Andy Sheppard Solo

Posted on December 18, 2011 by John

Yes, just one man and two sax­o­phones. and a bird whistle,  and a shaker, and a guitar-like instru­ment, and some elec­tronic wiz­ardry on stage.  The first piece turned some appar­ently dis­con­nec­ted sax­o­phone phrases into a rich back­ing and, sur­prise, there was “In the Bleak Mid-Winter” emer­ging towards the end.  One piece involved lay­ing down a per­cus­sion track using the sax to tap a rhythm on, and clap­ping, and mouth noises, and the bird whistle fea­tured early on a piece in which “Bye Bye Black­bird” turned up later, to giggles of delighted recog­ni­tion from the audi­ence at the NCEM. Slightly more con­ven­tional was “it’s a Won­der­ful World”; in this case we knew where we were at the start, and moved on and away from there.  I’ve been sniffy about elec­tron­ics in the past, mostly because what they added didn’t seem to be worth doing, but in this case Shep­pard built up his loops and repe­ti­tions with such care, slowly enough to take the audi­ence along with him, that the res­ult exten­ded and enhanced the pos­sib­il­it­ies of the sax.

I read in some review that Andy Sheppard’s link­ing announce­ments can be a bit enig­matic.  Well, he says a whole lot more on stage than Jan Gab­arek, who rarely says any­thing, but enig­matic is as good a way of char­ac­ter­iz­ing some of his words as any.

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Beating the Bounds of Bishophill

Posted on December 16, 2011 by John

Well, not exactly beat­ing the bounds, but cross­ing the patch, start­ing from the Swan, already busy at 7,30 on a Thursday even­ing, both rooms and the lobby well filled and com­fort­able.  Saltaire Blonde went down very well. A short ramble out­side the city walls and into the Golden Ball (known by some as the Gil­ded Gonad) where we found a corner seat in what I always think of as the liv­ing room — one of my favour­ite pub interi­ors.  The Deuchars was excel­lent.  We had to move on, thereby miss­ing most of the swamp/cajun band just set­ting off in the “pub­lic”.  The Acorn (changed many years ago to the Ack­horne for no sens­ible reason) was also busy but there was seat­ing avail­able, as were pickled eggs, a good choice of Seab­rooks crisps (by far the best) and vari­ous beers includ­ing Roost­ers Yankee.

Bypassing the delights of Mickleg­ate, and squeez­ing through Barker Lane and the snicket lead­ing to the front of the former NE rail­way offices, we arrived at the sta­tion where the York Tap had a vast selec­tion of beers, includ­ing a rather nice Keigh­ley Brew­ery light beer.  Won­der­ful as the res­tor­a­tion of the old refresh­ment rooms is, com­plete with leaded glass and ter­razzo floor, when it’s full the hard sur­faces make a far from pleas­ant harsh caco­phony out of many conversations.

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Two More Poets

Posted on December 12, 2011 by John

In brief, I’ve just fin­ished read­ing two slim volumes that proved well worth study­ing.  Just pub­lished is Gra­ham High’s “The Range-Finder’s Field Glasses” from Over­steps Books — tight yet lyr­ical love poems, remin­is­cences of his father, sus­tained meta­phors arising out of nature, a fas­cin­a­tion with the sea shore.

From 1993, Mairi MacInnes Bloodaxe pub­lic­a­tion “Else­where and Back — New and Selec­ted Poems”, the record of a long life lived thought­fully and adven­tur­ously both in the UK and the US, observing hard­ships and joys, the shape of people’s lived lives.

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Getting Around to Wuthering Heights

Posted on December 4, 2011 by John

As someone who got a IIi Hon­ours Degree in Eng­lish and Amer­ican Lit­er­at­ure in 1970 I might be for­given if I said I had read “Wuther­ing Heights” and for­got­ten much of it — less under­stand­able per­haps will be the admis­sion that I had never read Wuther­ing Heights until last week.  What was your Uni­ver­sity think­ing, you may ask, to award a degree to someone who had ignored the Brontes ?  I wondered this too, but was greatly encour­aged to dis­cover one acquaint­ance with an Eng­lish Degree who hadn’t read any­thing pre-1900, and another who hadn’t read any Chau­cer for his.  O tem­pora, o mores !

Any­way, I’m really glad I left “W.H.” until I was old enough to appre­ci­ate it. I found that the 19th cen­tury device of hav­ing a first per­son nar­rator to provide a frame, some­times irrit­at­ing, was in this case fas­cin­at­ing — the first layer of an onion-skin of nar­rat­ors, of which the main one, Ellen (Nelly Dean), is far from a detached observer, and whose actions and inter­fer­ence, or lack of inter­fer­ence, drive the plot.  There’s so much we don’t know, because we only see it through her eyes, or by her recount­ing what she has been told by yet another nar­rator.  Ill­ness and isol­a­tion; loneli­ness and lust; power and greed; nature and nur­ture.  I won’t say good and evil, for that’s too glib an inter­pret­a­tion.  I shall pass the gift shops of Haworth with a bit more respect in future. Incid­ent­ally, I gather I have been for­tu­nate not to have seen the recent film.

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Sun and Wind

Posted on November 26, 2011 by John

Late Novem­ber, so both sun and wind in the face head­ing south-west out of the city, but the coun­tryside sharp and clear — still green in many of the hedgerows, but trees shades of brown, if not nearly bare already.  After Tad­caster, head­ing to Bolton Percy and Appleton Roebuck, there were tiny arcs of rain­bow in the dis­tance under shreds of cloud, then lar­ger dark banks head­ing towards us, the out­lines of fields and trees blur­ring beneath them.  The Shoulder of Mut­ton at Appleton Roebuck provided shel­ter from a heavy shower, and served a nice pint of Sam’s, and the sand­wiches looked good. The pro­spect of a sunny inter­val beckoned me onwards and we were back in York in barely over half an hour with the wind behind us, catch­ing a few stray drops at Bish­op­thorpe and, alas, a really heavy shower in the last 1/4 mile.  Over­all not too bad for November.

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Two Theatres

Posted on November 26, 2011 by John

Way back in the 60s we used to watch a TV psudo-Victorian music hall pro­gramme from the Leeds City Vari­et­ies theatre — compered, if I remem­ber right, by Leonard Sachs.  50 years on, first visit. It’s a  long and nar­row shoe-box of a theatre but it presen­ted June Tabor and the Oyster Band very nicely.  Good to hear new mater­ial they have done together, as well as some from their col­lab­or­a­tion 21 years ago.  On the whole, I prefer Tabor with her usual accom­pan­ist, Huw Wil­li­ams, but this was an enjoy­able folk rock even­ing, and the Oyster Band were great — “The Bells of Rhym­ney” stands out.

Before­hand, we vis­ited The Swan, cent­ral Leeds’ little gem of a tucked away pub, also long and nar­row, but with a good range of real ale, includ­ing a tasty little Leeds Brew­ery blonde.

By con­trast, York Theatre Royal is expans­ive, host­ing North­ern Broad­sides in Blake Morrison’s “We Are Three Sis­ters”, the Brontes, their liv­ing room an oasis amidst the con­stantly storm-wracked moor­land and wretched liv­ing con­di­tions of Haworth.  Mor than a nod to Chekov, obvi­ously, but this stands on its own.  There’s isol­a­tion and sad­ness at the heart of it, for sure, and lurk­ing there too is the the­ory that great artists need to suf­fer in some way, to pro­duce their art. Yet for all their dark ima­gin­a­tions, the sis­ters tell them­selves that they are often happy, and Bran­well, their brother, shows that tal­ent can be extin­guished by misery as well as fostered by it.  Most sad is the doc­tor, lonely, drunk, with no great abil­ity as a doc­tor or any­thing else, who just suf­fers. A good, but not great play, but excel­lently acted, though it’s a pity Bar­rie Rut­ter seems to play the same char­ac­ter in every pro­duc­tion these days, only the clothes are different.

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Walk !

Posted on November 20, 2011 by John

Walk ! is the title of a new book by Colin Speak­man whose poetry book I men­tioned in a post on 17 Septem­ber this year.  Colin is an occa­sional poet but spends much more time pro­mot­ing walk­ing and the enjoy­ment of the coun­tryside on foot, prefer­ably by using pub­lic trans­port to get there.

Rather lazily, I sup­pose, I had assumed that our her­it­age of foot­paths and bri­dle­ways had some­how sur­vived through the ages with any dis­putes being resolved loc­ally.  I knew about big events like the Kinder Scout tres­pass but hadn’t real­ised in any detail the long struggle through the 19th and 20th cen­tur­ies to main­tain the his­toric net­work.  So Colin’s book was an eye­opener in many ways, not least the chapters on the Romantics and their heirs.  Dis­tant though he may be in time, his poetic prose in this, and of course the poems in his book, “Dune Fox” make him one of their des­cend­ants too. The book deserves to be widely read by the non-converted.

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Vampires in Bishopthorpe

Posted on November 17, 2011 by John

I know, implaus­ible isn’t it ?  But Matt Haig’s out­wardly respect­able sub­urban fam­ily, the Rad­leys, in the book of the same name, are the real thing.  I’ve never read a vam­pire novel before, so I’ve no idea if this is typ­ical, a spoof, or a vari­ation on the genre.  But I liked the notion of a vaguely east­ern european cold war style female police com­mis­sioner in charge of man­aging vam­pire crime through­out Eng­land (man­aging, mind, not elim­in­at­ing) and Bish­op­thorpe is really a very suit­able loc­a­tion for a fam­ily of vam­pires want­ing to keep out of the lime­light (or posss­ibly the red spot).  Manchester is the centre of vam­pire activ­ity in the North, accord­ing to Haig. On the way from one sav­age death to another, a few of the illus­tri­ous dead are claimed for vam­pir­ism — Byron and Hendrix for example.  Bloody bizarre !

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Saltaire

Posted on November 16, 2011 by John

An excur­sion to the West York­shire mill vil­lage where Titus Salt and David Hock­ney vie for pre-eminence.  Salt for his con­cep­tion of an entire com­munity in West York­shire stone, com­plete with mill, church, school, massive meet­ing hall and sports ground; Hock­ney for the cel­eb­ra­tion of his works in parts of Salt’s now non-spinning, non-clacking, non-weaving mill.

The vil­lage is char­ac­ter­ful, though now such a tour­ist draw that the every­day gro­cer, butcher and baker seem to have fled the imme­di­ate area of the mill, to let in cafes and qual­ity knick-nacks shops.  But just round the corner, it’s much as first built.

 

 

One of the things about Hock­ney is the way he brings out dif­fer­ent col­ours in the world.  The sky above the church could have been out of one of his Wolds paintings.

Inside the gal­lery, the latest Hock­neys on dis­play included some fine por­traits. They, and some other works, were claimed to have been cre­ated using a com­puter, and some had an i-phone involved.  Hock­ney is way ahead of me with the new tech­no­logy.  I can’t even begin to work out how he “paints” in that way.

My favour­ite was a view, from an ima­gin­ary high point, of the bare land left after a wood he had painted had been felled, with a clear­ing up fire burn­ing in the middle.

Excel­lent veget­arian curry after­wards at Prasad, in Brad­ford. Even Gor­don Ram­say rates it!

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Some US Authors.

Posted on November 11, 2011 by John

I first read Cor­mac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” soon after it came out, in 1991, and am aston­ished to say I remembered almost noth­ing about it — which is amaz­ing because on re-reading I find it one of the most fully enga­ging tales I have come across in a long time.  It’s bril­liantly and lyr­ic­ally writ­ten, with echoes of Faulkner in the prose. It’s the story of a 16/17 year old who leaves home in Texas, on horse­back and with a friend, to ride to Mex­ico, where they get work on a cattle ranch. The hero falls in love with the daugh­ter of the ranch owner — it’s doomed of course.  What the above sum­mary doesn’t cover is the neither the viol­ence and the cor­rup­tion in 1950s Mex­ico, nor the love of horses, which also weave through the novel. Some­how, the hero sur­vives, and more import­antly his sense of hon­our, of hon­esty, of what is right and owed to the earth, remains intact, though he is left a loner, hav­ing lost everything he has ever loved, except horses. At the end, he rides south again.

Mar­ilynne Robinson’s “Home” is a con­trast in terms of set­ting, char­ac­ters, and style, though the over­all effect is as sad as the Cor­mac McCarthy book above.  Rather than Faulkner, Robinson’s style reminds me more of Jane Aus­ten and Henry James, but sit­ting too in the con­tem­por­ary tra­di­tion which includes E Annie Proulx and Anne Tyler.   Set in a house in Gilead, a small town in Iowa, the novel never strays for more than a few miles . Two of the chil­dren of a former preacher have returned home from vari­ous fail­ures in their former lives, one a former teacher, the other the black sheep of the fam­ily. Between them they look after their dying and some­times con­fused father — the story is in the rela­tion­ship between these three as it devel­ops.  But not every story has a happy end­ing, some, per­haps many, are sad.

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