November Bonanza 1: Sara Watkins in Saltaire

If October was busy... something of a concert bonanza in November! The run started with Americana legend Sara Watkins playing The Live Room in Saltaire at the end of her UK tour. We saw Sara as part of the I'm With Her tour in Gateshead last year and have been much enjoying her current album Young In All The Wrong Ways. This album is quite a rocky/produced sound, so to hear the same songs from Sara alone with her instruments was a treat. It also meant that they lyrics stood out more. There were also older songs (including a few Nickel Creek tracks) and covers.

This was also our first visit to The Live Room, which is an award winning live space within Caroline Social Club in Saltaire. It's a very intimate space (a bit reminiscent of Belgrave Music Hall back in 2013 when we saw Basia Bulat), chairs, tables and low lighting. The live events are very reasonably priced and there are some great acts coming!

Sara had a local support, Serious Sam Barrett. Sam was very good, excellent chat and stories, and I was closely watching how he played his guitar. For all that - his songs were slightly genre-bound.

Sara played around 1 1/2 hours on stage with her and 4 instruments - two guitars, fiddle and ukulele. Fantastic mix of songs and instruments. I enjoyed them all - but the electric guitar Pat has a superb timbre. Young In All The Wrong Ways has been on regular rotation since! More details about Sara's many projects are available on her site.

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Angela Hewitt Week, 14th-20th May 2012

I just received information from a friend about Angela Hewitt Week in Ottawa, 14th-20th May as declared by Mayor Jim Watson. Ms Hewitt is performing with Chamber Players of Canada on Friday 18th May; there will also be An Afternoon With Angela Hewitt on 20th May at the National Arts Centre hosted by the Canadian Friends of the Trasimeno Music Festival .

Pigeon Funk

Notes on a very random purchase. Earlier today I acquired Venetian Snares 'Rossz Csillag Alatt Sz ü letett ' purely on the basis of the language and artwork. Its certainly something different - and most definitely not pop. After a bit of searching: Venetial Snares is, according to Wikipedia, the performing name of Aaron Funk, who seems to specialise in experimental tracks in odd time signatures. Article here . The sleeve notes for this album (whose title is Hungarian for 'Born under a bad star') poses the question: what if, for just a day, we could both be pigeons? Interessant. Apparently this concept (a day in the life of a Hungarian pigeon) is non-typical of Venetian Snares sound, but one could ask, does Mr Funk do 'typical'? On first listening, the sound of this CD mixes classical/traditional Hungarian sounds and breakbeats. but aside from that? Definitely a 'listen for yourself' artist; try the website , fan site or myspace .

The Venezuelan maestro comes to Cardiff

A highly anticipated evening of entertainment for M and I, we headed to St Davids Hall to see the conductor of the moment, Gustavo Dudamel , conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra . Highly entertaining, too, and the place was pretty full, though possibly not sold out. We had anticipated the first piece to be Antonio Estevez' 'Mediodia en el llano', but a last minute change meant the first work was (I believe - the posters up in the venue were rather short on info!) Berlioz' Roman Carnival. Initially we may have been a tad disappointed but the replacement work was excellently peformed, cue many smiles. Unfortunately, the smiles soon evaporated, as the second, and for us, least interesting piece, was Mozart's Piano Concert No.17 K453 with Emanuel Ax on piano. M described Ax as mellow, I described him as dull. That may be because neither of us are really into Mozart, but compared to previous visits to St Davids Hall to see pianists Noriko Ogawa and Freddy Kempf, we really...

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