Music news

• The Live Action Version Of Disney's The Lion King Has Found It's Simba (And Mufasa)

  19-02-2017 15:14
  
  Donald Glover just can't wait to be king!
  
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• Kim Kardashian Isn't Going To Paris Fashion Week After All

  19-02-2017 14:53
  
  The reality star was held at gunpoint last time she was at the fashion event
  
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• Little Mix Star Jesy Nelson And TOWIE Hunk Chris Clark Hit The Dancefloor Together

  19-02-2017 14:37
  
  Life styles of the pop stars and reality stars
  
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• BBCSO/Nicholls/Volkov review – soaring new work is timeless and timely

  19-02-2017 14:13
  
  Barbican, London
  Rachel Nicholls delivered a gleaming performance in Nicole LeFanu’s fiery new concertante, in an inspired programme including Schreker and RachmaninovNicola LeFanu’s new work, The Crimson Bird, an RPS Elgar bursary commission, feels at once timeless and urgently up to date. A mother sings of feeding her baby, and of a siege. So far, so Trojan. But John Fuller’s text turns us away from mythical times and towards the present. A house sliced open, children dead in
  
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• Scarlett Moffatt's Family Have Been Dumped From Gogglebox

  19-02-2017 14:03
  
  Sad news for Moffatt family fans...
  
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• Is This More Evidence That Louis Tomlinson And Eleanor Calder ARE Back Together?

  19-02-2017 13:43
  
  The One Direction star is reportedly back with his fashion blogger ex-girlfriend
  
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• Peter Skellern obituary

  19-02-2017 13:31
  
  Singer, songwriter and pianist who enjoyed great success with his 1972 hit You’re a Lady and went on to become a popular TV and radio entertainerWith his lyrics and vocal stylings echoing those of George Formby, Hoagy Carmichael and Noël Coward, and his penchant for brass band arrangements, Peter Skellern, who has died of cancer aged 69, sometimes seemed a man out of tune with the prevailing pop music trends of the 1970s and 80s. Nevertheless, after his breakthrough with the 1972 hit
  
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• Tom Daley Accused Of Secret '18 Month Long Affair'

  19-02-2017 13:13
  
  The Olympic diver could be in hot water after allegations about an affair made headlines
  
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• Stephen Bear And Charlotte Crosby Get VERY Cheeky On Social Media After Calming Split Rumours

  19-02-2017 12:39
  
  The reality pair seem to be having a lot of fun on the same balcony
  
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• Tallis Scholars review – sacred meets secular as early music voices raise the roof

  19-02-2017 12:29
  
  Assembly Rooms, Bath
  Peter Phillips drew full-blooded but ethereal sound from Scholars with a memorable programme than ran from De Lassus to JS BachThis programme given by Peter Phillips’ Tallis Scholars in Bath’s annual BachFest traced the German tradition of sacred polyphony, beginning with Orlande de Lassus and culminating in JS Bach.The very secular Assembly Rooms might not seem the natural context for such a performance, but such was the gloriously golden tone of the Scholars &n
  
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• Vicky Pattison Talks Wedding Plans Just Hours After Rumours Suggest She's Already Engaged

  19-02-2017 12:10
  
  She's not engaged - but she definitely has marriage (but not kids) on her mind
  
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• Cinderella review – effervescent Rossini for a Strictly Dancing era

  19-02-2017 11:14
  
  Grand theatre, Leeds
  Aletta Collins plays to her strengths as a choreographer with a sparkling new Opera North production that’s as much for dance fans as opera buffsIf asked to nominate your favourite fairytale destination, you may not automatically think of Leeds. But Opera North’s production of Rossini’s rags to riches tale forms the climax of a season of pure enchantment – one that has drawn together folktales from Russia (Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden), Ger
  
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• Stormzy: ‘Respect me like you would Frank Ocean or Adele’

  19-02-2017 10:30
  
  With debut album Gang Signs & Prayer on target for No 1, the south London rapper talks of his turbulent youth and standing up for young black British menI meet Stormzy in a beautifully appointed recording studio in a chi-chi area of London. He stands out, but then he would anywhere. Stormzy, real name Michael Omari Jr, is a can’t-hide 6ft 5in in his trackie bottoms, black socks and slides, plus a T-shirt that, unexpectedly, has a picture of Louis Theroux on it. (“Louis Theroux is
  
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• Tegan and Sara review – indie infiltrators must pop harder

  19-02-2017 10:00
  
  Roundhouse, London
  The Quin sisters undoubtedly deserve their mainstream success. Now they just need to get creativePop is rife with injustice. Adele scoops up an armload of Grammys, then apologises to Beyoncé, whose Lemonade album unforgivably lost out to 25. If you were to use ground-penetrating radar, you would find the citadel of success is built on the bones of countless adored cult acts who unfairly failed to make a living from their art. That manmade hill sits on the remains of all
  
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• Dirty Projectors: Dirty Projectors review – spectacular sonic fallout

  19-02-2017 10:00
  
  (Domino)
  David Longstreth’s breakup with former bandmate Amber Coffman is inescapable on this incendiary nine-song setLike Pavlov’s dogs, the listening public has been trained to respond to piano ballads as the sine qua non of heartfelt authenticity. Machines, though, can be kaleidoscopic conveyors of emotion. Witness Björk’s Vulnicura, an analogue/digital hybrid of untrammelled pain, or the proliferation of suffering digital dudes, best exemplified by Kanye’s 808s a
  
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• Ryan Adams: Prisoner review – affecting songs of love and loss

  19-02-2017 09:00
  
  (Virgin EMI)Having tackled it obliquely on his track-by-track remake of Taylor Swift’s 1989 two years ago, Ryan Adams’s divorce from singer Mandy Moore takes centre stage on his 16th album. The sense of loss is all-pervasive on songs such as Shiver and Shake (“I miss you so much I shiver and I shake”), and the self-explanatory Breakdown and Broken Anyway. However, where such raw subject matter might once have found Adams tumbling into self-indulgence, here he turns in a s
  
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• Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway review – timely and arresting

  19-02-2017 09:00
  
  (Nonesuch)Unlike Rhiannon Giddens’ 2015 solo debut, an album of covers, most of Freedom Highway is original material, though steeped in the revivalist style of the group she co-founded, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Banjo and fiddle are foregrounded in a production that breathes weathered timber and dusty roads. Some songs are clearly historical – At the Purchaser’s Option and Julie are voices from slavery days – but Better Get It Right the First Time, complete with rap,
  
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• Nikki Lane: Highway Queen review – country sweetness meets rock swagger

  19-02-2017 09:00
  
  (New West)Female self-reliance runs through the country genre from the year dot. Nikki Lane, however, is gunning her engine hard. “But the highway queen/ Don’t need no king,” drawls the daughter of an asphalt paver on the title track of her third album, a set of songs in which feeble hearts are tossed to the side of the road like litter, and Lane gets to drive a monster truck in the video for Highway Queen. Mixing country sweetness with rock swagger, Lane’s set takes in m
  
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• Le Vin herbé review – swords and bows

  19-02-2017 09:00
  
  Millennium Centre, Cardiff
  Tristan and Iseult share the stage with the band in Polly Graham’s valiant Welsh National Opera staging of an operatic rarityLe Vin herbé is not an opera, it’s a “secular oratorio”, composed by the Swiss composer Frank Martin between 1938 and 1941 for 25 chorus members, eight soloists, two violins, two violas, two cellos, a double bass and a piano. It’s an interpretation of the medieval legend of Tristan and Iseult, the tale of adul
  
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• Jidenna: The Chief review – a versatile, genre-bending debut

  19-02-2017 09:00
  
  (Wondaland/Epic)Sartorially inspired by the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, dapper rapper/singer Jidenna dresses up his strain of hip-hop and R&B in a similarly stylish exterior. Released via Janelle Monáe’s Wondaland label, debut album The Chief mixes his poetic, politically charged anger – the bass-booming, drum-clapping Long Live the Chief, and the prowling opener A Bull’s Tale – with a more relaxed, old-school soul vibe, as highlighted on the languid, Mon&
  
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• Jens Lekman: Life Will See You Now review – fresh lyrical vim

  19-02-2017 09:00
  
  (Secretly Canadian)This fourth album by Gothenburg’s master of the indie story song song finds him reinvigorated after 2012’s heartbroken I Know What Love Isn’t, kicked up the arse by drum machines. It’s also infused with fresh lyrical vim by the Ghostwriting project, in which he worked from fan-submitted stories, and Postcards, in which he released a song each week for a year. Postcard #17 appears here, and its more directly emotional night terrors offer a rich contrast
  
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• Glen Manby Quintet: Homecoming review – stylish hard bop

  19-02-2017 09:00
  
  (Mainstem)Jazz is constantly throwing up new genres and forms, but hard bop continues to outlive them all. Perhaps because it is technically demanding, it seems to attract more than its fair share of talented musicians too. Alto saxophonist Glen Manby is a case in point. Fully at home in the idiom, with a polished technique and mature tone, he’s an eloquent player. Normally based in Cardiff, he appears here with four of Britain’s A-team: trumpeter Steve Waterman, pianist Leon Greenin
  
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• Future: Future review – too much filler, not enough killer

  19-02-2017 09:00
  
  (A1/Freebandz/Epic)In an age of ADHD-level attention spans, prolific artists are a boon for diehard fans. Atlanta rapper Future used three mixtapes and one album in a 10-month span to reboot his career in brilliant fashion between 2014 and 2015, and hasn’t staunched the flow since. The hallmarks of his ice-cold persona are all over this surprise release: the thousand-yard-stare voice that ratchets up tension by forging relentlessly through dramatic beats, as on Poppin’ Tags and Rent
  
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• Bernstein, Copland, Harrison and Ives: Great American Sonatas CD review

  19-02-2017 08:25
  
  Nathan Williamson (piano)
  (Somm)Nathan Williamson brings together works by four American composers, mostly from the 1930s. Copland’s Piano Sonata (1939-41) is striking and desolate, especially the heavily chordal finale which sinks into quiet, mysterious retreat. Bernstein’s, composed when he was still a student at Harvard (1938), has a free structure but a dense texture, full of toccata and syncopation. Lou Harrison’s Sonata No 3 (1938) exemplifies his love of process and rule
  
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• James Brown's Funky Drummer Clyde Stubblefield dies at 73

  19-02-2017 02:45
  
  Stubblefield was best known for Brown’s 1970 single, Funky Drummer, which was sampled on 1,000 songs, including by Public Enemy and Ed SheeranClyde Stubblefield, a drummer for James Brown who created one of the most widely sampled drum breaks ever, died Saturday. He was 73.His wife, Jody Hannon, said Stubblefield died of kidney failure at a Madison, Wisconsin, hospital around noon. He had been suffering from kidney disease for 10 years, and had been hospitalised for a few days, she said. C
  
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