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Save Birdland - A Celebration of Music, History and Community Click here to watch On one hand it’s a legendary jazz club. The jazz club every single New Yorker and jazzers worldwide can name without thinking twice. On the other, it’s a neighbourhood hangout. I’ve spent more hours than I’ll admit to hanging around the bar at Birdland, listening to whoever is playing and greeting everyone who wanders in. Music in New York is unthinkable without Birdland. Now, due to the pandemic, Birdland is in trouble and everybody you’ve ever heard of is promising to turn up for a spectacular free concert on Sunday to save Birdland. The dozens of top-line singers and musicians who have committed to performing is so long it can’t be fitted in here but will include, Whoopi Goldberg, Clive Davis, Audra McDonald, Leslie Odom Jr., Monty Alexander, Wendell Pierce, Wynton Marsalis and, believe it or not, President Bill Clinton. Why is Birdland called Birdland? Simple. It was named for the great jazzman Charlie Parker, known as ‘Yardbird’, shortened to ‘Bird’, hence ‘Birdland’. Free Stream Begins 7pm ET on Sunday, Jan 24th and then the whole evening will be available on the website www.savebirdland.com for all of this week. It’s free but they’re hoping for donations. Concerts from Wigmore Hall Click here for tickets Wigmore Hall has always been my favourite venue for music, perhaps because as a child I lived around the corner and could get to it without crossing any main roads. I remember clutching my half-crown in my sticky little hand and asking the grown up who was ahead of me in the line to buy my ticket as I wasn’t big enough to reach the high-up box office window. Wigmore Hall is quietly streaming some beautiful concerts that they previously recorded and are now releasing. Check out both the new Live Streams (Christian Blackshaw playing Mozart and Schubert on Jan 25) and the Video Library. You can’t do better than Sir Andras Schiff playing Bach. In an empty hall, he conjures (I’m not being fanciful here) the spirit of Bach, of the composer’s intentions, with careful consideration of every phrase, every note. Only a master can pull all this attention to tiny details into an overwhelming whole. In this concert Schiff performs a programme entirely dedicated to Bach, including the composer's Capriccio in B flat, allegedly written to bid fond farewell to his brother, and his 1735 Italian Concerto. You’ll need to register for an account if you don’t already have one at the Wigmore Hall website but the concerts are free. Do, though, give a small donation for every one you watch which will help to keep the Hall and the musicians going during these hard times. Lungs - Old Vic Click here for tickets 27-29 Jan at 7.30pm Lungs is a contemporary play by Duncan Macmillan starring Claire Foy and Matt Smith whom, you may remember, played the Queen and Prince Philip in the first two series of The Crown. In Lungs, they’re still playing a young married couple but, this time, they’re a couple wrestling with life’s biggest dilemmas. As they say, “The ice caps are melting, there’s overpopulation, political unrest; everything’s going to hell in a handcart – why on earth would someone bring a baby into this world?” The play opened at the Old Vic last October to rave reviews and there were plans for a West End transfer but the run was necessarily cut short by the pandemic. £15. Frick – Cocktails with a Curator - Bouchier’s Four Seasons Click here to watch Bouchier’s Four Seasons, four paintings which were commissioned in 1755 by Bouchier’s great patron Madame de Pompadour — the long- time mistress of King Louis XV — to be placed over doors, hence their unusual lozenge shape. Xavier Salomon, Chief Curator at the Frick, explains that we’re not sure exactly which doors they hung over because Madame de Pompadour had so many houses that it could have been any of them. As always, he makes the paintings and the painter come to life in his description and also veers gently to others to illuminate the paintings he’s talking about. A joy as well as an education. Rose – Maureen Lipman Click here to view I have written about Rose before but as it will be repeated this week to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and it’s such a moving and important play I thought you should know about it, just in case you missed it before. Maureen Lipman stars as Rose in Martin Sherman’s one-person play. Rose is slightly surprised to find herself, at eighty, able to look back at most of the last century. She offers an intimate, humorous and, at times, searing account of the 20th century, and the ultimate triumph of humanity. God Bless America (in Yiddish) Click here to watch In this week of new beginnings, when so many of us are focused on America and what the election of this new President and Vice-President presages for that divided country, I found this version of God Bless America which seems to me to symbolise the best of what the United States has to offer to the stranger, to the immigrant. The singers are Americans, only a few are Jewish, and almost none spoke Yiddish before they were cast in Joel Grey’s wildly successful Yiddish language production of Fiddler on the Roof. Remember the final scene of Fiddler when the whole population is forced to leave their village, the only place they know, to go… who knows where? The lucky ones came to America, which is why this version of Irving Berlin’s famous song has such resonance this week. Nightly Opera Streams: The Antiheroes Click here to watch Any week that includes Mozart’s Don Giovanni is a good week for me. This 2016 Met production is my favourite of all four of the Met’s Don Giovanni’s because it stars Simon Keenlyside as the dastardly Don with Adam Plachetka as his rebellious servant Leporello. As I recall, the women in this production are good, not great, but the men are exceptional. This week’s theme is anti-heroes, from the afore-mentioned Don Giovanni to Verdi’s Falstaff via Rossini’s Le Comte Ory. That one has an irresistible cast including Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flores and Diana Damrau. If you’re not familiar with this comic opera, it’s a lot of fun and worth getting to know. Diana Damrau shows up again as a touching Gilda in Michael Mayer’s Las Vegas-style Rigoletto with Piotr Beczala as the Duke, transformed into a circus owner for this production, and Zeljko Lucic in the title role, here transmuted from clown to comedian. As always, check the date on the Met schedule for when your choice of opera will be free. It’s broadcast at 7.30 EST on that day and remains free for 24hours thereafter. Viva Las Vegas – Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley Click here to watch I am reliably informed that men, now old enough to know better, were obsessed with Ann-Margret in their youth and maybe many still are. To emphasise the attraction, a friend, now a learned judge, sent me this clip from Viva Las Vegas (1964). The point, apparently, according to those who know, is Ann-Margret’s wiggle. Talented, she was, but I have to tell you that the attraction of wiggle escapes me completely. But Elvis singing and dancing with her, despite the unholy mess he makes of the dance, (including dropping Ann-Margret at the end) now, THAT attraction is immediately obvious to the naked eye. At least, mine. See what you think.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
March 2024
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