What concert did you attend in 2018?

The wonderful Sharon Shannon and her band followed by Richard Thompson and his band at Towersey Festival. If I am honest I struggle with Mr Thompson. He writes incredible songs and is a fantastic guitar player but I get stuck with his voice. He was however on very fine form and his band were really fine. Short treat with Christine Collister joining him on a near silent mike! 

At 'The Proms again last Friday (24/8/18) to see Benjamin Grosvenor perform Mozart's Piano Concerto #21 which was superb.  This was followed by the enormous power of Bruckner's fifth, which is one of my favourites.  Me and the mem sahib were mesmerised!

btw the orchestra was the BBC SO and they did a brilliant job.

Big Bill posted:

At 'The Proms again last Friday (24/8/18) to see Benjamin Grosvenor perform Mozart's Piano Concerto #21 which was superb.  This was followed by the enormous power of Bruckner's fifth, which is one of my favourites.  Me and the mem sahib were mesmerised!

btw the orchestra was the BBC SO and they did a brilliant job.

I always think the BBC SO are underrated. Until I left London a decade ago I did 10-20 Proms a year, and the BBC SO were consistently excellent, very close to the LSO in quality with the best conductors.

Eoink posted:

Big Bill posted:

At 'The Proms again last Friday (24/8/18) to see Benjamin Grosvenor perform Mozart's Piano Concerto #21 which was superb.  This was followed by the enormous power of Bruckner's fifth, which is one of my favourites.  Me and the mem sahib were mesmerised!

btw the orchestra was the BBC SO and they did a brilliant job.

I always think the BBC SO are underrated. Until I left London a decade ago I did 10-20 Proms a year, and the BBC SO were consistently excellent, very close to the LSO in quality with the best conductors.

Couldn't agree more and what value they are when you think how many concerts they do every year which are transmitted in wonderful quality on BBC R3!  When the proms finishes a series of concerts begins at the Barbican, some of which are with the BBC SO.  I love the Barbican for its wonderful acoustics and their program coming up is very interesting, we once saw the amazing Steven Isserlis there - something I will never forget.

Off again to the proms again (Friday I think) for Stravinsky, Ravel & Berio, don't know Berio but I am sure it will be amazing.

Courtney Pine last night at St.Mark's in Rye.  A supremely talented musician who also came across as a rather lovely fellow. Most (including yours truly) arrived drenched from the wind and rain but CP got everyone up and moving, clapping and dancing, so by the end we had all dried out.  A great fun evening and I got to shake his hand as he played like the pied piper around the aisles, which was nice.

Richard Dane posted:

Courtney Pine last night at St.Mark's in Rye.  A supremely talented musician who also came across as a rather lovely fellow. Most (including yours truly) arrived drenched from the wind and rain but CP got everyone up and moving, clapping and dancing, so by the end we had all dried out.  A great fun evening and I got to shake his hand as he played like the pied piper around the aisles, which was nice.

A truly inspirational and talented performer who also gives freely of his time to young musicians on their way up in the jazz world.

Big Bill posted:

Eoink posted:

Big Bill posted:

At 'The Proms again last Friday (24/8/18) to see Benjamin Grosvenor perform Mozart's Piano Concerto #21 which was superb.  This was followed by the enormous power of Bruckner's fifth, which is one of my favourites.  Me and the mem sahib were mesmerised!

btw the orchestra was the BBC SO and they did a brilliant job.

I always think the BBC SO are underrated. Until I left London a decade ago I did 10-20 Proms a year, and the BBC SO were consistently excellent, very close to the LSO in quality with the best conductors.

Couldn't agree more and what value they are when you think how many concerts they do every year which are transmitted in wonderful quality on BBC R3!  When the proms finishes a series of concerts begins at the Barbican, some of which are with the BBC SO.  I love the Barbican for its wonderful acoustics and their program coming up is very interesting, we once saw the amazing Steven Isserlis there - something I will never forget.

Off again to the proms again (Friday I think) for Stravinsky, Ravel & Berio, don't know Berio but I am sure it will be amazing.

plus 1, and plus a shout for the BBC Phil...

Saturday 2nd June, at the Glastonwick Festival (a beer and music event in Sussex set up and still run by John Baine, AKA Atilla The Stockbroker) for plenty of food, real ale and Ese & The Vooduu People's set early evening set.

The band responded wonderfully to a great stage setup, superb sound system and a raucous 600-strong crowd.

Setlist:

Fairytale - Police & Thieves (Junior Murvin song) - Up In Smoke - I Don't Mind - Grey - Where Did I Go Wrong? - Dub - Family Affair (Sly & The Family Stone song) - Alien - Fly Away (Lenny Kravitz song) - She Said (Plan B song) - Silver Spoon - I Wanna Be Adored (Stone Roses song).

Open The Gate is an annual one-day festival of all things African (or Afro-inspired), held at Rich Mix in London. This year, we were lucky enough to get Ese and her Vooduu People on the bill, and they were very well received (and we even sold a few CDs).

Setlist: I Don't Mind - Where Did I Go Wrong? - Dub - Family Affair (Sly Stone song) - Up In Smoke - Grey - Alien - Fairytale - Silver Spoon.

8th June, to the Forum in Kentish Town, for my first-ever Half Man Half Biscuit gig. I have to say they were hugely enjoyable. Lots of Dukla Prague away strips in evidence!

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To The Hand in Hand in Brixton (July 10) for a show by the very talented Under Groove Land.

If you can imagine King Crimson as a funk trio with a manic Japanese drummer, a very good looking guitarist in a dress and a very tall black Canadian on bass, then you'll know what they're like.

Kevin-W posted:

8th June, to the Forum in Kentish Town, for my first-ever Half Man Half Biscuit gig. I have to say they were hugely enjoyable. Lots of Dukla Prague away strips in evidence!

Edit this setlist | More Half Man Half Biscuit setlists

I was a teenage armchair Honved fan myself...

At the Proms again last night for Semyon Bychkov and the BBC SO playing  Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring , Ravel’s La Valse and Berio’s Sinfonia  and what an amazing evening it was.  Great seats quite close to the stage with a beautiful view of the percussionists, those guys must think Xmas has come early when they are told they are gonna do The Rite of Spring and they did a brilliant job.  Berio is a composer I knew nothing about but I enjoyed Sinfonia and will look for more of his music.

Like many classical fans The Rite of Spring is one of my favourite pieces and the BBC SO did a truly amazing job on it as they did all night; the Berio is I imagine, a very difficult piece to play.

Great Night and I treated Mrs Big Bill to a Fish and Chip supper on the way home, cos' that's the sort of guy I am.

Last night it was the 'Last Night at the Proms' for me and Mrs Big Bill (03/09/2018) because there is some great stuff on this week as well and last night was the end of Proms 2018 for us.  Last night we had a real treat from the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Shostakovitch Fourth and it was so good, can't put into words how good it was.  For me Shostakovitch is the greatest symphonic composer there has ever been and I love the likes of Mahler, Beethoven,Bruckner and a few others but Shostakovitch is the master IMHO.  I first got "captured" by him listening to his 7th (Leningrad) symphony when in the mid 70s we were in Leningrad and saw it performed there and it blew me away.  The fourth was set against the equally grisly backdrop of the Stalin purges of the 1930s when execution teams roamed the country with gallows setup on the back of the lorries and victims were randomly picked to fulfil execution quotas.  The end of this symphony bursts out with joyous music and then fades slowly away to nothing and I have always wondered what he meant.  Was it the realisation that the state thugs could only take you life and not your soul......  Joy and then the next life?

Who knows?

No more proms for me and Mrs BB until next year! 

Sound wonderful, BB. As a particular fan of Shostakovich, you may already be aware of this resource, but just in case you’re not, and for others who aren’t, here’s a link to Mark Wrigglesworth’s piece intended to help contextualise and understand the 4th (there are others in his site for other symphonies). Spoiler alert - he leaves open what we are to make of the ending too, but there’s still plenty worth reading. 

Click here.

So far I’m only getting acquainted with Shostakovich myself. I chanced to hear his second cello concerto and really enjoyed it, then stumbled across the site I linked, and picked up the Barshai box set. A big part of finding it all so fascinating was Wrigglesworth’s articles. Such powerful stuff. I’ll have to check the proms performance out if it’s on iPlayer or somesuch.

Hi Dave,

No I didn't know about the Mark Wrigglesworth site which I will start exploring right away, so glad you made this post - many thanks.  Looking at my music server (QNAP running minim) I find that I have the following Shostakovitch albums conducted by Mark W:

Symphonies #1-3

Symphony #4

Symphony #8

Symphony #13  'Babi Yar'

Symphony #14

Plus some Britten, Tchaikovsky & Mahler - 3 more of my favourites.  Ya know I think that the 1812, although considered hackneyed by many, is an extraordinary piece of music.  We used to go to the Classical evening at Leeds Castle and the orchestra (something like the Hilversum Radio Orchestra) always ended with the 1812 and used real canons.  Great memories.

Thanks again Dave.

Just in case anyone's interested, I thought I'd add that I've had the proms programme in question playing on iplayer in the background whilst doing some work.

So far the programme hasn't got as far as the Shotakovich music because there's been a quite comprehensive bit of documentary-style introduction detailing some of the history of the piece, the death and portrayal of Stalin at the time and in current times, and so on.  Currently about 25 minutes so far.

I haven't been able to concentrate on it myself because of focusing on the work I've been doing.  But what I have absorbed by osmosis has sounded like fascinating stuff, and worth checking out when able to pay full attention.

It's from around 37 minutes in (after the Bernstein piece).  You can hear it by clicking here.

Looking forward to the first after summer holiday concert with Pain of Salvation....

So a short update on the concert, in the weekend more.

The surprise of the evening was for me the supporting act Kingcrow from Italy, who played pieces from their new stunning album, which I attached below....

The concert of Pain of Salvation was also a thunder of sound, with only a couple of songs in the middle which broke a bit the flow....

Some pictures of the concert..

Always funny to see the guitar player as a kind of Tarzan..., Sound was much better than my last concert of them in the same venue years and years ago. Was happy to hear a lot of songs of the last album. Would have hoped they would play the album in it’s entity but they didn’t, while a big part was played. A real concert with balls, actually requires earplugs...

The last number of the show was pure magic how they played it. Sounds was also special during the song.

Some more short snippets of the concert of Pain of Salvation in Aschaffenburg...

Saw Incubus at the O2 Apollo, Manchester on Saturday night. Sound was a bit distorted, and wasn't overly impressed by the venue.

That said the band played well and I love their music so was actually a very good gig.

Wooden Shjips @ Heaven, London

10th September 2018

I love this band. I even persuaded three mates to come along. Joyous evening, the highlight for me being ‘Ride On’ (from the latest album V.)

nickpeacock posted:

Wooden Shjips @ Heaven, London

10th September 2018

I love this band. I even persuaded three mates to come along. Joyous evening, the highlight for me being ‘Ride On’ (from the latest album V.)

I envy you that one, Nick. I'm a huge fan too and still biting my lip that I had to make a late call off to miss his side project (Moon Duo) in Edinburgh at the start of the year.