Classical

HALLÉ ORCHESTRA

For this streamed concert, Mark Elder, the chief conductor of the Hallé symphony orchestra, is joined by the senior sibling of the astonishing KannehMason family, pianist Isata (left). Making her Hallé debut, she will play Beethoven’s fierce Piano Concerto in C minor in between Richard Strauss’s deliciously sunny Serenade

– written when the composer was just 17 years old – and Sibelius’s poised and limpid Third Symphony. The concert will be available on demand for a month after its initial broadcast from the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. halle.co.uk, Thurs-June 18

Tomorrow is the final day of Jackie Kay’s five-year term as Scotland’s national poet, or Makar. Her work has always been influenced by music, drawing inspiration from folk tunes, the songs of Robert Burns, and above all the blues. This poem from Other Lovers (1993) could almost be a blues song itself, with its lilting repetitions. Bookended by a chorus conjuring the ghost of Bessie Smith, it describes the poet’s first encounter with Smith’s music. Her father’s exclamation – “that’s some voice she’s got” – could just as easily be said of Kay’s singing lines. Tristram Fane Saunders

THE RED GRAVEYARD

There are some stones that open in the night like flowers

Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.

There are stones that shake and weep in the heart of night

Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.

Why do I remember the blues?

I am five or six or seven in the back

garden; the window is wide open; her voice is slow motion through

the heavy summer air.

Jelly roll. Kitchen man. Sausage roll.

Frying pan.

Inside the house where I used to be myself, her voice claims the rooms. In the best room even, something has changed the shape of my silence.

Why do I remember her voice and not my own mother’s?

Why do I remember the blues?

My mother’s voice. What was it like? A flat stone for skitting. An old rock. Long long grass. Asphalt. Wind.

Hail.

Cotton. Linen. Salt. Treacle.

I think it was a peach.

I heard it down to the ribbed stone.

I am coming down the stairs in my

father’s house.

I am five or six or seven. There is fat

thick wallpaper

I always caress, bumping flower into

flower.

She is singing. (Did they play anyone

else ever?)

My father’s feet tap a shiny beat on

the floor.

Christ, my father says, that’s some

voice she’s got.

I pick up the record cover. And now.

This is slow motion.

My hand swoops, glides, swoops

again.

I pick up the cover and my fingers

are all over her face.

Her black face. Her magnificent

black face.

That’s some voice. His shoes

dancing on the floor.

There are some stones that open in the night like flowers

Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.

There are stones that shake and weep in the heart of night

Down in the red graveyard where Bessie haunts her lovers.