ART Sung, created by pianist Elizabeth Mucha, is a variable group that unites song and narrative.
In this incarnation, they were two singers, two pianists, a dancer and a videographer, all focused on the life of Edith Sitwell, Behind Her Façade – who can lay claim to be Scarborough’s most famous daughter.
Young William Walton – “Willy” as she called him – knew the Sitwell family better than most, having encountered them at Oxford and lodged with them in London for more than a decade.
His decision to set Edith’s Façade poems thrust him onto the musical map; its success can be said to have benefited her equally. Neither looked back thereafter and, by the time of her death in 1964, she had become the grande dame of English poetry.
Art Sung made numbers from Façade the backbone of its exploration of Sitwell’s life, with mezzo Lucy Stevens inhabiting the role to her fingertips, dressed all in black, including gloves and turban-style hat.
Realism was enhanced with the very curtain used in the work’s 1923 premiere, from behind which she had projected her poetry through a megaphone. James Symonds contrived a video backdrop here with animated sketches intensifying her reminiscences.
During a potpourri of some 30 items, other composers had a welcome look-in. There was a surprising song from Michael Head, The King O China’s Daughter’ and two Ned Rorem settings of Sitwell too.
Two settings of Olivia Diamond’s Sitwell-related poetry by Hayley Jenkins made an impact, the one with exciting speech-song, the other involving tenor Michael Gibson in a solemn line, which he controlled smoothly.
He also offered an all-too-brief extract from Still Falls The Rain, Sitwell’s meditation on the raids of 1940, which Britten set as his Canticle III. It deserved more, but since this was mainly a frolic it may not have seemed to fit.
An opportunity was certainly missed to look into The Heart Of The Matter, a Sitwell programme devised especially for the Aldeburgh Festival in 1956, with Britten’s music.
Three extracts from Satie’s ballet Parade, played with considerable panache by pianists Elizabeth Mucha and Nigel Foster, either or both of whom were present throughout the evening, offered an opportunity for dancer Roxani Eleni Garefalaki to evoke the spirit that led to the Roaring Twenties. She reappeared in a fragment from West Side Story, recalling Sitwell’s visit to the USA.
A Joseph Horovitz setting of Out, Out Damned Spot (Macbeth) near the end accurately encapsulated the mixture of enthusiasm and derangement that Stevens had so vividly painted in this wide-ranging programme.
Michael Head: Leading The Red Elastic Band at The Crescent. All concert pictures: Paul Rhodes
MICHAEL Head has packed a lot of living into his 63 years, and has more than earned the right to enjoy his very slow in-coming popularity. While the voice may be a shade less than before, the body seemed more than willing. Head was clearly loving being on tour.
No longer a loaded man (having also overcome heroin addiction twice), a sober Head is now a safer proposition live than he was in the past (when liquid lunches didn’t sit well with knock-out performances).
Martin Smith: His brass instruments were refreshingly to the fore
The 18-tune set at the sold-out Crescent featured his May 2024 album Loophole prominently. Ciao, Ciao Bambino was the pick of the new tunes and is also the title for Head’s autobiography (slated for release next August). Described by another reviewer as “Toxteth Tijuana”, Martin Smith’s different brass instruments were refreshingly to the fore.
Loophole is receiving both critical praise and has gone Top Ten. Rightly so. While it may not be a Christmas party banger, it is a record that repays multiple listens. The four-piece Red Elastic Band re-create the album with subtle backing that is full of interesting touches.
“Harmony heaven”: The Coral’s Paul Molloy performing his closing number with Fiona Skelly
Opening act Paul Molloy needed (nor received) any introduction for his tuneful conspiracies. The singer and guitarist for that other Liverpool/Wirral institution, The Coral, has a voice that was seemingly minted on the West Coast in the late 1960s.
Like Dylan or P.F. Sloane, Molloy’s voice has a certain quality that lifts anything. Dungaree Day was far better than its title, although his Arlo Guthrie-like tune Artificial Intelligence felt a bit laboured. The closing duet with Fiona Skelly was harmony heaven.
Head above the rest: “More than earned the right to enjoy his very slow in-coming popularity,” says reviewer Paul Rhodes
Head has always worn his Laurel Canyon influences proudly. “This one is for the believers,” he said as he introduced Comedy. This tune in some ways mirrors Head’s fortunes: written as his first band The Pale Fountains were splitting, it resurfaced on Shack’s over-produced HMS Fable (the unstable 1999 album that quickly sank).
Add a quarter of a century more perspective, however, and Comedy is now rightly held up as one of the finest jewels in Head’s career. More conker than diamond perhaps, since his unshowy songs have their own internal glow.
The cover artwork for Loophole, Michael Head’s May 2024 album
The best cast a blissed-out spell. Somethin’ Like You, from The Magical World Of The Strands, to this reviewer as good as anything by Burt Bacharach, was rather underwhelming live.
More effective in person were the comparatively up-tempo closing numbers, Pretty Child and Meant To Be. They finished, as is their habit, with a rousing A House Is Not A Motel by the Californian band Love before heading back to Liverpool to finish the tour on home turf.
Review by Paul Rhodes
Drumming home the band’s name at The Crescent on Tuesday
Finding his feet: Jared More’s Fizzy Finn with Meg Blowey’s Tink the Cobbler in Riding Lights Theatre Company’s “crackling new Christmas adventure”
PLAN B may need its own Plan B amid the Omicron surge, but Charles Hutchinson seeks to be positive – in Christmas spirit only – until otherwise informed.
Children’s show of the week: Riding Lights Theatre Company in Fizzy Finn Finds His Feet, Friargate Theatre, York, today to December 23
JON Boustead’s “crackling new Christmas adventure” addresses children’s mental health problems arising from lockdowns and separation from family and friends.
Finn is a fidget whose brain is ablaze with an unbreakable buzz that fizzes to his fingers and tickles his toes, or it would do if he could only find his feet in a 50-minute story of fear and bravery suitable for children aged five to 11.
The show’s magical blend of vivid storytelling, original music by Patrick Burbridge and creative puppetry is presented by Jared More’s Fizzy Finn and Meg Blowey’s Tink the Cobbler. Box office: 01904 613000 or at ridinglights.org/fizzy-finn.
Christmas Eve would not be complete in York without…City Screen showing It’s A Wonderful Life
Christmas film tradition of the week: It’s A Wonderful Life (U) at City Screen, York, today, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Christmas Eve
AN elderly angel is sent from Heaven to help desperately frustrated businessman George Bailey (James Stewart) as he contemplates suicide.
Taking George back through his life to point out what good he has done, the angel shows him what life would have been like if he had never existed.
Frank Capra’s classic from 1946 is a Christmas Eve big-screen staple: City Screen has shows that day at 3pm and 6pm. Box office: 0871 902 5747 or at picturehouses.com.
Joe Alexander Shepherd: York pianist returns to the NCEM tonight
Pianist of the week: Joe Alexander Shepherd, National Centre for Early Music, York, tonight, 7.30pm
YORK pianist and composer Joe Alexander Shepherd combines beautiful contemporary and classical music with a Christmas ambience tonight, complemented by special guest appearances by singer-songwriter Wounded Bear and singer Amelia Saleh on his return to the NCEM. Expect new compositions, by the way.
Shepherd composed the music for UEFA’s First World War Truce video, starring footballers Sir Bobby Charlton, Wayne Rooney and Gareth Bale, and for a UK Women’s Rugby Football Union advert.
Concert proceeds will go to the Charlie Gard Foundation to support families affected by mitochondrial disease. Box office: 01904 658338 or at ncem.co.uk.
Art attack: Replete’s mural Shark at Piccadilly Pop Up, Piccadilly, York
Finale of the week: Uthink Piccadilly Pop Up art studios and gallery, 23 Piccadilly, York, today and tomorrow
THE Uthink Piccadilly Pop Up art studios and gallery must vacate their temporary premises by the end of the month after being served notice by the re-developers.
Since August 2020, the studios opened to the public on Saturdays to showcase work by 15 artists, ranging from painting, drawing, abstract art and collages to photography, sculpture, installation and poetry.
Today, public opening will be from 12 noon to 6pm; on Sunday, a festive market and extended art exhibition will run from 11am. Admission is free.
Shed Seven: Two “Shedcember” nights in Leeds on the Another Night, Another Town tour
Gigs of the week outside York: Shed Seven, Another Night, Another Town – Greatest Hits Live Tour, Leeds O2 Academy, Monday and Tuesday
SHED Seven have restarted their Covid-stalled tour after calling off December 10 to 16’s run of shows to next March when a member of the touring party tested positive.
Earlier this week, the York band tweeted: “Excited to confirm that the tour will resume this Friday [December 17] in London – let’s finish what we started!! New dates for the shows that were postponed will be announced next week. Shed Seven ride again. See you down the front. X.”
Tickets are still available for both Leeds gigs atticketmaster.co.uk/shed-seven-leeds. Doors open at 7pm each night.
Head’s up: Michael Head to play The Crescent on Tuesday
Cult gig of the week: Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band, The Crescent, York, Tuesday, 7.30pm
IN the wake of Adios Señor Pussycat in 2017, Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band are working on a new album, nearing completion.
Devotees of the 60-year-old Liverpudlian’s gilded songwriting brio can expect to hear new songs as well as much-loved nuggets from his days in Shack and The Pale Fountains. Pet Snakes support at this standing-only gig. Box office: thecrescentyork.seetickets.com/event/michael-head
Car Park Panto’s Horrible Christmas: Parking up at Elvington Airfield on January 2
Pantomime in a car park? Oh yes it is, in Car Park Panto’s Horrible Christmas, Elvington Airfield, near York, January 2, 11am, 2pm and 5pm
BIRMINGHAM Stage Company’s Horrible Histories franchise teams up with Coalition Presents for Car Park Panto’s 14-date tour of Horrible Christmas to racecourses, airfields, stadiums and a motor-racing circuit.
In writer-director Neal Foster’s adaptation of Terry Deary’s story, when Christmas comes under threat from a jolly man dressed in red, one young boy must save the day as a cast of eight sets off on a hair-raising adventure through the history of Christmas.
At this car-centred, Covid-secure experience, children and adults can jump up and down in their car seats and make as much noise as they like, tuning in to the live show on stage and screen. Box office: carparkparty.com.
Rachel and Becky Unthank: York Barbican concert on Sorrows Away tour
Looking ahead to 2022: The Unthanks, Sorrows Away, York Barbican, May 31; doors 7pm
NORTHUMBRIAN folk sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank will perform forthcoming new album Sorrows Away and Unthanks favourites with an 11-piece ensemble in a co-promotion by York’s Please Please You, The Crescent and Black Swan Folk Club and Brudenell Presents from Leeds.
As the album title suggests, Sorrows Away promises to be a blues-belter and a step into the light for sisters known more for melancholia and, well, sorrow. For tickets for The Unthanks’ return to touring after a two-year hiatus, go to: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
