CRITICS’ CHOICE

POP

Lizzo

Pop music became a brighter place this year with the breakthrough of the irrepressible Minneapolis musician Lizzo, who brings a unique skillset to the charts as rapper, singer, songwriter and classically trained flautist. Expect all those attributes and her powerhouse stage presence to come into play at this show in service to the irresistible soul and funk tunes from her third album, Cuz Iloveyou.

O2 Academy, Glasgow, 8 November, 0141-418 3000

Fiona Shepherd

THEATRE

Cabaret

The coming week is a rich one for large-scale touring theatre in Edinburgh, with Priscilla Queen Of The Desert (starring Joe Mcfadden) at the Playhouse, and the current thrill-a-minute touring version of The Exorcist at the King’s. The ace in the pack, though, is Rufus Norris’s superb 2012 production of Cabaret, set to arrive on Tuesday at the Festival Theatre. John Partridge of Eastenders and Masterchef stars as the Emcee, with Kara Lily Heyworth as Sally Bowles, and the timeless Anita Harris as the elderly landlady Fraulein Schneider, whose late-life romance is brutally ended by the rise of Nazism, chillingly portrayed in the show’s unforgettable final moments. Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 5-9 November, 0131-662 1112

Joyce Mcmillan

ART Being Human: Observed, Remembered, Imagined

Joyce Gunn Cairns and Henry Jabbour are two painters whose work looks empathetically at the human condition, Jabbour in vibrant expressionist colour, Gunn Cairns in quiet contemplative observation. Complementary and contrasting, their work sits together for the first time in this two-person show, a powerful reminder of the strength of figurative painting in Scotland.

Smithy Gallery, Blanefield, 3-24 November, 01360 770551

Susan Mansfield

CLASSICAL

SCO and Anna Clyne

Haydn’s stuttering symphony Il Distratto is the inspiration for Edinburgh University graduate Anna Clyne’s new work Sound and Fury. Both are performed together in this exciting SCO programme, marking Clyne’s inauguration as SCO associate composer, and also featuring her earlier double violin concerto, Prince of Clouds, with director/vioinist Pekka Kuusisto and leader Benjamin Marquise Gilmore as soloists. Beethoven’s The Creatures of Prometheus Overture opens the concert.

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 7 November, 0131-668 2019; City Halls, Glasgow, 8 November, 0141-353 8000

Ken Walton