Author: Matthew Connolly
Review: Chamber Music Festival, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester
The words ‘chamber music’ can turn off many perfectly open-minded people.
Read the full story..Jane Austen at Home: Northern Soul talks to TV historian Lucy Worsley
“She was very intolerant of foolishness, vanity, empty talk, obsequiousness, time-wasting, cruelty.”
Read the full story..Review: Morrissey, First Direct Arena, Leeds
For such a towering musical icon he looked small, but anyone would from the back row of the upper tier of a vast, fan-shaped arena accommodating 13,000.
Read the full story..Film Review: The Post
You may well blanch at the thought of yet another Hollywood ‘based on a true story’ film whose needle is stuck in the vinyl of JFK, LBJ, Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon etc etc – that endless broken record the Americans play while they gaze into the grubby bits of their political navels.
Read the full story..Review: Julie Fowlis, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
There’s a YouTube video featuring folk singer Julie Fowlis on the BBC’s Transatlantic Sessions 3 in 2008 which has the Scotswoman sitting surrounded and attended – like some young folk goddess – by middle-aged men all doing her musical bidding, while she sings Bothan Àirigh am Bràigh Raithneach (A Sheiling On The Braes Of Rannoch).
Read the full story..Book Review: Ghost Stories, M.R. James
It’s stating the obvious, when reading something written over a century ago, to say that it sounds a bit outdated for the modern day.
Read the full story..Review: The Slow Readers Club, Albert Hall, Manchester
“Readers! Readers! Readers!” chanted a legion of rafter-shaking music fans at Manchester’s Albert Hall, a former Methodist hall and chapel just down the road from the city’s Central Library.
Read the full story..Review: Emily Barker, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
You can tell a good singer by the way they sing out of tune.
Read the full story..Review: Cabaret, The Lowry, Salford
The secret of good timing is comedy, as the saying doesn’t go.
Read the full story..Review: St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Leeds Town Hall
Hmm. Ominous silence from Putin’s St Petersburg, cradle of the October Revolution, in its centenary month.
Read the full story..Editor's Picks
Freerange Comedy Festival at Brewery Arts Centre Kendal
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