Category Archive: MUSIC
Wagner Returns (in shimmering gold and black)
Wagner Gala, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart, Tasmania, 2 November 2019 TVC descended on gloomy, beautiful Hobart for the much awaited return of Nina Stemme, currently the world’s greatest soprano (only the 2nd person to be awarded the Birgit Nilsson Prize, for those for whom awards matter), with the great bass baritone John Lundgren, who gave us a night of selected Wagnerian hits in concert format. Stemme made a big splash in Hobart in 2016 singing excerpts from Tristan und Isolde with Stuart Skelton. No Tristan this time unfortunately, but the programme was ideally suited to the leads: The Wotan and…
Continue Reading →Adelaide Festival 2020
29 October 2019: TVC crept in to Bonython Hall at Adelaide University on a beautiful Spring Morning for the launch of the programme for the internationally renowned Adelaide Arts Festival (& Adelaide Writer’s Festival) in February/March 2020, the AF’s 60th year. Expect ABC documentaries and coffee-table books aplenty! “The Big Reveal” (yes, ‘reveal’ is now a noun, evidently) was preceded by some homilies from Aunty Georgina Williams Ngankiburka Mekaune, Senior Woman of Water, who also dropped the (yawn-inducing) Welcome to Country upon us, along with a tag-team of professional signers, complete with their ‘jazz hands’ to emulate applause. Judy Potter,…
Continue Reading →Malibu Drive
The Railway Hotel, Port Adelaide, Saturday 28 September 2019 A cover band with street cred, “Malibu Drive” had and gave a great time at the Port on Saturday Night a couple of weeks back. Whereas bog-standard pub bands comprise guitar, bass, drum and one mediocre lead vocal, here was a 7-Man Monster with as many good vocalists as Fleetwood Mac has. This line-up carries a big repertoire and enables them to traverse numerous genres with ease (see programme notes below). The house was full: and full of Funk, Pop and soft Rock, delivering joy to a cross-section of groovers of…
Continue Reading →Kris Kristofferson
Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide, 17 September 2019 Kris is a versatile man: a scholar, a soldier, an actor (of sorts) and a country music living legend. If we sound snippy about his film career, it’s because they’ve been so many more misses than hits (think Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Last Movie, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, or Heaven’s Gate – those last 3 would grace many a worst-list) – but we’ll give him inter alia: Blume In Love, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and though he’s oddly cast, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town. He’s in his 80s now, ye…
Continue Reading →Girl’s Night Out
Simone Young and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Guests, Adelaide Town Hall, 9 August 2019 One can be ambivalent, even resentful about Richard Strauss, with his ‘stress-without-storm’ tone poems, dalliances with flaxen-haired girleens, Daddy-jokes, and general frivolity, even (and perhaps especially) concerning Nazis. Yet who could resist an evening of his pieces by the ASO conducted by Simone Young, featuring 4 great female singers, the romantic feminine being the essence of his oeuvre? The programme of works says it all: included were interludes from Intermezzo, Capriccio and Salome; snippets from Ariadne auf Naxos, duets from Arabella, and a selection from Der…
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