Cellist Shirley Smart has helped extend the number of unusual instruments that find a home in jazz, but she draws…
Sarah Meek & the BMJ Collective at Abergavenny
September 5, 2023Jazz singing is the art that often beguiles with the idea that complexity is easy to deliver by substituting manner…
For The Grace Of You Go I, Theatr Clwyd
July 15, 2021LOCKDOWN must immediately have felt to some like a state requiring communication by other means, though perhaps not to the…
Nigel Jarrett: New Journal of the Plague Year
April 7, 2020New Journal of the Plague Year As lockdown was imposed, Welsh writer Nigel Jarrett began, at his home in Abergavenny,…
Tommaso Starace Quartet at Black Mountain Jazz, Abergavenny
November 26, 2019Anglo-Italian saxophonist Tommaso Starace has long been standard-bearer for Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley, who himself has long been resident in…
L’heure Espagnole, Mid Wales Opera, Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff
November 17, 2018One might be uncharitable and say that Mid Wales Opera’s production of Ravel’s musical comedy L’heure Espagnole has serious faults and…
European Union Chamber Orchestra, Borough Theatre, Abergavenny
October 22, 2018The arrangements by which the EUCO puts itself about across Europe takes in both grand and modest venues, which accounts…
Brecon Baroque Festival, Brecon Cathedral
October 20, 2018Concepts in the performance of music – Mozart by Candlelight, Vivaldi Out of Doors: that sort of thing – can…
Tristan, Black Mountain Jazz, Abergavenny
October 2, 2018A healthy musical culture is one that never leaves its historical achievements behind as though they counted for nothing. At…
Wall2Wall Jazz Festival, Abergavenny
September 6, 2018There’s a sense in which the current Brecon Jazz Festival and Black Mountain Jazz’s Wall2Wall festival at Abergavenny are remnants…