GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes a bold feminist subversion of classic folktales that are ubiquitous in the Irish imagination
Listening to the machines made him want to conduct them!
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to saxophonist, composer and orchestrator JULIAN SIEGEL
Jacquard lace-making machines, 1968; Julian Siegel, 2018
[Ages/CC; Schorle/CC]
A novel by Mexican Juan Pablo Villalobos, poetry by Mexican Ingrid Bringas, and a biography by Argentinian Mercedes Halfon
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an entertaining dramatisation of the famous dispute that gives insight into the struggle, and Murdoch’s unscrupulous mendacity
ELLIS RAE is disappointed by the revival of a nihilistic play that fails to offer alternatives for social change
STEVE JOHNSON recommends an exceptional album that explores the narrative folk tradition often with a strong political message
JOHN GREEN appreciates an informative and readable account of the nation state and its current dilemmas, but doubts the solutions this author has to offer
I’VE always argued that jazz grew and bloomed out of multiple acts of work.
The great blues singers like Bessie Smith (Washwoman’s Blues) or Big Bill Broonzy (Plowman’s Blues) sang about their aversion to alienating forms of labour, and some of the earliest jazz recordings invoked hard-working lives, including New Orleans pioneers Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet in Coal Cart Blues — where Armstrong sings of his boyhood hard labours of hauling sacks of coal — or trumpeter Freddie Keppard’s Chicago cattle abattoir narrative, Stockyard Strut, or Joe “King” Oliver’s paean to all Windy City workers, Working Man Blues.
Even early Duke Ellington tracks like Stevedore Stomp told of the travails of Harlem-based dockworkers.
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Re-releases from Bobby Wellins/Kenny Wheeler Quintet, Larry Stabbins/Keith Tippet/Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Charles Mingus Quintet
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
This is poetry in paint, spectacular but never spectacle for its own sake, writes JAN WOOLF