Time to break out the swanee whistles, don your Union Jack hat and polish up your sea shanties. Yes, the annual flag-waving jamboree that is the Last Night of the Proms is upon us once more, and you’re not getting in without a very large kazoo. Continue reading ››
In terms of unlikely events, the appearance of a band whose back catalogue includes the evocatively named albums Urine Palace, and Spit Bucket in the music programme of the Edinburgh International Festival, surely ranks high. But The Tiger Lillies, who on Saturday mount their Tribute (of sorts) to Monteverdi in the Usher Hall, are not surprised at all. “We’re the band of choice for highbrow festivals looking to round out their portfolio with a naughty night. They actually want us to offend people,” sniggers Martyn Jacques, “criminal castrato” and accordion-playing lead singer of the group, whose cult following stretches from Mexico City to St Petersburg. Continue reading ››
I am sitting in the nave of Fontfroide Abbey church, in a remote corner of south-west France, waiting for Jordi Savall. In front of me is a tiered musical ensemble, each member wielding an instrument unfamiliar to most modern audiences, including a Renaissance arpa doppia (double harp) and a sackbut (early trombone). There are also the tabla and sarod of the Indian classical tradition (the latter played by a man who bears a remarkable resemblance to Gene Wilder), while one of four Japanese musicians is armed with an alarmingly large bamboo flute. The rapt audience is as quiet as a church mouse. Continue reading ››
When the last shivering swimmer hauled himself out of the Art Deco sea water pool at Tarlair twelve years ago, it seemed that the floundering phenomenon of the Scottish lido had finally gone under. For a country so battered by challenging weather, our once-enthusiastic embrace of the alien concept of the lido has left scores of deteriorating carcasses dotting Scotland’s coastline, victim of mass closures after the rise of the cheap package holiday in the 1970s. Continue reading ››
Adrian Wiszniewski is famous for two things - on paper that is. That he’s famous on canvas, as one of our foremost contemporary painters, is simply a matter of fact. But on paper, he is famous, firstly, as one of the New Glasgow Boys, those Glasgow School of Art graduates, including Peter Howson, Ken Currie and Steven Campbell, who in the 1980s were credited with bringing figurative painting back into the mainstream. Continue reading ››
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