Music news

• Patti Smith at the New Yorker festival: 'I can't play anything'

  04-10-2015 18:54
  
  Artist says she sees herself more as a performer than as a musician before pulling off a rendition of a classic with the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief, David Remnick“I feel embarrassed when people call me a musician, because I can’t play anything,” Patti Smith told the crowd late in her talk at the New Yorker Festival on Saturday night. David Remnick, editor-in-chief of the magazine and her interviewer, began to make noises of protest.Continue reading...
  
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• The man who bought Ian Curtis’s house: ‘Joy Division is the modern Rembrandt’

  04-10-2015 18:00
  
  Hadar Goldman stepped in to offer £75,000 above the asking price to buy the Macclesfield house where the singer lived and diedLast February, after a group of Joy Division fans failed to raise enough money to buy Ian Curtis’s old house in Macclesfield and turn it into a museum, entrepreneur and musician Hadar Goldman decided to step in. The house had already been sold to a private buyer, but Goldman – inspired by the campaign – offered to pay a £75,000 compensat
  
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• Ellie Goulding Brushes Off Lip-Sync Claims In The Coolest Way

  04-10-2015 17:09
  
  Don't mess with Gouldiggers...
  
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• BBCNOW/Søndergård review – intimacy and lyricism in season opener

  04-10-2015 16:47
  
  St David’s Hall, Cardiff
  The BBC National Orchestra of Wales tipped their hats to Huw Watkins in a performance that showed just how assured their new composer-in-association isUnder principal conductor Thomas Søndergård, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales opened their new season with a showcase affair, beginning with a glittering display of Stravinsky’s Fireworks. Because this was the work in which the young Igor was flexing his wings for his early masterpiece The Fireb
  
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• Total Immersion: Henryk Górecki review – from merely histrionic to magical

  04-10-2015 16:15
  
  St Giles’ Gripplegate, London
  The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s evening concert, under Antoni Wit, highlighted the best of and worst of the Polish composerIn 1992, a recording of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs saw him achieve an unprecedented level of popularity for a contemporary classical composer. The CD went on to sell more than 1m copies. The BBC’s day-long Total Immersion event, however, left out the Polish artist’s most famous piece while expl
  
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• There Was A Game Of Thrones Reunion And It Warmed Our Hearts

  04-10-2015 15:46
  
  Khaleesi + Khal = together again...
  
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• Public Image Ltd review – Lydon’s unrefined invective still engrossing

  04-10-2015 15:13
  
  Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
  John Lydon, punk’s eternal provocateur, comes on like a commedia dell’arte performer trying to ruin a perfectly good funk-pop band
  Venues are bulldozed to make way for more forests of empty gold-brick investment flats. The co-writer of All About That Bass trousers a mere £3,700 for 178m Pandora streams. Clean Bandit hire Cortana as their new manager. Principle, it appears, is for the past. Like it or not, we live in a sellout society –
  
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• If You're A Fan Of Friends (Who Isn't?) Then You're Gonna Love This Hamsters Version

  04-10-2015 15:04
  
  Say hello to Jennifer Hamsterson...
  
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• Natalie Dessay review – fascinatingly unpredictable and occasionally exquisite

  04-10-2015 13:43
  
  Barbican, London
  The opera singer-cum-actor returned to the recital stage for a theatrical performance that at times came perilously close to going over the topMaverick diva Natalie Dessay nowadays considers herself as much an actor as a singer. Many will associate her with the Romantic coloratura repertory, but two years ago she gave up opera to concentrate on spoken theatre and song recitals. Next year, she will venture into musicals, as Fosca in a Paris production of Stephen Sondheim’s
  
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• The X Factor Wasn't On (Again) Last Night And Fans Were NOT Happy

  04-10-2015 13:16
  
  Their reactions were priceless...
  
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• Glastonbury 2016 tickets sell out in 30 minutes

  04-10-2015 12:20
  
  Timeout system frustrates some would-be buyers of the festival tickets, but others report successful purchases using 4G on their phonesGlastonbury tickets have sold out just half an hour after going on sale, but last year’s festival still holds the record for the speediest ever sale of the 120,000 Worthy Farm tickets.The speed with which tickets sell out had increased each year: in 2012 it took 1hr 40mins, in 2013 1hr 27mins and last year just 25mins. This year took slightly longer, 30 min
  
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• John Grant: Grey Tickles, Black Pressure review – the most chipper of Grant’s solo works

  04-10-2015 10:00
  
  (Bella Union)“Middle-aged nightmare” is hardly the snappiest sell for a new record, not least one being released by a biblically bearded 47-year-old polyglot. But that’s the gist of Grey Tickles, Black Pressure, the third solo album by John Grant.The title apparently combines the Icelandic for midlife crisis with the Turkish for nightmare. The cover finds Grant’s eyes gouged out, with two carved owls doing the seeing for him. Inside, the tracklisting is bookended by readi
  
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• Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk review – masterpiece has rarely sounded better

  04-10-2015 09:30
  
  Coliseum, London
  New ENO music director Mark Wigglesworth gets off to a flying start with a searing account of Shostakovich’s only major operaThe dazzling brass fanfares, blasting their crazed fortissimos from either side of the orchestra pit, would be reason enough to rush to hear Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1934) at English National Opera. The music blisters, bubbles, froths and caresses. The cast is effective, chorus robust, enlarged orchestra on peak form. Conducted by Mark Wigglesworth,
  
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• Demi Lovato Posed Nude For Vanity Fair And Everyone Lost Their Mind

  04-10-2015 09:19
  
  The singer's braver than us
  
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• Alessandro Scarlatti: Con eco d’amore CD review – a delicious selection

  04-10-2015 09:03
  
  Elizabeth Watts (soprano), the English Concert/Cummings
  (Harmonia Mundi)Golden-voiced soprano Elizabeth Watts has spent the past few years unearthing neglected arias by Alessandro Scarlatti, father of Domenico and founder of the rich Neapolitan school. With 600 cantatas and 100 operas to his name, Watts had plenty to go at. She’s come up with a delicious selection – some, such as Se geloso è il mio core from Endimione e Cintia (1705) and Farinelli’s showpiece, Torbido, i
  
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• Youssou N’Dour & Le Super Etoile de Dakar: Fatteliku Live review – exuberant early work

  04-10-2015 09:00
  
  (Real World)It’s remarkable how much has changed since this recording was made, when the Senegalese star was support act to Peter Gabriel in 1987. N’Dour was little known outside West Africa and Nelson Mandela, the subject of one song here, was languishing in prison. Neither situation endured long. N’Dour’s charisma and acrobatic vocals opened a new era for African music, while Mandela walked free in 1990. Some of the majesty of N’Dour’s breakthrough albums &n
  
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• Rudimental: We the Generation review – a couple of months too late

  04-10-2015 09:00
  
  (Atlantic)The timing of east London collective Rudimental’s follow-up to their debut, Home, feels a couple of months late. Songs such as I Will for Love and the Ella Eyre collaboration Too Cool – both of which are propelled by their trademark drum’n’bass-fuelled choruses – are precision-tooled for summer festivals, not chilly autumn commutes. Second time around, however, that quiet-loud-quiet dynamic is too heavily signposted, the album working better when it relaxe
  
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• Rameau: Anacréon (1754) CD review – an important landmark

  04-10-2015 09:00
  
  Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Choir of Enlightenment/Williams, Matthew Brook, Anna Dennis, Agustín Prunell-Friend
  (Signum Classics)Debussy conducted a version of Rameau’s one-act Anacréon back in 1909, but it has taken the scholarly ingenuity of Jonathan Williams and a major collaboration to revive it in our time. This Rameau project, involving Oxford University and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, shows how integrated research and performance have now beco
  
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• Liam Payne Reveals The Reason One Direction Are Taking A Break And Everyone Panicked

  04-10-2015 01:12
  
  Liam wins for being cheeky...
  
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• Hurts' Adam Anderson: Third album Surrender not so painful to play live

  04-10-2015 01:02
  
  Singer Theo Hutchcraft and multi-instrumentalist Adam Anderson are about to release new music which reflects their massive success.
  
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• Did Brooklyn Beckham Really Dump Chloe Moretz For Selena Gomez?

  04-10-2015 00:27
  
  Why are love lives so complicated...
  
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