Last year I tried for the first time to write about the part that music has played in my life, the way in which that is bound up with my relationship with my late husband, and how I struggled with finding ways of listening alone. It will never, of course, be the same, not even close. But I have prioritised listening to music from our collection, as well as listening to Radio 3 as we used to, and have added some new bands, composers and music programmes to my repertoire. I’m proud of that – it wasn’t as easy as it might sound.
Not long into 2024, my hi-fi was dismantled, and my CDs packed into boxes and stored in the garage, ahead of a major redecoration of the living/dining room. It all took a long time, and only now, as the year draws to a close, do I have full access both to the CD collection and to the means of playing them. Now, I do know about streaming and am aware that playing actual CDs marks me out as very old school indeed – and as the list below shows, I did carry on regardless. But I like to hear the whole album, the tracks that the artist decided to record, in the order that they wanted them to appear. And so many of these CDs were acquired and listened to with M, and, as I said in my music blog a year ago, it’s very important to me that this tradition – of evenings devoted to listening to CDs, chosen semi-randomly from the vast collection – is part of my life now.
Music Nights (or mornings, or afternoons, but mainly nights) – the methodology is as described in last year’s blog. During the week if I think of something I’d like to play (it might be suggested by something I’ve read, an anniversary or obituary, or just a memory) I put it on a pile by the CD player, and on the night I add to that pile random choices – whatever came up when I threw the dice and counted the shelves – so that I don’t stay too firmly within familiar territory, or within any one era or genre. This does include music on TV or DVD and tracks that I accessed via Spotify as well as via the collection, but in general inclusion indicates that I listened to more than just a single track, even if not a full album.
This year I listened to music by: Beethoven, Berlioz, black midi, Bombay Bicycle Club, Bowie, Brahms, Britten, Brubeck, Bruckner, R D Burman, Byrd, Alina Bzhezhinska, Camel, Can, Nick Cave, Terri Lynne Carrington, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Chopin, Billy Cobham, Leonard Cohen, Alice Coltrane, John Coltrane, Costello, Kim Cypher, Miles Davis, Olivia Dean, Delarue, Bryce Dessner, Corrie Dick, Marlene Dietrich, The Last Dinner Party, Dinosaur, Dreamliners, Dukas, Dylan, Earth Wind and Fire, Elgar, Ella, Ellington, ELP, Eno, Fairport Convention, Fakear, Fauré, Reinhard Fek, Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita, Graham Fitkin, Fleet Foxes, Flobots, Frankie goes to Hollywood, Marvin Gaye, Gilgamesh, Gomez, Pavel Haas, Charlie Haden & Egberto GIsmonti, Matthew Halsall, Gavin Harrison & O5Ric, P J Harvey, Lianne la Havas, Dashiell Hedayat, Hendrix, Bernard Herrmann, Hindemith, Zakir Hussain, Keith Jarrett, Johann Johannson, Quincy Jones, Quincy Jones & Miles Davis, King Crimson, Michael Kiwanuke, Gideon Klein, Gladys Knight, Korngold, Last Shadow Puppets, Bill Laswell, Ant Law & Alex Hitchcock, Léonin, Los Campesinos, Yo-Yo Ma, Kirsty MacColl, James MacMillan, Mancini, Bob Marley, Maximo Park, Curtis Mayfield, Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Pat Metheny, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Monk, Mozart, Mulligan & Monk, Nick Mulvey, Meshell Ndegeocello, Yoko Ono, Pérotin, Iggy Pop, Psi Vojaci, Rachmaninov, Emma Radicz, Radiohead, Ravel, Red Rum Club, Martha Reeves, Max Richter, Rodrigo y Gabriela, SBB, Ryiuchi Sakamoto, Schoenberg, Schubert, Schumann (Robert & Clara), Semer Ensemble, Shangri-las, Sharp Little Bones, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Silk Road Ensemble, Horace Silver, Nina Simone, Roni Size & Reprazent, Smetana, Sam Smith, Snarky Puppy, Katie Spencer, Spiritualized, Candi Staton, Steely Dan, Max Steiner, Richard Strauss, Karl Svenk, Taylor Swift, Sylvian & Fripp, Tallis, Tangerine Dream, Carlo Taube, Michael Tippett, Peter Tosh, Ali Farka Toure, Travis & Fripp, Martina Trchova, Unthanks, Vaughan Williams, Verdi, Kevin Volans, Weather Report, Yiddish tango
Live Music
Music nights are almost always solitary now. But live music is also vital to me, and for that I often especially value company. So thank you to Ruth, Peter, Adi, Jennie & Michael, Arthur, Jane & Richard, Amanda, Liz and Under the Stars colleagues for sharing some of these musical experiences with me.
Opera
For a few years, I reviewed Opera North productions for The Culture Vulture, a Leeds-based online journal, which was fabulous – I got free tickets to all of the productions. All this came to an end for me even before lockdown, as my youngest brother, who had terminal cancer, approached the end of his life, and I knew I could not commit to attending or to turning a review around within a day. When lockdown ended, I was looking forward to starting again and was due to see Carmen on 9 October 2021. That morning, M died. It was not until my sister-in-law, who had got me started on this whole opera thing, moved back to Leeds from Rome last year that I went back to the Grand Theatre (not as a reviewer, just a regular audience member).
At Leeds Grand we saw two marvellously magical productions, Mozart’s bonkers The Magic Flute, and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both of which were delightful, imaginatively staged and beautifully sung. Before that, we saw Britten’s Albert Herring at the Howard Assembly Rooms, a lovely, funny production.
West Yorkshire Playhouse’s revival of My Fair Lady drew on Opera North talents too, with lovely performances in the lead roles, including John Hopkins (a former sidekick of Midsomer Murders’ DI Barnaby) as Henry Higgins, and Katie Bird, who we saw in The Merry Widow back in 2018 at the Grand, as Eliza. It has tricky moments – not so much Higgins’ sexism, given that this is not endorsed by the script or by the production, but the off-hand references to domestic violence, the normality of black eyes and broken bones as part of married life. I can’t recall if these are in the Shaw, or only in the libretto. Despite that it was a gorgeous, funny production and it’s packed with glorious tunes, beautifully sung.
Sheffield City Hall – Legend: The Music of Bob Marley. Excellent tribute band – the lead singer in particular was superb. I wondered about the audience when I saw a lot of white folks wearing knitted hats with knitted dreadlocks attached, but it was clear they were passionate enthusiasts for the music, knew all the lyrics, and kept a respectful silence when asked to do so in memory of Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett. An exuberant evening of fantastic songs.
Manchester Palace Theatre – Hamilton. I’d seen it on Disney+ but live is so much better. Spinetinglingly, exhilaratingly great songs and singers, superb choreography, a compelling story. It probably shouldn’t work but it absolutely does and I loved every moment.
Since I got involved with Under the Stars, first as a trustee, now as Chair, I aim to get to as many of their gigs and drama performances as I can. It’s always a joy. This year, Sparkle Sistaz played the Octagon Centre at Sheffield University as part of a Street Choirs event and went down a storm (they were followed by the excellent Young ‘Uns, who recognised they had a damn hard act to follow). The Stars Band played at Yellow Arch and at Tramlines, and Clubland Detectives launched their new EP with a gig at the Greystones Pub.
Music in the Round is always a huge part of my musical year. It started off with a concert in the Upper Chapel (Koechlin, Tomasi, Lutoslawski, Poulenc) and then the Steven Isserlis curated Chamber Music Festival in mid-May celebrated Fauré’s centenary with a packed week of gigs, mainly at the Crucible Playhouse. I got to five of the concerts, and heard music by Ades, Bach, Farrenc, Faure, Franck, Holmes, Messager, Onslow, Ravel, Saint Saens and Tchaikovsky, performed by Ensemble 360, with Isserlis, Peter Hill, Abbeydale Singers, Ella Taylor and Anna Huntley. And then Kathy Stott launched the autumn season with a performance of short pieces by Bach, Boulanger, Ravel, Piazzola, Shostakovich, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Chopin, Fitkin, Shaw, Vine, Grainger, and Grieg. This was part of her farewell tour, with a programme of short pieces – it was wonderfully eclectic and delightful.
We were at the Crookes Social Club for Sheffield Jazz gigs from the Clark Tracy Quintet, Corrie Dick Sun Swells, Hannah Horton Quartet, Adam Glasser, and Soft Machine, the Crucible Playhouse for Empirical with Jason Rebello, Firth Hall for Fergus McCreadie, and the main Crucible Theatre for their 50th anniversary gig, with the Emma Rawicz Quartet and the Tony Kofi Quartet. All were excellent but standouts were Corrie Dicks, Soft Machine and Tony Kofi.
This year’s Tramlines was dry and sunny, for which we were very thankful after last year’s downpour and resulting quagmire. The stand-out performances were from Maximo Park, Dylan John Thomas, The Human League, Sprints and Stars Band. We also saw Bombay Bicycle Club, Coach Party, Example, Flowerovlove, Darla Jade, Jazzy, Miles Kane, Otis Mensah, Harriet Rose, Mitch Santiago, Rumbi Tauro and The View plus brief snippets of The Charlatans, Cucamaras and Paolo Nutini.
And then a new feature on Sheffield’s musical calendar, Richard Hawley’s Rock & Roll Circus – we only went to one of the three nights, but enjoyed Gilbert O’Sullivan, The Coral, The Divine Comedy and Richard Hawley himself. O’Sullivan I remember fondly from the 1970s, when he had a run of hits, all of which he performed here and most of whose lyrics I could recall. His voice is still there (not always the case with performers whose heyday was 40+ years ago) and it was an enjoyable set, if not one that made me want to seek out his newer material. I fell in love with The Coral years ago – that Mersey/Motown blend is joyous and I love them live (I saw them at Tramlines 2022). I was much less familiar with The Divine Comedy’s output (I knew ‘National Express’ of course but little else) but was inspired to listen to more. And Hawley, in his home town, was electrifying, performing songs that featured in the musical Standing on the Sky’s Edge, which played to rapturous full houses here in Sheffield, and less inevitably, replicated that success in the West End.
And a concert at the tiniest venue I know, Café 9. Pre-booking is essential, and reserving seats helpful as one can end up practically knee to knee with the performers – but it’s a gorgeous space, which I discovered last year, and went to three gigs there in fairly quick succession. Just one this year, from Katie Spencer, whose songs draw on her upbringing on ‘the edge of the land’, as one of her songs puts it, on the East Yorkshire coast. She’s a great songwriter, guitar player and singer. She was supported by Gerard Frain, an excellent South Yorkshire singer-songwriter.
For next year I’m checking out the Sheffield Jazz programme and the 2025 Sheffield Chamber Music Festival programme, I’m already booked to see two operas (Weill and Verdi), and we have our tickets for Tramlines in July. And whatever else the year brings, I know it will be full of music.
Passing Time 