I’d waited thirty-three years to see a Keith Jarrett solo show and forked out forty quid of xmas present money in order to join the South Bank Centre and get priority booking. This worked out well, as we arrived in time to check out the sold out Light Show at the Hayward Gallery, a stunning array of illuminated pieces and installations, that Southbank members get in to for free. There are notices everywhere about photography not being allowed, but these were frequently flouted. Before leaving, I took my partner for a return visit to Olafur Eliasson’s incredible night garden of 27 strobe lit (hence you couldn’t stay for long) water sculptures just before the gallery closed and we would have had the room to ourselves…

This review appears in today’s Nottingham Post   Fifty years since her first hit and a few days after selling out the Royal Albert Hall, Dionne Warwick brings her band and the South Bank Sinfonia strings section to Nottingham, a city she first visited in the mid-60’s and has returned to regularly ever since. Unfortunately, it’s the middle of a long, wet bank holiday that has seen many flee the country. Only half of the seats have been sold. Dionne doesn’t mind. ‘The order of the evening is to have a good time,’ she begins. Her voice has ‘given her good news’. She’s over a cold, so will be able to add a couple of songs that she couldn’t manage earlier in the tour. The early…

This is my review of last night’s show from the Nottingham Post, with a download of one of the show’s highlights and a bonus cover version, which (if I remember correctly) Rumer put out to her fans on Valentine’s day this year.   It’s a year since Rumer played a six song set to Smooth FM competition winners at the casino down the road (my Post review here). That night, she was a nervous presence, yet won over the audience with the quality of her voice. The songs turned out to be growers, too, and Seasons Of My Soul got to number three in the album chart, going platinum with over 300,000 sales.   Tonight, on her second headlining tour, the concert hall was all…

A very slightly extended version of my review for today’s Nottingham Post. On kd lang’s first visit to the Royal Concert Hall, nearly twenty years ago, the audience was dominated by screaming young women. Tonight the top tier is empty and there are notably more males, of the middle aged variety. The Canadian singer is touring with a permanent band who give her a more relaxed onstage presence. They launches into ‘I Confess’, followed by a boomy ‘Summer Fling’. The sound settles down for a delicate ‘Water’s Edge’. Then it’s a lovely ‘Miss Chatelaine’ from her breakthrough, still most successful album, ‘Ingenue’.  The intro is coquettish, her stage dancing joyful.  The title track of new album, ‘Sing It Loud’, is dedicated to ‘all the freaks.…