Retiral hint but Rocket Man isn’t slowing down yet

Sir Elton John

SSE Hydro, Glasgow

Russell Leadbetter

*****

FORTY-EIGHT years after responding to the NME advert that introduced him to his lifelong songwriting partner Bernie Taupin, Elton John is still touring like there’s no tomorrow; he’s on the global road until December.

Except there might not be too many sprawling tours like this one. He told this sell-out cheering Glasgow audience he wouldn’t be doing this forever as he wants to see his two young boys grow up.

If this was a swansong of sorts, it was a remarkable one, not least because it lasted a full two hours and 20 minutes.

Backed by a band that included guitarist Davey Johnstone, drummer Nigel Olsson and percussionist John Mahon, John opened with a run of songs from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

The opener, Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, had the intensity of an encore. Benny and the Jets was the first of several numbers throughout the night that showcased Elton’s brilliant piano skills; Candle in the Wind is still an affecting song, no matter how often you hear it.

Elton was in good, chatty form throughout, milking the applause of the fans, telling them how much he appreciated their love for him.

Other highlights, in a night full of them, included Burn Down the Mission, Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word, a brilliant Your Song and I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues.

A word of praise in passing for the visuals projected onto the huge screen behind the band – they were excellent, particularly during Rocket Man.

Solas Festival (Saturday)

The Bield at Blackruthven, Tibbermore

Alan Morrison

****

IT MIGHT seem strange to those who know Solas only as a festival with roots in the Methodist Church that Saturday’s programme should climax with The Vaselines singing Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam, the song made worldfamous when covered by Nirvana on their Unplugged album. Actually, it’s only one indication Solas boasts perhaps the most laidback vibe of all Scotland’s summer music festivals.

The Vaselines’ Frances McKee was in cheeky, flirtatious form throughout the headline set, which added a sprinkling of distinctively Scottish guitar pop to a day of diverse music.

Earlier in the evening, Blue Rose Code mined lovely harmonies from the SAY Awardnominated Ballads Of Peckham Rye album; Hector Bizerk whipped up a storm in the manner that can only happen spontaneously at a festival by adding Nic Gareiss’s Irish step dance to Glasgow hip hop; and Honeyblood unveiled a couple of excellent new songs that showcased the powerhouse drumming of Cat Myers.

Blessed by unexpected sunshine, Saturday afternoon’s musical bill in the outdoor area of The Bield estate had flowed through various moods.

Liz Lochhead’s poetry accompanied by Steve Kettley’s sax brought a taste of Greenwich Village to rural Perthshire, while Bill Wells’s National Jazz Trio of Scotland soundtracked a “cocktail hour”, if pints of IPA can be considered cocktails.

Jonnie Common’s quirky electro-pop snapped, Declan Welsh’s punk-edged garage-rock crackled, and both were soothed by the perfect Scottish, Irish and Manx Gaelic-tongued fusion of Aon Teanga.

Solas has its political talk events, children’s workshops, storytelling sessions, spiritual element and more – the curation of each growing stronger every year – but its music strand is now an enviable draw in its own right.

The Session

Jazz Bar, Edinburgh

Rob Adams

****

EDINBURGH got a taste of the young New Orleans jazz scene over two nights last week.

The Session is a quintet of the Crescent City’s rising generation of players, including one, baritone saxophonist James Partridge, who learned his craft in London but is now settled in Louisiana.

It’s a very accomplished, vibrant band with clear roots in the Nawlins tradition - strong blues connections and grooves strong enough to run trains on – that it brings into post-Kind of Blue and beyond developments.

Baritone and trumpet isn’t exactly a standard frontline pairing and Partridge and the forthright, sure toned Stephen Lands present an uncommon, sumptuous sonority that sounds like more than two musicians might be responsible, working closely together and in relays as the arrangements require. Meanwhile the rhythm section of pianist Andrew McGowan (a good New Orleans name – remember, Dr John’s actually called Malcolm), bassist Jasen Weaver and drummer Miles Labat work as one behind and alongside them as the music ebbs and flows.

McGowan contributes much of the repertoire, including the opening, mature-sounding Persistence, which featured bravura, superbly ordered soloing from Lands, the first of many.

The pianist’s improvising has a real sense of pace and purposeful imagination, not to say explosiveness when Labat opens up and drives him on with an exciting splash of cymbals and snare drum emphasis.

Horace Silver’s classic Doodlin’ and Land’s arrangement of Sting’s An Englishman in New York underlined the sense of jazz tradition moving forward with sensitivity and awareness and Stephen’s Samba duly danced with an air of Mardi Gras-cumCarnival celebration in both the typically sharp ensemble execution and the deeply resourceful individual playing.

BBC Scottish Symphony

Orchestra

City Halls, Glasgow

Carol Main

****

NOT A voice presented at all frequently in our concert halls until the centenary of his birth last year, Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik has been, as the BBC SSO proved beyond measure on Saturday, unfairly neglected.

There is much to be heard from this major composer of the 20th century, who made England his home in the 1950s until his death in 1991.

Opening their weekend celebrating Panufnik and his music, the BBC SSO turned to his first surviving symphony (much of his earlier work was destroyed), the Violin Concerto, Lullaby and Divertimento for Strings, so a diverse selection of music from different times of his career.

With Polish conductor Łukasz Borowicz making his debut appearance with the orchestra, the strings were appropriately fullbodied and polished in tone for the briskly taken folksy tunes of the Divertimento, an adaptation of 18th century string trios by Felix Janiewicz which Panufnik made in1947.

Jumping almost 25 years on, the Violin Concerto, composed at the request of the legendary Yehudi Menuhin, is pure Panufnik.

The declamatory, solo opening for the violinist turns into an elongated melody, high above pizzicato accompaniment from strings below.

If written with Menuhin and his unique abilities in mind, the concerto lives on in the same spirit in the hands of Alexander Sitkovetsky.

His exquisitely beautiful, resolute yet lyrical sound was perfectly complemented by the SSO strings. The gorgeous opening up at the end of the adagio, like the sun rising on the world, led straight into a sparsely rhythmical third movement vivace.

Lullaby for 29 solo strings and harp was strangely soothing in its gentleness and conducted by Borowicz, as was all, with deep affinity for Panufnik’s music.

Brass Lab

Cottier’s Theatre, Glasgow

Michael Tumelty

*****

ON THURSDAY night a newish group, Brass Lab, founded by Bryan Allen, trumpeter extraordinaire, previously brass guru at the old RSAMD, made its Cottier Chamber Project debut with a brass quintet concert that opened with Lutoslawski’s mindblowing Mini-Overture, continued with the evocative portraiture of Judith Bingham’s Dream of the Past, and concluded with Philip Wilby’s Classic Images.

In between these, all delivered with style and panache by the inimitable Allen and his platoon of untouchables, was a new piece by a young musician called Jay Capperauld. Remember that name. He’s a tall, slim, fair-haired Scot. I wrote about his music through his student years.

He’s an original: new thinking, fresh expression and nothing second-hand; it’s all his own. His jazz orchestration (Heroin Chic) is mind-blowing. His command of abstract musical drama with a historical anchor (an incredible piece on attempts to contact Harry Houdini beyond the grave) is riveting.

And now, what does he do in his latest piece, Inertial Frames, a brass quintet? Oh, he stops Time.

More precisely, he disrupts the pulse and flow of chronological time. He sets a relentless metronomic pulse going and pits instrumental lines and chords against it, trying to break free of its remorseless grip.

It tries to speed up. It tries to free itself of the inexorable thump of the pulse. Nothing goes anywhere because there is nowhere to go. Speed doesn’t work. They’re stuck. They try charm by getting expressive. It doesn’t work. It’s teeth-grinding. It’s a classic study in tension from Capperauld the magician.

He has his first major orchestral commission in the pipeline, from the BBC SSO: heads up for a fresh voice on the music scene.