performingartsincornwall

9th August 2017 at 1300 The Jazz Bar Edinburgh Daniel Smith piano Scott Hannah guitar Daniel Smith is a very adept Boogie Woogie and Blues pianist and an easy stage entertainer.  His lunchtime set at Edinburgh Fringe in the Piano Bar was packed ..and for good reason as this is a hi-energy perfomance with a very up beat presentation.   Scott Hannah on guitar provided an ideal low key but able foil to the fireworks on the piano. Between excerpts of St Louis Blues 1930s, Basin Street Blues, Honky Tonk blues, we had new work featuring Jamaican ryhthm,  Ska, R&B.   The pianism is enthusiastic and sparkling, the repartee is fast and welcoming and the knowledge of his subject draws even non-jazzers into his world.   As a pianist myself, his technique and command is impressive and enviable!   I have promoted gigs in Cornwall on Carn to Cove with Daniel Smith in the past and audience have loved it and this was a reminder that he is still there and as dazzling and entertaining as ever

Monday 10th July 2017  Krysia Osostowicz, Oscar Perks violin, Yuko Inoue viola, Richard Jenkinson cello East Cornwall Youth String Orchestra director Tim Boulton The Dante Quartet have been running a chamber music -plus festival in East Cornwall for 14 years and I confess this is the first time I have been able to attend what has become a critical event in East Cornwall classical music making of recent years http://www.dantefestival.org/contact.htm .  This concert was the opening of a busy week  which includes concerts up and down the Tamar Valley, including today in Blisland and Launceston and at Calstock Chapel, Callington Church.    The  leader Krysia Ososkovich is now resident in Cornwall  - in fact co leader because   Oscar Perks led the astonishing performance of Shostokovich's 7th Quartet and the Arensky, so in this quartet leading honours are shared.  Yuko Inoue the violist is a strong middle anchor and,  the relatively new member (to me) of this quartet (whic

9th August 2017 A seven hander  with a sort of Ancient Greek style drama - a  chorus,  three musicians but the whole cast alsosing well in harmony.  This from the copany Patch of Blue who previously performed "By the Sea" and  a successful show Back to Blackbrick about dementia We are in a hermetic commune located  where all the young people are children of Elah.  Modelled on some of the sect like, The modern world is "Out" and the young people we encounter are happy in their diurnal regimen .  Like "The Beach" it is illness which the Elders try to conceal  which forces a braver young woman to look for assistance in the outland any maybe to find her mother who departed many years before. The creepiness and the oppressiveness of "The Elders" who are never seen but who oversee the monotony of daily labour and curfew are well caught and the damaged horizons of the young now emerging into adulthood brought up to fear the outside.  Their encoun

Summerhall was the centre of much interesting Edinburgh Fringe Programming this year The phenomenon of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome  affects present day sufferers and this play cleverly conjures the dilemmas that sufferers and their partners encounter in dealing with this very real experience but one which tests the nature of our beliefs.   This one woman play developed by Rachel Bagshaw and Chris Thorpe and performed with delightful candour and openness by Hannah McPake is gripping and fascinating On the surface it is an attempt to describe the realities of phantom pain sufferers and its effects on their social and personal releations.  It  has also had the benefit of a fistful of medical Professors who have collaborated on the background.    A remarkable monotone screen and set provides a digital text and graphic accompaniement allowing the audience to "enter the pain" not in a sadistic way but to understand its pervasiness and some of its dimension. Deeper t

Friday 11th August at King's Hall, 21.30  As part of the Canada 150th anniversary presentation a new space occupying a church "King's Hall" behind Summerhall in Edinburgh has been curated as a Canada Hub. Showcasing some content produced for the Dominion's anniversary. I attended this Klezmer music and theatre show which did not entirely comfortably make the Atlantic crossing being somewhat domestically oriented, but nevertheless had contemporary parallels which remind us of Canada's prominent role in opening its doors to more recent Syrian refugees which puts the UK's ignorant shirking to shame. A well told and scripted story by Hannah Moscovitch (the name of the family CHaim and Hannah in the story so possibly her family story??)  of Jewish refugees from the pogroms of the late 19th century in Romania and their  experiences of persecution, exile, deprivation before arriving in Halifax Nova Scotia and settlement in  Montreal and in particular foc

A reprise of Fringe Award winning one- hander tour de force  -  A southern self confessed "fag" author knows he is destined for stardom and  takes on the rednecks, the literary lions of the USA, and Hollywood celebrity   - notably Gore Vidal, Marlon Brando, Marilyn, Hemingway, Mailer,  Dorothy Parker   -  and lords it over them all,  an ego of gigantic proportions makes it big - catty remarks and put downs, bandinage all delivered impeccably in character by Bob Kingdom.  We are taken through the five stages of celebrity:   "Who is Truman Capote?";  "Get me Truman Capote"; "Get me someone who looks like Truman Capote";  "Who is Truman Capote".  From small town America to canyon like mansions of billionaires, to parties in New York swankiest hotels,  to drunken disgrace  on TV  chat shows in the later years...... Even if you have never heard of Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's , in Cold Blood) ...this show is simply simmerin