Music news

• Music mogul Cowell's mother dies

  05-07-2015 23:30
  
  The mother of music mogul Simon Cowell, Julie Cowell, has died at the age of 89, it was announced today.
  
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• Lost Frequencies Takes First UK No 1 Single With Are You With Me

  05-07-2015 20:38
  
  As Lionel Richie's Glasto spot takes him to top of albums chart...
  
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• Lionel Richie tops UK album chart after Glastonbury set

  05-07-2015 20:00
  
  The Definitive Collection by Lionel Richie & The Commodores reached No 10 on its release in 2003 and has now climbed to top spotLionel Richie & The Commodores’ The Definitive Collection has topped the official albums chart after Richie’s performance at the Glastonbury festival.
  The album, which reached No 10 on its release in 2003, jumped 103 positions this week. It is Richie’s first UK No 1 album since Back to Front 23 years ago. Continue reading...
  
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• Ernani review – superbly captures Verdi's fire and fury

  05-07-2015 19:15
  
  Queen Elizabeth Hall, LondonGwyn Hughes Jones dominated a rip-roaringly good concert revival of Verdi’s cult thriller
  First performed in 1844, Ernani, Verdi’s fifth opera, has something of the status of a cult thriller. Set in Renaissance Spain, it explores the consequences of a moral code that values honour above everything else – even life itself. The bandit Ernani, the implacable grandee De Silva, and Carlo, the Holy Roman emperor in waiting, are slugging it out for the love of De Silva
  
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• Kourtney Kardashian Posts Fourth Of July Pics As Scott Disick Still Parties With Ex

  05-07-2015 17:37
  
  Reality TV star waves the star-spangled banner on social media...
  
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• Queen Latifah, Amy Schumer headline Fourth of July festival

  05-07-2015 17:29
  
  NEW YORK (AP) — Queen Latifah started with "The Star-Spangled Banner" and ended with a rap classic, Amy Schumer told raunchy jokes despite some children in the crowd and country singer Sara Evans was a vocal powerhouse when she covered Sam Smith.
  
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• The Immortal/Mark Simpson review – a blazingly original oratorio

  05-07-2015 16:43
  
  Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterSimpson’s new occult-obsessed oratorio, with Melanie Challenger’s libretto about the founder of the Society of Psychical Research, asks the existential question: is anybody there?Mark Simpson says he composed the music for The Immortal, a blazingly original 40-minute oratorio steeped in the world of Victorian occultism, in a form of trance. If the purpose of art is to pose existential questions, then the piece, commissioned by the Manchester International festival
  
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• Fans gatecrash Wireless Festival - video

  05-07-2015 14:05
  
  A video posted online shows dozens of fans gatecrashing London's Wireless Festival after someone from the inside opened the gates. The footage shows security trying to keep the doors closed, despite fans hammering on them from outside the venue. The festival's organisers later said that 'the perpetrators were removed' and there were no injuries Continue reading...
  
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• Love Supreme festival review – edgy jazz with a heart of soul

  05-07-2015 14:03
  
  Glynde Place, East SussexBig crowds and a diverse lineup of big names, including Neneh Cherry, Chaka Khan and Joshua Redman, round out a shrewd – and powerful – lineup
  The third annual Love Supreme festival pulled one of its biggest crowds, and a collective good humour – kindled by the music, the scenery and the sun – audibly warmed hearts and imaginations on stage. Two singers who could hardly have been more different – Neneh Cherry and Dianne Reeves – performed as if their lives de
  
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• Wireless festival review – Drake an easy favourite from bold-faced lineup

  05-07-2015 12:36
  
  Finsbury Park, LondonThe Canadian rapper leaves punters euphoric, while Kendrick Lamar wins them over with crowd-pleasers at this headliner-heavy festivalFor all the riches of its glorious lineup, Wireless can’t shake its reputation as a headliner-focused festival. That is great news for Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Avicii, the Friday headliner and Saturday closing acts, respectively. For other performers, it spells trouble and raises the challenge of rousing heat-weary punters into a state of ex
  
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• Rihanna Vs Kim Kardashian In Independence Day Cleavage War

  05-07-2015 12:17
  
  Stars both show off their lady lumps on Instagram...
  
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• #MTVFestivalSeason: Kendrick Lamar Has The Recipe For One Heck Of A Party At Wireless

  05-07-2015 11:59
  
  Pulling in the biggest crowd of the day, Kendrick kept our vibe going strong at Wireless...
  
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• Ed Sheeran Shows Up At Taylor Swift's Fourth Of July Party As British Soldier

  05-07-2015 11:34
  
  Pop star stages historical re-enactment in big red coat...
  
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• Lily Allen 'Collapsed At Glastonbury'

  05-07-2015 11:09
  
  Pop star reportedly assisted by paramedics...
  
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• Sleaford Mods: ‘The thing is, there really is no future for a lot of people out there’

  05-07-2015 10:45
  
  Nottingham duo Sleaford Mods are Britain’s angriest band, their sweary rants a brutal stream of working-class disaffection. And at 44, singer Jason Williamson makes an unlikely pop star…It’s just seven months since Jason Williamson gave up his day job as a benefits adviser in Nottingham. “It’s great that I don’t have to work now,” he says, “but I did go through a period of feeling really guilty about it. I missed having the routine – clocking on and off, going out in the mornin
  
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• Ezra Furman: Perpetual Motion People review – an outsider who’s not just lovable but hummable

  05-07-2015 09:59
  
  (Bella Union)Misfits can often be hard to listen to. Wherever their alienation springs from – a sense of marginalisation, lack of formal chops, some deeper source – it often reflects in their art, which comes across to more privileged, more schooled “straights” as raw, untutored, or hard to process; an acquired taste.Ezra Furman is not like that. The 28-year-old Chicago-born singer, on his third solo album and the cusp of renown, is, bluntly, an observant rock’n’roll Jew who cross-dr
  
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• Hello Kitty Is Going To Star In A Hollywood Feature Film

  05-07-2015 09:54
  
  Iconic character set for big-screen stardom...
  
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• wonder.land review – occasionally dazzling, often garbled

  05-07-2015 09:00
  
  Palace theatre, Manchester festival
  Damon Albarn fails to pull a rabbit out of the hat in this modern reworking of Alice in Wonderland“Weirder and weirder,” notes one character, pointedly, in this contemporary retelling of the Alice in Wonderland story. We are in a girls’ toilet in a drab secondary school. From one of the cubicles emerges the Caterpillar (Hal Fowler), a psychedelic-eyed, multiperson creature, smoking a rolled-up white umbrella. The headteacher, Ms Manxome (Anna Franco
  
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• Lucy Rose: Work It Out review – indie hooks fail to take hold

  05-07-2015 09:00
  
  (Columbia Records)In the three years since Rose’s folky debut album, the singer-songwriter has continued her streak as an accomplished backing vocalist, featuring on albums for both Manic Street Preachers and Bombay Bicycle Club. Her new album, however, lacks the texture that her voice adds to the male-led vocals of these bands. Although Work It Out sees Rose develop a poppier sound (the bouncy hooks and catchy melodies of singles Like An Arrow and Our Eyes are unabashedly chart-oriented), the
  
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• Gioachino Rossini: Guillaume Tell review – hits the mark, despite the booing

  05-07-2015 09:00
  
  Royal Opera House, London
  Yes, the rape scene was ugly. But to show something is not to endorse it – and we have seen far worse in operaBooing: the one petard guaranteed to hoist opera into the headlines. The Royal Opera’s new Guillaume Tell, perceptively conducted by Antonio Pappano, with a top cast led by Gerald Finley, John Osborn and Malin Byström, has achieved it as never before – and mid-performance at that. The noise on first night, which started as a lone shout and turned into
  
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• Four Tet: Morning/Evening review – a low-key treat

  05-07-2015 09:00
  
  (Text)On Morning Side, the first track of this two-track album, a sample of Bollywood singer Lata Mangeshkar repeats, as Kieran “Four Tet” Hebden assembles beats and textures beneath Mangeshkar’s voice using Ableton software, complete with time glitches. On Evening Side – which seems to pack in more thematic dawns than Morning Side – a wordless sample repeats elegiacally, as the digital sands shift beneath, eventually morphing into something you might dance to. Producer and DJ Hebden�
  
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• Scarlatti: Piano Sonatas review – an inventive approach yields dividends

  05-07-2015 09:00
  
  Claire Huangci(Berlin Classics; 2 CDs)You can do so much with Scarlatti’s hundreds of keyboard sonatas – arrange them for the accordion or guitar, put them in all sorts of different order; here Claire Huangci groups them together, first as Suites on CD one, and then as Sonatas on CD two. Pure invention, creating a certain tonal monotony (seven successive sonatas in G major is too many). The “Sonatas” are more varied as their central movements are in different keys, but they tend to be pa
  
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• JS Bach: Partitas; English Suite review – a rewarding and highly personal disc

  05-07-2015 09:00
  
  Rudolf Buchbinder (piano)(Sony)“Composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirits”, Bach’s six keyboard partitas were first published as a set in 1731. The Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder, now approaching 70, plays the contrasting No 1 in B flat and No 2 in C minor, plus the English Suite No 3 in G minor with its grand, almost “orchestral” opening prelude and well known Gavottes I & II. Usually associated with later Germanic repertoire (hear his Beethoven Sonatas at Edinburgh
  
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• Veruca Salt: Ghost Notes review – dreary alt-rock by numbers

  05-07-2015 09:00
  
  (El Camino)Even at their mid-90s peak, Veruca Salt – fronted by Louise Post and Nina Gordon – always came across as a less-interesting-sounding Breeders. After moderate success, Gordon left in 1998, amid much rancour, so when the original line-up reunited in 2013 it was a surprise. They do a good job of ticking off alt-rock touchstones on their comeback album – quiet-loud-quiet dynamics, fuzzed-up guitars, an all-pervading sense of angst that’s hardly becoming for fortysomethings – whi
  
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• Kacey Musgraves: Pageant Material review – sweet tunes laced with wit

  05-07-2015 09:00
  
  (Decca)With its witty accounts of small-town life, Musgraves’s 2013 debut, Same Trailer Different Park, cast the young Texan as the antidote to the beer-toting, pickup driving cliches of “bro-country” that dominate Nashville’s output. This follow-up, while more polished, maintains her appeal on songs that hark back to forerunners such as Bobbie Gentry and Dolly Parton. Like them, her vocals are sweet rather than strident, while her tunefulness comes spiked with wry homilies; “Pissin’
  
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• Tim Richards’ Hextet: Telegraph Hill review – a joy from start to finish

  05-07-2015 08:59
  
  (Tim Richards)Pianist-composer Tim Richards is one of the cornerstones of contemporary British jazz. Over more than three decades, the ever-changing personnel of his bands has included some of our finest musicians, often at the very start of their careers. His own work, as player and bandleader, has been amazingly consistent – attractively melodic, harmonically rich and refreshingly unpompous. Hextet maintains the standard. Trumpeter Dick Pearce and saxophonist Ed Jones remain from the band’
  
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• Elvis Perkins: I Aubade review – dreamy, spare and intimate

  05-07-2015 08:59
  
  (MIR)If Elvis Perkins’ previous album, 2009’s Elvis Perkins in Dearland, implied he was determined to beef up his folk-rock and reach out to a wider audience, its follow-up sees him retreat into his shell. Recorded without a producer or a band, I Aubade is nearly as impressive as his heartrending debut, 2007’s Ash Wednesday, though the songs have a dreamy, half-finished feel, as if composed by Perkins in his sleep. My Kind, for instance, wheezes and creaks like an old man struggling up a h
  
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• Coke: Preludes and Variations review – fevered chromaticism

  05-07-2015 08:00
  
  Simon Callaghan (piano)
  (Somm)Roger Sacheverell Coke (1912-1972) was something of a tragic figure; wealthy, talented, well connected and the possessor of a formidable technique, he devoted his life to music, writing copiously for the piano, the orchestra and the stage. But despite all his advantages he could never find a publisher, resorting to his own money to put his music in front of an audience. The critics were harsh, questioning why in the mid-20th century he was writing florid, late-Roman
  
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• Katy Perry, the archbishop and the nuns who won’t budge from their convent

  05-07-2015 01:05
  
  The singer wants to buy their property, but even a personal audience with her did not sway the sistersIt was probably the first audition that Katy Perry had to do in a long time – an improvised performance in a former convent to a handful of elderly Catholic nuns who, all things considered, preferred Perry Como. It didn’t go well.“She pulls out her phone to get the words for Oh Happy Day,” Sister Rita Callanan, 77, recalled. “I was looking at my attorney, thinking, ‘What on earth?’
  
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• Conor Maynard promises fans his new album is just around the corner

  05-07-2015 01:02
  
  The pop singer has a second album due out this year.
  
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