Category: Music
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Everybody loves the sunshine…with a little cooling breeze
“Just bees, and things and flowers” Like a lot of formerly news-hungry journalists these days I can hardly bear to open the many journals I subscribe to. But earlier this year I read the FT’s Life of a Song. And Roy Ayers Sunshine blew Trump thunderstorms away.
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We’re all islanders in a pandemic
In retrospect it all seems eerily prophetic. Those faces framed in small screens, their distant voices interconnecting in the ether. Yet for Giles Perring it’s something much simpler and more profound than Zoom
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Poetry and song for a pandemic
Look up. Only look up. The night sky framed in my window is an escape from lockdown. Into darkness or light?
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In search of the emotional museum
Can museums use popular culture to engage a wider audience? What better time could there be to explore what shapes our identities? Let’s hit the road…
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Rite of Spring
Here’s the Rite of Spring playing in front of me. Close up and breathtakingly personal. The Scottish Ballet’s raw reworking is not for casual viewing. How on earth did I think I could combine it with a spot of ironing?
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Winds of change at The Botanics
With rich irony the latest exhibition at Inverleith House is titled I Still Believe in Miracles. But no miracle is likely to save the art gallery from closure after the doors shut on a show celebrating 30 years at the heart of contemporary art in Edinburgh.
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The song is older than the sorrow
Breakfast on a wintry Edinburgh morning to the background melodies of South Uist. I woke this morning with tunes from last night’s show dancing a jig in my head. It’s a sign of a good performance when both the singer and the songs follow you home.
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Memories: handle with care
As invited, I approach the record player in the middle of the gallery. Play a record, the artist says. I place a 7 inch single on the turntable and find myself transported to another time and place.