Speigel Tent
Paisley Spree Festival
October 16th 2018

It was a great pleasure to be back at the Paisley Spree’s best venue, the fabulous Spiegel tent. A circular, swirling, special space with a spectacular stage surrounded by mirrors (hence the name), and with a great view from any perspective. The stage was set with instruments standing ready to be played, making the period of suspense as we waited for the music to start all the more potent.

Callum Ingram is a Paisley born musician trained on the cello and is known for mixing a wide variety of musical genres. Sitting down with his electric cello, he took the room by storm with highly charged vocals, the lyrics and melody strongly influenced by blues tradition. But his talent far extends beyond just one simple musical genre, including at one point a sound similar to the sitar. Having got us in the mood quite beautifully, his music introduced the main act for the evening with passion and a great deal of enthusiasm – Vieux Farka Toure from Mali, often referred to as the ‘Hendrix of the Sahara.’

Vieux sat down with a guitar and a mic and proved instantly that power in music does not always come with numbers. In fact, his musical grace somehow pulled us in to a far greater degree than more lively music could have. As he began to sing in sync with his guitar, I found myself listening to music that I had only ever heard in recordings, and like everyone in the room, was mesmerised and filled with awe and respect. His African lyrics brought a style with them that his melodies translated into something that was free for all to understand. This performance was pure, joyful entertainment.

We could hear multiple genres in each of his masterful nuances. Entwining them and using them to tell stories the highs and lows of his life experiences, understood in the universality of music. There was something pure and wise streaming from his fingers as they moved up and down the neck of his guitar. Later, he brought Calum back on stage and the two musicians jammed together, blending their instruments in a masterly way to fill the space with ever more intriguing melodies and new musical insights. They smiled in appreciation of each other’s skill.

It was wonderful to walk into that famous tent to a warm welcome and an enticing evening; to be surrounded by music at its most meaningful and universal; to be glued to your seat by the sheer virtuosity on display. If you ever get the chance to go and see Vieux or Callum live, take it, you won’t regret it.

Daniel Donnelly

Edinburgh Playhouse
08-10-18

In 2012 I saw the Stone Roses play at Heaton Park, Manchester. It was a wonderful experience, emotional really – finally, one of my favorite bands in the flesh. Somehow, I felt the exact same sensations yesterday at the Playhouse, when 4 talented young musicians replicated most meticulously what the Beatles would have sounded like. Here was had Ben Cullingworth as a bang-on Ringo, Michael Bramwell as John, Emanuelle Angeletti as a head-bobbing Paul & John Brosnan as George.

This is the second incarnation of the Let It Be touring show, which includes a post-interval section set at John Lennons’ 40th mythical birthday get together in 1980, when the lads jam through some of their solo work. All in all dozens of classic songs were played immaculately , a key plus to all this was the hearing some of their later music live – the Beatles had initially quit touring after their momentous gig at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1966, the height of Beatlemania. No-one could hear a note over all the screaming. They began recording some killer albums, & apart from a gig on a London rooftop in 1969, that was it for live concerts.

To see some of Sergeant Peppers being played by the Let it Be company is worth the entrance fee alone. Meticulous costume work, sublime & visual treats & incredible musicianship create the perfect illusion. Despite George Martin’s profundity for overdubs & orchestras, the arrival of keyboard wizard (I didn’t catch his name) replicated everything perfectly. It wasn’t flawless – George Harrison’s accent, for example – but pretty damn close; all the instruments were played live, while the four tvs beamed love footage of the gig, or of concert crowds from the 60s & even adverts between set changes. I cannot praise Let It Be highly enough – what a cracker, & to see an entire auditorium on their feet singing Hey Jude was an even greater spectacle than the brilliant show I’d been completely immersed in for two & a half hours.

Damo

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Thursday 27^th Sept 2018

This Gamelan and Piano concert was chock-a-block full of treats. Here are four for starters; the celebratory atmosphere of a student’s final event; the attraction of the gamelan instruments themselves, before a note was even played; the professionalism of Wilson Chu (he should run a masterclass on how to receive and respond to applause), and the variety the programme packed into one hour.

Gamelan music, with its ancient origins, comes from Indonesia and is played on an orchestra of metallophones and gongs. It has a characteristically shimmery sound, as the instruments are tuned in order that the harmonics produced should jostle and dance against each other, this effect being called ‘ombak’.  If that sounds quite exotic, it is, but what surprised me was what a welcoming sound world the gamelan proved to be, with several styles sounding perfectly at home beside it.  I was even reminded of some Scottish traditional music (e.g. ‘The Joy of It’ by Catriona MacDonald), and of Debussy (not surprising, he was one of the many classical composers to love and be influenced by the gamelan). The gamelan-inspired piano pieces worked extremely well, and were tuneful, lyrical and sometimes flamboyant. These pieces for solo piano i.e. Tembang Alit, by Jaya Suprana, Java Suite by Leopold Godowsky, and Chu’s own Paraphrase on a Javanese Theme should be widely played.

The prepared piano piece by John Cage introduced wit and humour, as the preparations acted like a costume for the piano, so that it could play a new role alongside the gamelan with the help of many unusual timbres. You can judge for yourself what the finished effect was, but I thought it was glorious. The addition of voices allowed for what was the highlight of the evening for me, as the voices were left solo chanting a rapid motif, one of the deeper gongs came in with the drama we associated with gongs, but a lot of playfulness as well. By the last two pieces it was as if the gamelan instruments had really woken up, there was rather a lack of volume of the shimmering sonorities previously mentioned prior to that, and rather a lot of drum. But the last two pieces, by Wilson Chu and the leader of Gamelan Naga Mas, J. Simon van der Walt were a fitting dramatic and musical climax to a wonderful evening of music. Now listen again to the wonderful music of Wilson Chu and the Gamelan Naga Mas, and wish him well in the future, as do I.

Catherine Eunson