Laufey Click here to watch This keeps happening to me. I keep coming across artists I’ve never heard of who have become famous and highly successful while my attention was elsewhere. One is Laufey, half Icelandic, half Chinese, brought to my attention by my friend Harvey who says she is the hot new thing, playing three sold-out concerts at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco and gaining traction as a major attraction. Laufey's music bridges the gap between jazz and cabaret, aiming at younger, mainstream audiences. Her sophomore album, Bewitched, broke Spotify's all-time streaming record for a jazz debut ever in the platform's history and resulted in her first Grammy nomination. Playing the piano for herself, accompanied by a string quartet, her songs connect her melodies with Chet Baker-like scats combined with charming and playful lyrics. Her videos are soupy and clearly aimed at the pop market but her voice is the real thing. Warm, accurate, tuneful and appealing, this young artist knows what she’s doing and she does it confidently and with panache. Harvey is right, unless I miss my guess, Laufey is heading for stardom but, of course, in some quarters she’s a star already and it’s taken me this long to catch up with her. Baroque Theorbo – Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Click here to watch This week, April 22nd, saw the 200th birthday of Immanuel Kant, German philosopher and one of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment. He wasn’t a musician so what should I play you to celebrate his birthday? It’s a dubious connection but the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment – no relation, I assure you – has a wonderful series of videos on the origins of the historic instruments they play. I’ll bring them to you one at a time to space them out but here is their lutenist, Elizabeth Kenny, playing the Baroque Theorbo and explaining how and why it was developed in the 17th century, and what it was used for. Insights: Black Dancers in Ballet – Sharing a Rich Trans-Atlantic Legacy Click here to register On April 25th, live from New York AND London, we are invited to join the livestream of a special event with The Royal Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Black British Ballet, including a discussion moderated by Norton Owen. The program will feature performance excerpts, a panel discussion, and an interactive Q&A from both London and New York City. The program is FREE to watch live on YouTube and Facebook! Register now to receive the links on the day of the program. April 25th at 2pm ET, 7pm GMT. Mahler Resurrection – RPO with Vasily Petrenko Click here for tickets "The whole thing sounds as though it came to us from some other world," wrote Gustav Mahler ahead of the premiere of his Second Symphony, known as "Resurrection". "I think there is no one who can resist it. One is battered to the ground and then raised on angel’s wings to the highest heights." Very few works can vie with Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony for sheer emotional power, from the solemn first movement to the delicate alto song "Urlicht" that forms the fourth—and, of course, the spine-tingling final-movement pianissimo arrival of the chorus, followed by a breathless and jubilant apotheosis about which Mahler wrote, "There is no punishment and no reward. An overwhelming love lightens our being. We know, and are." Vasily Petrenko leads the Royal Philharmonia Orchestra in this singular masterwork at the Royal Albert Hall with mezzo Jennifer Johnson and soprano Elizabeth Watts as soloists. New York Pocket Reviews Appropriate – Belasco Theatre Call me shallow, but I need someone to root for. I need at least one character in a play who, if I met them, would be worth my time, one person I’d be interested to know, one kindred spirit whose welfare and future I care about. My problem with Appropriate, an otherwise admirable play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins which many Broadway sages are mooting to win the Best Play Tony this year, is that all the people in it are simply awful. My other problem with them is that they all shout a lot and what they are shouting about is always nasty, frequently racist, and often obscene. Bo, Frank, and Toni are the siblings who gather at their recently dead patriarch’s Arkansas house to divide up the spoils, pick at the family;s prejudices and hatreds, and dissect the political and personal attitudes of their dreadful father who, thankfully, is dead and doesn’t appear here. With their assorted spouses and significant others, along with their children, all appalling in different ways, they don’t so much meet as collide in destructive and painful ways. There is fine work from a very experienced cast, led by Sarah Paulson as Toni, and all the actors, including the awful children (who are not above a bit of blackmail) are excellent. You can only leave the theatre relieved that you don’t know anyone like them. Corruption – Lincoln Center Theater Almost a documentary in play form, J.T. Rogers gives us a straightforward retelling of the phone hacking scandal in the News of the World, and lays bare the corruption at the heart of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The theatre was almost full when I saw Corruption which is interesting because this is an intrinsically British story and, while I, as a Brit, recognised all the people involved - the MPs, the politicians, the private detectives, the police, and especially Rebekah Brooks, prime mover and darling of Rupert Murdoch - I wondered how this was resonating for an American audience who had never heard of any of them. Brooks was a prominent figure in the scandal, having been the editor of the News of the World from 2000 to 2003 when the stories which involved illegal phone hacking were published by the newspaper. Murdoch remained loyal to her, even when exposure of the behaviour of her reporters shut down her paper and she herself was arrested and tried in a criminal court for several charges of conspiracy for which she was eventually acquitted. He continues to employ her to this day as CEO of his News Corp. British actor Toby Stephens leads the cast as Tom Watson, the MP determined to expose the underbelly of the Murdoch empire which permeated to the top of UK society, the cream of whom attended Brooks wedding to the racehorse trainer, Charlie Brooks, which opens the play. The director has opted for a story-telling style that is busy – the stage is surrounded by projections, and moving furniture seems to be the prime activity of the cast who, apart from Toby Stephens, double and triple roles as the scandal unfolds. For those of us who know the story there is little actual drama here because we know what happened, but the audience at Lincoln Center seemed absorbed by the vision of the movers and shakers in Britain being as noxious as their American counterparts. Philadelphia, Here I Come - Irish Repertory Theatre The Irish Rep, a tiny theatre downtown, almost as far from Broadway as you can get, has a season of Brian Friel plays. One, The Faith Healer, is currently playing in London at the Lyric Hammersmith. The one I caught in NY was Philadelphia, Here I Come, a soulful take on the social and cultural shift that was taking place in Ireland in the 1960s, the pull between the traditional and the modern, and the movement towards emigration to the US. All this is in the shape of one young man, Gar, played by two actors, both splendid, identified as the public and private Gar, dramatising his decision to leave the next day to make a new life in Philadelphia, at odds with his love for his hometown and his friends and family.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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