PrettyInScarlett

Following on from my recent post, last night was our first visit to the National Arts Centre for pianist Radu Lupu 's show Rapture and Fire. The pieces performed were: Peter Paul Koprowski 's In Memoriam Karol Szymanowski ; Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op 54 ; and Brahms Symphony No 4 in E minor Op 98 . We went early for the pre-show talk 'Constant Farewells' by music critic Jean-Jacques Van Vlasslaer. Something of a new concept for us, but it was interesting and helpful to have a short explanation of the evening's programme, complete with audio samples. Van Vlasslaer was describing the social and musical links between Schumann and Brahms revolving around (amongst other themes) Schumann's musical theme for his wife, Clara. Following the talk, we headed into Southam Hall, and were very pleasantly surprised both by the near-capacity crowd and the broad range of people attending. For many of our visits to Cardiff's St Davids Hall and Wales Millen...

I have finally sorted out my site links to reflect some new/renewed interests and my current location. We have something of a National Arts Centre bonanza shortly: I had already booked to see Angela Hewitt on 16th Feb but found a good ticket offer on LivingSocial.com to see Radu Lupu this coming Wednesday, 26th. In addition to all that, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross (his recent book, Listen To This , is excellent, as well as his previous tome, The Rest Is Noise ) is giving a talk there on 13th February. This is all followed in March by a complete about turn to the Bronson Centre to see Finnish band Apocalyptica . They have been somewhere on my radar for a while but I was spurred on to book tickets after a bout of nostalgia. M and I were regular visitors to Wolverhampton UK to see various bands at Civic Hall/Wulfrun Hall; a few months ago a mutual friend posted on that there Facebook thing about seeing said Apocalyptica at Wulfrun Hall. Nostalgia for the venue and renewed intere...

Something of a late review.... M and I went to see Melissa Auf der Maur at Mavericks on 5th November - first 'dingy venue' gig in Ottawa. Not that Mavericks is at all bad - seemed on first impressions to be a mixture of The Boardwalk and Clwb Ifor Bach. Nice and cosy, although the 'locals' seem to drink less. In keeping with the usual pattern of support bands, the touring support Final Flash (whom I believe are from Montreal) were quite interesting and obviously had some solid fans in the crowd, but local support The Balconies left a lot to be desired (although they also had a few keen fans). The young lady fronting The Balconies seemed to run out of breath part way through lines. They were clearly targeting the catchy-tunes-trio idea but said front-woman also lacked sufficient guitar skills to really pull it off. Melissa (and band - who also doubled up as road crew but were very polished players) played a set mixed from new album Out Of Our Minds and previous solo ...

Something of a random spot in the free Metro paper. Sunday 31st October M and I attended 'an afternoon of classical guitar, flute and violin' sponsored by the Embassy of Japan but held in the auditorium of the National Gallery of Canada. We thought, maybe it would be similar to the Swiss Ambassador's Award Concert last year - we were wrong. The NCG auditorium holds many more people (a few hundred at least) and is much more modern. The show, free and not ticketed, was also completely full - mixture of dignatories, Japanese local residents and others. According to the Ambassador's preamble, almost 100 people were turned away! The 3 musicians - Yasuji Ohagi , guitar; Kazunori Seo , flute; Gentaro Kagitomi , violin - have played a string of concerts across Canada, in Vancouver , Montreal and Quebec City as well as Ottawa. The programme was a mixture of (predominantly 20th century) Eastern and Western music for solo, duo and trio. M and I thought the solo works (Ysäye: Sona...

Something of a hiatus over the summer.... After a brilliant holiday in Iceland, M and I relocated to Ottawa, Canada. Our new neighbourhood, Old Ottawa South, hosts a literary festival twice a year: Ottawa International Writers Festival . Last Thursday I tried out one of the events: an evening with writer Eric Siblin in Southminster United Church. Earlier this year I read his book The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals and the search for a Baroque Masterpiece and found it hugely enjoyable and informative. At first glance the book is a biography of J.S. Bach through the story of his 6 suites for unaccompanied cello; however, as Siblin also tells the story of 20th century Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, the book encompasses not only 17th but 20th century history, as well as Siblin's own journey with Bach. Siblin was talking on the subject of Bach's Cello suites, accompanied by cellist Winona Zelenka . Zelenka is assistant principal cellist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and...

Time again for the periodic trip to Wolverhampton. The last few visits (Nov 2008- Sigur Rós, Jan 2009- Seasick Steve) were to Civic Hall, but 28th April was to the smaller sister venue Wulfrun Hall. We hadn't been there for (I believe, don't really want to count!) 5 years, and in a lot of ways it is a better venue than the Civic -more intimate but still good acoustics. The reason for this trip was to see Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC). I somehow want to write 'underground', but as the show was a sellout and I believe many of the other dates were/are too, maybe 'ignored by the media' will suffice. Certainly I can't recall reading much about them recently, however over the years there's been a steady stream of albums with a few varying styles. M and I saw BRMC separately back in 2003 and enjoyed the band's live sets then. Amazingly, BRMC's website has their entire 'gigography' online, so according to them the respective dates were 4th...

Another trip to Barfly on 15th April. Not quite a complete random gig; we chose The Crookes as the band members are/were all students in Sheffield (my old university haunt) & the band is named after the city suburb. Something of an oblique reminiscence, then. They've also been on 6 Music recently. Thankfully, it was one of those period nights where the support bands were at least as good as (possibly better than) the headline act. Toy Horses and Zenyth completed Thursdays lineup. Toy Horses were fun and quite infective. Very enjoyable and maybe even the highlight of the night. Zenyth were more in the South Wales rock mode, in my ears quite obviously influenced by Stereophonics etc (the list of influences on their myspace is also quite telling) but not disturbingly so. They weren't as exciting as Toy Horses but still an enjoyable set. The Crookes, for all the 'great new band' hype, were again ok but not an awful lot better. Someone needs to teach them onstage bante...