Balagan Cafe Band The Poly, Falmouth 19th April 2017 Christian Miller guitar Richard Jones fiddle Shirley Smart cello I think we stumbled on the best live cello jazz playing I have ever heard last night. we went to the Poly in Falmouth ostensibly to see a new German movie....but the date was wrong so we went to see the band booked for the night ....the Balagan Cafe Band...instead. Billed as a world music crossover band we did not know what to expect but as I walked into the auditorium I immediately brightened up because there was a cello sitting in front of one of the three chairs.....so I thought I can learn something this evening....boy what a lesson it turned out to be. We were two of a small audience augmented by the lead fiddle players' family celebrating the retirement of the Headteacher of Mylor Primary School The band is a trio Richard Jones - is a fluent folk-fiddler slick with the wah-wah peddle and enjoying Balka...
Posts
"Spillikin" a new play by John Welch performed by Pipeline Theatre at Edinburgh Festival 2015 - a review
Spillikin a play by John Welch perfomed at the Edinburgh Ftinge Festival 2015 by Pipeline Theatre Another great new play from Cornish company Pipeline Theatre with writer John Welch and Jude and Alan Munden producers following their controversial internet work "Streaming" which played in London last year without attracting the attention of the critics to any degree (why.) This show closes with a realistic rendition of Chet Baker's My Funny Valentine sung by ahighly empathetic robot. I cannot be alone in wahting to take this character home with me. To anyone priveleged to be familiar with John Welch's entertaining` funny and acutely well observsed writing as the current writer is proud to be the lachrymose love song provides a jazz signature that pervades his work. See this show for stagecraft, robot realism, a warm love story exploring gawky awkward teenagers in a first love which turns into abiding love and care and a fast moving realistic script b...
Roughcut 7th May 2017 Plaza Cinema Truro @RCfilmnight O region, the Cornish film production company (leading lights brothers Simon and Brett Harvey) presented its second short film challenge competition - to produce a 51 second film on the subject of "1967 - the Summer of Love" at WTW's Plaza Cinema Screen 2 in Truro. As I entered Truro I was struck by the youth of the audience. Here present in the room were many of the film makers and competitors and many were in their teens and twenties and most were local....film is the medium of youth ..... I sat next to a group of film producers from Newquay - a team of four in their late teens and next to another group of Porthleven families where the kids were the film-makers. The results were born out in this . . amazing evening of 50 second films The call out was posted internationally and 33 films were submitted which the audience voted on - there was a great atmosphere as Simon Har...
30th March 2017 Perranporth Memorial Hall part of the Cornish Week Residency of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra The Memorial Hall is laid out for the String Section of the BSO sideways on. The crescent shaped comfy seats the length of the hall draw the packed audience close to the orchestra on a level into the intimate performance we are to attend. The programme begins with Grieg's Holberg Suite and the easy familiarity and the work does not disguise the care that has gone into the preparatino. There is no schmaltz or rubato here, Victor Aviat, the French born conductor (an oboist in Berlin and organist) has a very subtle precision to his approach - he is precise, stylish and graceful in his movement and well rehearsed. The interpretation is nearly self-effacing in its restraint, but Grieg's glorious melody and bitter sweet reflection glows like a jewel as a result. The hall is pleasingly dry making a challenge to the ensemble of the string...
This is a highly dynamic physical theatre piece which is beautifully performed by a female company of 5 actor/dancers and two live musicians in a highly choreographed polemic set about the oppression of women in work. The landscape is the polluted, industrialised Mexico-US border lands where labour is cheap, and women are exploited and routinely subjugated by the system, the police and the capitalists. A group of adolescent children play as their mothers endure factory drudgery and 35 pesos a day breadline work. The ensemble work is both thrilling and engaging with set piece emotional body expression particularly powerful and probably on its own a compelling reason to seei this show. The live music is provided by percussionist Haruna Komatsu and singer/guitar strummer Shamira Turner who also embodies the fat cat hierarchy of boss, police officer, major and presidents. The lead is the convincing Milagros Tamsin Clarke - child of the streets and t...
Radouan Mrziga is the performer. The producing centre the Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre - Mrziga is a Moroccan born, Brussels based dancer whose show called "55" is a solo dance performance conceptual in nature around the topic of the human body as an instrument of measurement. 6 ancient cassette players are placed around the dance area and are started by the dancer at various cues in the dance sequence Intermittently -simultaneously recorded linear soundtracks . The sounds are indistinct music as if from the kasbah as if played on a poorly a tuned car radio in a taxi. This continues sequentially "around" the space for the duration of the performance with long pauses of silence in between. It suggests a middle eastern or Arabic environment. The "dance" consists of a routine of, at first inexplicable, physical jerks executed in a pattern, with rippling arabesque movements in the arms as if the dancer were playing a game of incomplete hopscotch. A...
Its a wet Februany Saturday in Newlyn Cornwall and dynamic Cornwall youth dance group All Boys Dance and Panta Rei Danse Teater, the Norwegian dance company are about to perform the outcomes of the ground breaking mini-residency on the Wharves and in The Centre in Newlyn. Panta Rei Danse Teater are now regular visitors to Cornwall thanks to Carn to Cove - they have performed "I Wish Her Well"; "House Gran Nabo", "We Fiction and Private Rites" in spaces from the Lisekerret Centre, to the Guildhall St Ives . This time they performed with a 3 male dancers and two brilliant live musicians cellist (Gustavo Tavares) and pianist/composer (Sverre Indris Joner) on stage a work called "Lullaby" Lullaby explores the prickly relationships that men and boys develop in their friendship groups....joshing, messing about, facing off, fighting. The male subject matter of the dance "Lullaby" was the springboard for Rob M...