We liked the participation elements of the show and threw ourselves into those with reckless abandon.
Mucking about inside a black bag…or rather, “performing Bag Piece” as I should properly describe it, seemed like my idea of fun…
…until I realised that I needed to get up again and get out of the bag…
Rescued by a helpful exhibition steward who also kindly consented to being photographedJanie seemed more at home in a black bag
Then on to an exhibit where you can draw (and/or photograph) your companion’s shadow on the artwork.
Some wags might suggest that I look better in the shadowthan in real lifeA rare opportunity to vandalise an art work with both a hammer & the artist’s consent.Has Janie missed me while I was messing with the art works?
Then on to the refugee boat piece for some more graffiti art
Janie was then horrified to learn that our next contribution to Yoko’s art required us to eulogise our mothers.
Oh crikey!Let’s work on this one togetherResultBottomsI think I’ll play whiteMore messages of peace even in the lobby outside the exhibition
And in the new swanky bar on the river side of the Tate Modern…
…a message in a bottle of ginger beer.
We enjoyed our afternoon. Shame about the rush hour journey home, saved by dint of using the Elizabeth Line westbound instead of the Central.
“Don’t mess with my partitas, mate!”, Heinrich Biber
Hmmm, we were neither of us sure about this one. We really enjoyed bits of it, while spending some of our listening time hoping for certain pieces to end.
Queenslander Brett Dean comes across as a genuinely nice bloke who surrounds himself with musicians who like to play with him. His compositions, though, borrow from well-known composers and tunes, deconstructing and reconstructing them in ways that could only please ears wired differently from ours.
Brett claimed that the music in his concert spanned the 16th to the 21st century, only omitting the 19th century. I would dispute that claim. His “some birthday” piece of 1992 is a sort-of variations on the tune we know as “Happy Birthday To You”, which was first published in 1893 as “Good Morning To All” in “Song Stories for the Kindergarten” by Patty and Mildred J. Hill. While the Hill’s copyright is famously disputed, that tune is surely 19th century.
Here’s the oldest known version – let’s not even think about what Brett’s version looks like on the page
Anyway…
…here’s a nice recording of the first movement of Biber’s 7th parthia, which was the first piece we heard:
Janie and I both found George Benjamin‘s piece too weird for us. George kindly turned up to take the applause afterwards – turns out he’s a Londoner. Here’s a recording of it enabling you to judge for yourselves:
Byrd’s Fantasia pieces are lovely little vignettes. That segment was too short (or there were too few of them) for my taste. Here’s a nice example of one played by a consort of viols (almost certainly what Byrd had in mind) rather than violas and cello – which we heard and still sounded lovely:
The highlight of the evening, for us, was to see the young gifted harpsichordist/pianist Xiaowen Shang play with such joy and expression. For us she played Byrd’s Earl of Salisbury pavan and galliard, plus The Bells – both favourites of mine – on the harpsichord. Below, a video of her playing a lovely piece of Bach on the piano:
The Earl of Salisbury pavan is such a favourite of mine. Xiaowen played it beautifully, if a little twiddley for my taste. Below is Janie’s hand-held recording of Reuben Ard playing it on the electric virginals at Hampton Court Palace last year, for my Gresham Society event there:
Let’s not talk too much about the things Brett Dean did to Byrd’s beautiful pavan and his take on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 6. Imagine PDQ Bach in a really bad mood, unable to make jokes.
“There’s nothing funny about feet either” (Janie, attrib. PDQ Bach)
It seemed to take an age to segue from Brett’s “treatment” to the concerto itself, which was a rather glorious and suitable choice of closing number for a concert that focussed to a large extent on the idea of two violas. By the time the concerto finally arrived, we thought we’d more than earned some ear candy.
Here’s a lovely rendering of the Bach by some sensible Dutch people who don’t mess with it:
“Is that it?”, asked Janie as the applause rang out for the Brandenburg.
To a late evening jazz concert in the crypt of St John’s Smith Square. The Harry Baker Trio. A young bunch. We’d not seen or heard of them before, but that’s our problem, not theirs.
A small, select audience. A few younger people, plus one or two other tables of seasoned folk like ourselves.
Here’s a short video of the three of them playing one of Harry Baker’s own moody compositions, which we thought were rather good:
But most of the evening comprised them playing standards, the most effective of which were the livelier ones: St Thomas by Sonny Rollins, Empty Pockets by Herbie Hancock, something less well-known by Thelonious Monk and Tempus Fugit by Bud Powell.
These three know what they are doing and play without pretention and with evident joy.
We very much enjoyed our evening. Good luck to them.
But somewhat out of the blue, a few weeks ago, Teresa got in touch to say that she would be making a rare visit to London and the timings worked for her to visit Noddyland for tea.
How very civilised.
Janie went to work immediately on the matter of home baked cakes…
…she called Cafe 11 up the road and ordered a huge chunk of lemon cake and a huge chunk of pistachio cake.
Top method for ensuring that you offer the highest quality of baked cakes.
It was really lovely to see Teresa again, after all these years. There was a fair bit of catching up to do on where life had taken us all, but we were soon able to move on to trying to put the world to rights:
One afternoon wasn’t quite enough to solve all of the world’s problems
The afternoon whizzed by, then Teresa went off to have an early evening meet up with her son John. As Teresa said in her note this morning, which Janie and I echo:
I’m not entirely sure what motivated me to book Joe Lovano, as I was aware that he had some connections with that school but also with many other schools of jazz. I played a few snippets on YouTube and reckoned that Janie’s love of the saxophone would conquer all.
The first two or three minutes did not go well. In particular, Marilyn Crispell’s first few bars on the piano sounded really free, really free, really-really-really free, to me.
Were I a praying person, I would have been praying for the gig to warm up.
It did warm up.
I was more impressed by Carmen Castaldi on the drums than Janie was. He was assisted at times by Joe Lovano himself, who not only played the saxophone but also the gongs and a shaky-stick thing which defies description other than the term “shaky stick thing”. It might have been a cacho seedpod stick. I think that both of them also used some loose seedpods a few times. It all felt a bit experimental and “do what you like” at that end of the percussion section.
But heck, this trio is old enough and experienced enough to do what they like. I have said many times that Wigmore Hall is one of the few places left where stewards refer to us, without irony, as young man and young woman. But these days we rarely feel, as we did that evening, that we are youngsters next to all of the performers. No matter.
Here’s a little documentary released by ECM in 2019 when this trio started working together:
Here’s a recording of a whole live gig from 2022 in Luxembourg, some of which will sound much like the music we heard:
At the end of the evening we ran into John Thirlwell, one of my real tennis pals from Lord’s. Come to think of it, Lord’s is the only other place left, apart from Wigmore Hall, where we are still addressed by stewards as young man and young woman without irony.
Totally genuine picture taken on the night in question
I needed to get one more Ogblog piece in before the end of the 2023/24 tax year, obviously, so have chosen briefly to write up the Ivan Shakespeare Dinner which took place on 4 April 2024.
These gatherings of former NewsRevue writers (most of us relics from the 1990s) are a source of great joy. As Graham said at the end of the dinner,
I laugh far more at one of these evenings than I would if I paid to see almost any comedy show in town.
We’ve been enjoying these events for decades now – a couple of examples below:
John Random is our ringleader for these get togethers. In real life John might not be the most organised person I know, but oh boy is he better than all the rest of us put together in the matter of organising these gatherings.
As the years have gone on, it’s not just been Ivan we have been memorialising but several other “fallen” from our ranks. On this occasion, Barry brought a little memorial photograph tribute, which was lacking a picture of at least one of the fallen and which lacks room for any additional pictures. Either hope way in excess of expectation, or Barry plans to cram in some smaller pictures when the time comes.
John deferred on the quizzing this time, allowing Colin and Graham to confound us with some good quizzy offerings. Graham’s revolved around hit song lyrics, which he (and Sue) expected me to smash [did you see what I did there?] but I came up well short on that game, failing similarly on Colin’s quiz. I don’t think I am much of a solo quizzer to be honest. I work better as part of a team…
Anyway, Ivan Shakespeare dinners are not primarily about the quizzing, they are about mirth and convivial dining. I think I’m reasonably good at that.
Colin commented that we don’t often take pictures at these events, which I realised is true. The six of us who gathered this evening: Barry, Colin, Graham, John, Mark, and me – might never again comprise the exact group of an actual Ivan Shakespeare dinner. So obviously the event needed to be commemorated with a picture – see headline and below.
Proof…not that proof should be needed…that we are all absolutely fine.
There is no reason for anyone to question the veracity of this picture. My plea, should the gutter press start to delve deeply where they are not wanted, is to scream, “leave us alone FFS”.
