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Overture of Overtures – West End Musicians Click here to watch With all the fabulous events on the blog today, this is my show of the week. Everybody in entertainment is worried about the massively-rising level of unemployment at all levels, and particularly the freelance workers who are usually unseen by the audience. In every orchestra pit, in every theatre, in every concert hall in the country, there are bands of highly trained musicians. You don’t see them, but they’re there and they work hard, six nights a week and twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays. When they can get them, they also play recordings and school gigs during the day. Not now. The theatres are closed and virtually every musician in the country is out of work, with little prospect of work in the near future. This hasn’t stopped them. Music Director and Orchestrator Alan Williams has made this wonderful arrangement of the overtures of just about every musical you’ve ever heard of – there are already competitions among music theatre lovers to name every show excerpted here – and combined them into a stunning Overture of Overtures, played by dozens of professional West End show musicians, each in their own homes, for the sheer pleasure of playing their music again and of being together, even though separate. What an achievement this is. What a joy for us. See how many you can name. Magnetic North - British Museum – Border Crossings 3 December, 6.30pm Click here to watch Climate change and art come together in Magnetic North, an unusual live streamed event from the British Museum. This is part of the museum’s first major exhibition on the history of the Arctic and its Indigenous Peoples, Arctic: Culture and Climate. The theatre company Border Crossings celebrates the cultural diversity of the Arctic. It includes Arctic performance artists, poets and musicians, together with music, Tlingit storytelling, performance poetry, Greenlandic mask dancing. Award-winning Arctic photographer Kiliii Yuyan illuminates Magnetic North with film and photographs showing the hidden stories of polar regions, wilderness and Indigenous communities. So, if worry about climate change is keeping you up at night, this is for you. Tasmin Little – The Lark Ascending Nov 18-December 17 Click here to watch For those of you who don’t know her, Tasmin Little is one of Britain’s most popular, (and nicest) classical musicians. I don’t normally quote other music writers but if anybody called me, “One of the supremely great violinists of our time” (Music-Web Intl.) or “Little can justly be regarded as Britain’s finest violinist” (Independent), I’d be boasting about it. Tasmin doesn’t boast, she simply plays all kinds of music, from newly composed to Baroque, from classical to contemporary, with a kind of insouciant artistry that makes other violinists gasp. Last year, she announced, at the age of 54, and playing better than ever, that she’s going to retire this year. No, I don’t know why. That’s why I’ve grabbed this concert with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, conducted by Joshua Weilerstein, in which she plays one of her favourite pieces, The Lark Ascending. Inspired by George Meredith’s poem about the song of the skylark, this is Vaughan-Williams’ vision of an idyllic English countryside. Her recording of this is the one I play most often. She is also performing Ravel’s passionate Tzigane for Violin and Orchestra, all that gypsy fire to counterpoint all that bucolic charm. Mozart’s 40th (Jupiter) is also on the programme. A bargain at £10. Frick – Cocktails with a Curator – Muglai carpets Click here to watch Every Friday, one of the Frick Museum’s expert curators settles down with a cocktail to talk about a painting or piece of porcelain or furniture in their collection. The Frick is my favourite New York museum because it has a fabulous collection and also because it’s on a human scale, you can actually get close to the paintings and examine them at your leisure. One thing the lockdown has done for us, as opposed to the myriad things it has prevented, such as visiting the museum in person, is the opportunity to meet the people who choose the contents and watch over them – the curators. These are art historians on the highest level and they wouldn’t be there unless they were both knowledgeable and passionate about the art they look after. During the pandemic they’ve come out from behind the scenes to talk about the works in their collections in mini-lectures and I, for one, have become addicted to them. This one is about Muglai carpets (no, I didn’t know I was interested in them either) and comes from the Chief Curator, Xavier Salomon, who suggests a disgusting-sounding cocktail to go with them that involved chai tea and vodka. You’ll be relieved to know that you don’t have to drink it to enjoy the talk. Closer Than Ever - MNM Theatre Company November 27-Dec 31 Click here to watch I’m always on the lookout for productions of Richard Maltby and David Shire’s Closer Than Ever and I’ve finally found one to share with you from a Florida-based musical theatre company. For those unfamiliar with it, and that will be most of you as it’s rarely performed, it’s a song cycle exploring the everyday struggles of love in the modern world. Each song is a story told by a new character, taking audiences into the minds of the individuals facing these relatable challenges. Topics ranging from unrequited love to aging to Muzak, are tackled with resounding sincerity and precisely placed hilarity. It’s a great show. MNM Theatre Company who are producing it, say that this production combines live performances with video, audio, and projections. I don’t know how that’s going to work but the show won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. The cast is Aaron Bower, Johnbarry Green, Shelley Keillor, Elijah Word, all new to me, as is the production company. Tickets are $20 and you can rent the video any time between November 27-Dec 31. Old Vic – In Camera – Playback Dec 2-4 Click here to watch All three of the plays that the Old Vic streamed recently were a great success, artistically and financially. They will all be repeated as an encore series, starting with Three Kings, Stephen Beresford’s excellent one-man play for Andrew Scott which will be repeated for three nights only (why?) on Dec 2-4 at 7.30. The Old Vic says that Three Kings is about disappointment, the gifts and burdens of inheritance, and the unfathomable puzzle of human relationships. I can tell you that Andrew Scott gives a performance of strength and sensitivity which won’t disappoint fans of his Hamlet. For those who missed it when it was first shown, it’s definitely worth your time and your £15, although why they have to be so precious about it and only run it for three nights with a limited number of tickets, I can’t fathom. Philharmonia Sessions – Beethoven’s Prometheus 4 December at 7.30pm Click here to watch On Friday, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in the full ballet score of Beethoven’s The Creatures of Prometheus, almost 250 years to the day since Beethoven’s birth. Beethoven composed this score in 1801, in just 11 days. It was a huge success and remained one of his most popular works throughout his lifetime. In the ballet, the gift of fire is interpreted as a metaphor for the civilizing power of science and the arts. Between symphonic movements, Stephen Fry reads Gerard McBurney’s script telling the Prometheus story, with animator Hillary Leben’s visuals bringing the story to life on screen. Salonen has long been interested in music inspired by Greek myths and this is his most ambitious project to date. And it’s free. The Myth of North America in One Painting - New York Times Click here to watch I can’t resist including this interactive article from the New York Times by their art critic, Jason Farago, I hope nobody at the NYT objects, but it’s another of those wonderful essays by an expert which cause you to see in detail a familiar, or in this case an unfamiliar, work of art - “The Death of General Wolfe,” painted by Benjamin West in 1770. I’d never heard of General Wolfe but he was clearly an important British soldier in the Seven Years’ War — what Americans call the French and Indian War — another in those endless conflicts where French and British forces clashed on five continents, from the Caribbean to Senegal to India and the Philippines. Never mind, Farago has a lot to say about this painting, all of it pertinent.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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