Music news

• Nikolaus Harnoncourt obituary

  06-03-2016 16:25
  
  One of the most influential conductors of the 20th century who brought a historical perspective to his workNikolaus Harnoncourt, who has died aged 86, was one of the most innovative and influential conductors of the second half of the 20th century, bringing the scholarship and sensibility of historical performance to the mainstream repertoire with sometimes controversial, but always illuminating results.With the Concentus Musicus of Vienna, an ensemble he formed in the early 1950s, he recorded,
  
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• The 1975 review – rock rebels usher indie into the mainstream

  06-03-2016 15:41
  
  O2 Academy Brixton, London
  It’s a stunning show, but Matty Healy and co’s boundary-busting songcraft is tested by the two-hour running timeSo even boyband indie develops its Doherty. Matty Healy flounces, gyrates and convulses around a stage of neon pink monoliths akin to Mariah Carey’s shoe wing, glugging from a wine glass and eliciting devotional teen screams with songs about infidelity, hard drug addiction, mental disintegration and Manchester slum life.This tattooed, cyber-
  
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• Geordie Shore's Gaz Beadle Hits Out At 'The Only Way Is Essex' Saying It's 'Fake'

  06-03-2016 14:39
  
  IT’S WAR!
  
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• Bill Ryder-Jones review – a magical talent spills melody and emotion

  06-03-2016 14:27
  
  The Deaf Institute, Manchester
  Co-founder of the Coral takes the solo route to fuse grunge and gentleness in compelling tales of everyday lifeWith dishevelled clothing and hair over his eyes, Bill Ryder-Jones looks more like a sleepy teenager than a seasoned music industry veteran. However, now 32, he co-founded Wirral psychedelists the Coral aged 13, and subsequently enjoyed No 1 albums before agoraphobia and stress-related illness led to his departure from the band.Eight years on, any music bu
  
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• Calvin Harris Has ‘Politely Declined’ A Duet With Girlfriend Taylor Swift As He ‘Doesn’t Want To Rock The Boat’

  06-03-2016 14:15
  
  We’ve seen what happened with Rita Ora…
  
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• Akhnaten review – a gloriously coloured eye-catching affair

  06-03-2016 14:12
  
  Coliseum, London
  Phelim McDermott’s sumptous new production of Glass’s opera features startling imagery, strong lead performances – and the ENO chorus on magnificent form Akhnaten was the first of Philip Glass’s operas to be seen in the UK when it was performed by English National Opera in 1985, a year after its Stuttgart premiere. Thirty years and more than 20 further Glass operas later, it is back at the Coliseum, in a new production by the Improbable company team of di
  
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• Vicky Pattison, Charlotte Crosby & More Celebrities Wish Their Mums A Very Happy Mother's Day

  06-03-2016 13:26
  
  Charlotte and her mum's face swap though... LOL
  
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• Scott Disick Defends His Drinking Problem And Admits He Was Addicted To Sleeping Medication

  06-03-2016 13:00
  
  The KUWTK star has recently left rehab...
  
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• Apparently Kendall Jenner Tried To Punch A Paparazzi On Paris Fashion Week Night Out With Gigi Hadid

  06-03-2016 12:35
  
  Don't mess with Kendall Jenner...
  
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• Paramore’s Hayley Williams Has Announced Her Hair Dye Range & All Of Our Teenage Dreams Are Coming True

  06-03-2016 12:11
  
  We've all dreamt of having hair just like Hayley’s…
  
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• Lena Dunham Rushed To Hospital For Emergency Surgery With Ruptured Ovarian Cyst

  06-03-2016 11:46
  
  The Girls star suffers from endometriosis...
  
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• Låpsley: Long Way Home review – tunes that are wise beyond their years

  06-03-2016 10:00
  
  (XL)Holly Lapsley Fletcher is an artist on XL who doesn’t sound much like an artist on XL, the hip UK label that is often home to edgy talent, as well as the White Stripes, passim. She’s not much like FKA twigs, or newer signings such as Kaytranada (a Haitian-Canadian hip-hop producer) or Empress Of (a Brooklyn indie-pop R&B siren).She’s more like the last XL signing who sounded little like an XL act: Adele. Låpsley is releasing her debut album, Long Way Home, aged 19
  
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• Adele live review – born for the big stage

  06-03-2016 10:00
  
  SSE Arena, BelfastThe first night of Adele’s world tour bodes well as the arena-shy megastar delivers the hits with her easy charm and trademark witAt first, you think it’s your eyes playing tricks. A black and white image of Adele’s eyelids, swooshed by eyeliner, crenellated with falsies, dominates the screens. It looks like a photograph, but it flinches: you are watching a film of Adele’s shut eyelids flickering gently with nervous energy. When the music starts, they bl
  
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• Il trittico; BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Wigglesworth – review

  06-03-2016 09:30
  
  Royal Opera House; Barbican, London
  Ermonela Jaho is unforgettable in Royal Opera’s revival of Puccini’s Il trittico. Plus Britten with added visuals…A dimly lit quayside drab with poverty and toil. A women’s cloister spotless but for the stain of indelible sin. The bedroom of a dying man made all the more airless by the gabbing and pecking of his greedy family. Three worlds, three sets of desires and three operas. Puccini described his Il trittico, with some bathos, as
  
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• The Coral: Distance Inbetween review – reunited and re-energised

  06-03-2016 09:00
  
  (Ignition)Hatchets are buried so regularly these days that you fear more for the futures of bands on amicable hiatus than those who’ve split. But the Coral return after five years sounding re-energised and inspired by the possibilities of playing together again. In part that means increasing the volume: their impish folk-pop is beefed up into something much heavier here; tracks such as Million Eyes recall the muscular riffing of stoner rock as much as the skybound uplift of psych
  
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• Poliça: United Crushers review – bubbling beats but little mystique

  06-03-2016 09:00
  
  (Memphis Industries)Poliça’s first two albums of electronic soul updated trip-hop for a post-Weeknd world, endearing the group to Jay Z and Bon Iver, who labelled them “the best band I’ve ever heard”. The Minneapolis quintet’s third set is their most straightforward yet, chiefly because, in contrast to its predecessors, Channy Leaneagh’s vocals aren’t bathed in effects. As a result, Poliça have lost some of their mystique, perfectly listena
  
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• Loretta Lynn: Full Circle review – a fine set of new songs and old favourites

  06-03-2016 09:00
  
  (Legacy)It’s surely with one eye on Johnny Cash’s legacy-sealing valedictory burst of creativity that Loretta Lynn, now 83, has asked his son, John Carter Cash, and her daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, to be joint producers of Full Circle, apparently the first in a series of releases. The queen of country’s first album since 2004’s Van Lear Rose opens with a re-recording of the first song she ever wrote, then works through a selection of standards (Always On My Mind, In the
  
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• Kenny Barron Trio: Book of Intuition review – easy, seamless mastery

  06-03-2016 09:00
  
  (Impulse)If you have been vaguely wondering what happened to wholehearted, outgoing jazz piano in the grand manner, just listen to this album’s opening track, Magic Dance. It has everything – attractive melody, unbuttoned swing, virtuosity and enough rhythmic sleight-of-hand to keep you wide awake. Among the dozen or so most admired pianists in jazz today, Kenny Barron strikes me as the one who wears his mastery most comfortably. From a languid piece such as Dreams, to Thelonious Mon
  
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• Kendrick Lamar: Untitled Unmastered CD review – offcuts shining with detail

  06-03-2016 09:00
  
  (Aftermath/Interscope)Few artists’ collections of offcuts would open with an epic vision of a divine, apocalyptic rapture, but Kendrick Lamar is in a period of extraordinary creative fertility right now. Last year’s ubiquitously lauded To Pimp a Butterfly was densely packed with ideas to the point it felt as though it was on the verge of brimming over – and this week’s surprise release, Untitled Unmastered, catches some of that overflow.Its descriptions of towers crumblin
  
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• Handel/Mendelssohn: Israel in Agypten CD review – a fascinating reconstruction

  06-03-2016 09:00
  
  Teuscher, Doyle, Summers, Hulett, Williams, Choir of the King’s Consort, the King’s Consorts/King (Vivat)Mendelssohn famously revived Bach’s St Matthew Passion, but he was also fascinated by the music of Handel, having studied his music on a visit to London in 1829. In 1833 he revised, reorchestrated and semi-staged (with a series of tableaux vivants) Handel’s great Old Testament oratorio Israel in Egypt. It has now been reconstructed by Robert King, and the results are f
  
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• Aziza Brahim: Abbar el Harmada review – potent songs of Sahrawi exile

  06-03-2016 09:00
  
  (Glitterbeat)Raised in a refugee camp in Algeria, Aziza Brahim embodies and mourns the displacement of North Africa’s Sahrawi people. Her ascent has been steady rather than spectacular, her breakthrough coming with 2014’s Soutak, an elegant acoustic set that drew from her adopted Barcelona home. Here, Brahim embraces the electric desert blues popularised by Tinariwen and Tamikrest (with whom she shares producer Chris Eckman). It’s a buoyant sound – Brahim’s voice is
  
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• Violent Femmes: We Can Do Anything review – veteran rockers go back to basics

  06-03-2016 08:59
  
  (Pias)Reunited in 2013, 30 years after their brilliant debut album, the veteran punk-folk band released a very promising EP last year. This ensuing album – the first substantial Violent Femmes record since 2000 – starts with a look backwards, a previously unrecorded song from the vaults called Memory, in which Gordon Gano (guitar, sneery vocal) tries to remember details about a girl. It’s classic Femmes – tuneful, bordering on sociopathic, big on Brian Ritchie’s aco
  
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• Palestrina: How Fair Thou Art CD review – 16th-century sizzlers

  06-03-2016 08:55
  
  The King’s Singers
  (Signum)That erotic celebration of human love, the Song of Songs, seems a strange subject to set to music for a pope, but all Italy knew that Gregory XIII was more than a little worldly; after all, his son, Giacomo, was a prominent cardinal. Palestrina’s intense, lascivious pieces would surely have appealed to their dedicatee, with their praise of rounded navels, sweet breasts and the comely daughters of Jerusalem. The King’s Singers maintain an admirably coo
  
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• Janáček: Orchestral Works Vol 3 CD review – ablaze with excitement

  06-03-2016 08:45
  
  Jakubiak, Bickley, Skelton, Bretz, Trotter, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Choirs/Gardner
  (Chandos)Edward Gardner and his orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic, have gathered exceptional soloists, together with double choir, for the latest in their Janáček series. Sara Jakubiak, Susan Bickley, Stuart Skelton and Gabor Bretz are joined by virtuoso organist Thomas Trotter for the composer’s 1926 late masterpiece: the exuberant, rumbustious Glagolitic Mass. Gardner steers the clas
  
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• Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster help starving immigrant begging on Paris street

  06-03-2016 00:50
  
  Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster revealed their generous spirit during a trip to Paris. The 71-year-old singer and his wife were returning from hunting for antiques at the world's largest flea market in Paris's Porte de Clignancourt, when they spotted a mother and her young son begging on the street. Miss Lancaster was spotted handing the woman a bag of groceries and what appeared to be a baguette.
  
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