) Burt’s songs are deceptively light. Famously grumpy critic Lester Bangs called him “the Master of the Superficial.” But his love melodies, entwined with the lyrics of Hal David, among others, are, in fact, little masterpieces of intimate, intricate concision. He co-wrote 73 US top-40 songs, so he must have been doing something right. On Friday night, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, under Benjamin Northey, was in full lavish-and-lush mode, providing a gorgeous backdrop to accomplished singers David Campbell, Emma Pask, Thndo and Chantelle Ormandy. Unfortunately, vocalist Elise McCann was indisposed, but…
Continue Reading →Simone and the Valkyries
Die Walküre, Sydney Opera House, 15 November 2024 (Simone Young, Conductor /Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Stuart Skelton, Siegmund/Peter Rose, Hunding/Vida Miknevičiūtė, Sieglinde/Tommi Hakala, Wotan/Alexandra Ionis, Fricka, Roßweiße/Anja Kampe, Brünnhilde/ Helena Dix, Helmwige/Madeleine Pierard, Gerhilde/Natalie Aroyan, Ortlinde/Deborah Humble, Waltraute/Margaret Plummer, Siegrune/Kristin Darragh, Grimgerde/Liane Keegan, Schwertleite) The Sydney Opera House does not have the capacity to mount a proper Ring Cycle, but its beautiful concert hall can put on a brilliant concertized version, and Die Walküre offers a chance to savour the key spoke in Wagner’s wheel without the distractions of the monumental amount of staging required for a full-scale production. Instead there were…
Continue Reading →Still Shining
(Marcia Hines at Norwood Town Hall, Adelaide, 4 October 2024) She came from Boston to Australia on a six month gig in Hair, and 50 years later…she’s still here. And Australia is the better for it. Three times crowned as Australia’s Queen of Pop, Marcia’s lovely voice soars through all registers and her choice of material is broad but apt. At Norwood on Friday night, a packed Hall saw an enthusiastic (up in years) cohort get up and boogie, to songs such as Fire and Rain, I Want You Back, Shining, You, Disco Inferno, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, I Don’t Know…
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