The Times | Wednesday November 22 2017 1G T 11 CATHERINE ASHMORE Artsfirst Night
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the times | Wednesday November 22 2017 1G T 11 CATHERINE ASHMORE artsfirst night a London of the past is preserved in the venue’s faded splendour. In one of World music the Georgian bars, I could almost Dance Carminho Sings Jobim believe I had seen Tom Rakewell Pavement Barbican himself stopping for a tot of gin on his Sadler’s Wells {{{{( Hogarthian journey from bucolic bliss {{{{( to brothel to Bedlam. o an outsider they can A choice setting, then, for the yle Abraham has become sometimes sound like two inaugural production of OperaGlass a force in American different languages. With its Works, set up by the actor-director dance since founding soft, nasal shades, the Selina Cadell and the dramaturg Eliza Abraham.In.Motion in 2006. Portuguese we hear on a Thompson to bring chamber operas This past weekend his TJoão Gilberto record can make the up close to audiences. With Alan Kcompany made its London debut with cadences of the motherland appear Bennett, Stephen Fry and Vanessa an hour-long production inspired in harsh and guttural. Bossa nova is all Redgrave on the list of supporters, this part by John Singleton’s powerhouse about understatement; fado, the folk fledgling outfit has cachet. And this is 1991 film Boyz n the Hood as well as by music of Portugal, is much more a fine outing for Stravinsky’s morality the writings of the civil rights activist declamatory, sometimes downright tale. A little safe, perhaps, but drawing WEB Du Bois. The good news is that melodramatic. first-rate performances. Sadler’s Wells has already promised The two traditions were woven If Cadell doesn’t entirely overcome to present more of Abraham’s work. together in this compelling display at the opera’s occasional longueurs, this Pavement is an oblique yet powerful the EFG London Jazz Festival, with period-dress production scores in consideration of urban American life, the young fado singer known as other ways. The interplay between art particularly in terms of race relations. Carminho (full name, Maria do Carmo and life, artifice and truth, for instance. Singleton’s film revolves around the Carvalho Rebelo de Andrade) paying Laurence Cummings directs the fates of three young black males in homage to Antônio Carlos Jobim. For spirited Southbank Sinfonia on stage, inner-city Los Angeles. Pavement is this project she could not have had initially sporting a resplendent wig sketchier, eschewing narrative in better guides. The cellist and arranger that would have made Handel jealous. favour of a looser construction that Jaques Morelenbaum is a master of A chorus member glances knowingly allows us to read more into the this kind of chamber music and the at the audience as he sprinkles leaves alternately expansive and suggestive Jobim connection was made flesh in to suggest a garden. Wooden ladders interactions between four black men the self-effacing form of the dotted around the stage are used (including Abraham), two white men composer’s son, Paulo, on guitar, and literally and metaphorically, a banner and one black woman. Abraham’s grandson Daniel on piano. depicting a snake completing this experience of growing up in two Admittedly, Morelenbaum’s presence Robert Murray as Tom and Victoria Simmonds as Baba the Turk devilish game of luck and fate. primarily black neighbourhoods of did sometimes leave you wishing that Almost every word of WH Auden Pittsburgh was another key influence. his wife, Paula, could have been there and Chester Kallman’s libretto is clear, The setting was simple: a metal too. No singer caresses Sabiá or O and it is a good choice to dispense fence upstage and above it a basketball Grande Amor with as much tenderness On the merry with surtitles. Robert Murray makes hoop behind which images of and precision. Yet if Carminho’s a moving Tom Rakewell, an affable residential buildings were projected. versions did not flow as seductively, innocent, his voice always sweet. And This left plenty of space for the cast to her more jagged approach and broader who wouldn’t be lured in by Jonathan express themselves physically and to dynamic range had compensations of Lemalu’s gravelly, smiling Nick some extent verbally. Their sometimes their own. On Retrato em Branco e road to Bedlam Shadow, there to make Tom’s every tellingly detailed movement slipped Preto she gave Chico Buarque’s lyrics wish come true? Victoria Simmonds continuously between the vernacular the full measure of ruefulness. relishes Baba the Turk, with a beard and the virtuosic, all of it cued by a Morelenbaum added washes of First-rate performances and a magical to rival Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot richly layered soundtrack featuring subtle colour, while the drummer setting launch the inaugural production moustache, while Susanna Hurrell’s Vivaldi, Bach and Britten as well as Paulo Braga gave the quartet just the of a new company, says Rebecca Franks Anne Trulove is a joy throughout. Jacques Brel and Sam Cooke. right amount of momentum. Wave, a Fine turns too from the supporting Whether deceptively casual and song that Anglo-American singers here may be a more roles and chorus, and special mention throwaway or sharply precise, nothing often turn into stodgy MOR, took atmospheric and appropriate for the trumpeter Etty Wake’s solo, the cast did was overstated or flight here. Before she left, Carminho Opera theatre in which to stage bright as a gold coin. Best of all is the dramatically dishonest. Yes, Pavement soared on Saudades do Brasil em The Rake’s Stravinsky’s The Rake’s mad scene, the emotional truth of the might have benefited from greater Portugal, a lament by Jobim’s Progress Progress, but I wouldn’t bet opera wrapped up in a delusion. As visual texture, but what it conveyed collaborator, the poet and diplomat Ton it. The intimate Wilton’s Music Hall Tom, believing himself to be Adonis, about the complexities of human Vinicius de Moraes. Two continents Wilton’s, E1 is right in scale and feel. Just as the declares his love for Venus, Anne sings relations was delivered with notable came within touching distance. {{{{( composer refracted the 18th century him to sleep with infinite tenderness. integrity, grit and grace. Clive Davis in his bittersweet neoclassical score, Box office: 020 7702 2789, to Sat Donald Hutera sitting by his father’s deathbed and ifty years after the death of from John Coltrane’s later work and being interrupted by a male nurse John Coltrane and a decade some audience participation: getting Comedy telling him about his son’s mania for Jazz after the death of Alice us to meditate. “Imagine you are at Greg Davies roast chicken, he makes us feel as if A Concert for Coltrane, the influence of the the top of Everest and you can see all Eventim Apollo, W6 we were in the pub with our funniest Alice and John husband-and-wife pillars of the other peaks,” Baptiste requested, friend. And that friend is on a roll. Fspiritual jazz is growing. The Coltranes adding that we shouldn’t worry about {{{(( Davies strings this all together with Barbican believed that universal musical the Earth being round since this was reg Davies is an outsized a theme about the disparity between {{{{{ structures transcended humanity’s our astral place. Accompanying our presence in British comedy, how we see ourselves and how others divisions. After listening to three and journey within was the perfect blend plying a vision of barely see us. Which sounds stimulating, until a half hours of sublimely transcendent, of expression, sophistication and fun, fettered vitality in you realise that it takes in pretty much Coltrane-focused music, you could with the quartet bouncing around The Inbetweeners, Cuckoo, every story ever told. He pays tribute only conclude that they were right. John Coltrane’s endlessly complex G and his starring sitcom to his dad, whose rambunctious The 77-year-old free-jazz master music with virtuosity, not excessive Taskmaster Man Down. These claims to absurdity motored so much of his act Pharoah Sanders was the main event, reverence. small-screen fame, he warns at the before. Yet with dad a more spectral but with the Denys Baptiste Quartet Sanders looked like a wise old sage start of You Magnificent Beast, don’t presence, there is a new coarseness at and the Alina Bzhezhinska Quartet as he shuddered on to the stage. He quite hint at the material he’s about to play, a diminution of the generosity interpreting John and Alice recorded with both Coltranes and is bellow at us. “I am a very dirty boy.” that used to make Davies such delicious respectively this was a rare concert the living successor to their deep Well, he wasn’t so dirty before, and company. Rococo churlishness outguns (part of the EFG London Jazz Festival) approach, which goes way beyond maybe that’s why I was less persuaded affectionate exasperation as he in which each beautiful element was as jazz; after summoning the chaos of than usual by his biggest-selling and describes meeting a cabbie who claims important and captivating as the next. life itself with the wild saxophone least charming live show. Davies is to have played bass for A-ha, or wearily Bzhezhinska, from Ukraine, shares notes of The Creator Has a Master Plan still a strong storyteller, a big kid giving in to the advances of an with Alice a mastery of the jazz harp, he chanted the statement of the title. forever astounded and amused by life’s enamoured Bristolian rendered brutish a niche among niches, and put her It was impossible not to be swept up capacity for ludicrousness.