Pete Paphides
“There’s a new music that’s taking over our country and it’s called indie!”
trumpeted the disgraced race-row Big Brother contestant Emily Parr –
a one-girl embodiment of the strange allure that the post-Libertines indie
milieu has for a certain strain of posh teenage dim-wit. Her claim was
depressingly hard to dispute at Glastonbury, as we stood in a vast bog and
watched Doherty peddle feeble smack-skiffle to a crowd who had clearly
forgotten how decent music is supposed to make you feel.
With hindsight though, I owe Doherty a debt of gratitude. So pissed off was I
by the turn that events had taken – previous sets by the View and the Magic
Numbers had hardly helped matters – that I made an executive decision.
Despite being the only Times reviewer there, I’d ignore the promise
of the Killers and the Kooks on the main stage that night and go and see
something that actually sounded interesting.
I trudged towards the new Park stage and happened upon something that reminded
me what the entire point of all of this is. Under the Africa Express banner,
Damon Albarn had helped to assemble a revolving door “super-jam” in which
musicians such as Amadou & Mariam, Baaba Maal, Tinariwen, Hard-Fi, the
Specials and Rachid Taha played their songs, each other’s songs and songs
that had yet to be given a name. Five hours long in total and an absolute
lose-your-self epiphany for everyone who was there. I’m almost reluctant to
go to Glastonbury again because I can hardly imagine how it could possibly
be topped. To give up, though, is to walk willingly in the direction of the
musical ditchwater that prompted me to hunt out Africa Express in the first
place.
Top five albums of 2007
The Good, the Bad & the Queen – The Good, the Bad and the Queen
(Honest Jons/Parlophone)
Britney Spears – Blackout (Sony BMG)
Abdel Hadi Halo and the El Gusto Orchestra of Tangiers – Abdel Hadi
Halo and the El Gusto Orchestra of Tangiers (Honest Jons)
Radiohead – In Rainbows (self-released/XL)
Gruff Rhys/Super Furry Animals – Candylion/Hey Venus! (Rough Trade)
Top tracks
Blonde Redhead – 23 (4ad)
Lucky Luke – Reynardine/Hori Horo (Wee Black Skelf)
Mika – Grace Kelly (Casablanca)
Arcade Fire – Intervention (Merge)
Richard Morrison
Perhaps it’s a sign of my advancing years, but the musical achievements that
moved me most in 2007 were heroic efforts by veterans battling against the
odds. Claudio Abbado, for instance – whose stomach cancer seemed terminal a
few years ago – brought his Lucerne Festival Orchestra to the Proms and
delivered an interpretation of Mahler’s Third Symphony so sublimely
conceived that nobody present will ever forget it.
Another seemingly indestructible veteran, John Tomlinson rescued the Royal
Opera from catastrophe by stepping in as Wotan in the Ring – and in
magnificent style – when Bryn Terfel pulled out for reasons that many still
find hard to swallow.
And it was a third great stalwart, the tenor Philip Langridge, who figured in
a stunning performance of Britten’s War Requiem by the National
Youth Orchestra. There was something profoundly touching about hearing
Langridge bringing his decades of experience to his delivery of Wilfred
Owen’s poems, while accompanied by youngsters of the same age as the
millions sent to their deaths in Flanders.
Maybe veteran performers are better able to understand, and embody, that wise
old French saying: “To be truly beautiful, you must suffer”. That was
certainly evident in two other unforgettable shows. One wasCritical Mass,
a collaboration by a quirky choir called the Shout and Streetwise Opera,
which works with homeless people. Funny, wry, sad and startling, it was as
powerful and timely a plea for the tolerance of loners and outsiders as I
have encountered on a stage.
The other was Pimlico Opera’sLes Misérables at Wandsworth
Prison. To hear stirring hymns to liberty hurled out within those grim walls
was mesmerising and humbling. Music isn’t just about entertainment.
Sometimes it shines a light on the darkest crevices of the human condition.
Album of 2007: Sir Charles Mackerras with the Scottish Chamber
Orchestra – Nine Beethoven symphonies (Hyperion)
Bob Stanley
The accelerating demise of the secondhand record shop has meant that holidays
ain’t what they used to be. I retaliated by buying a bunch of vintage
Schweppes bottle crates to store my 45s, thus transforming my home into the
last man standing. A childhood dream come true, but probably not a very
healthy one. My conversion to iTunes also made me feel as if a life’s work –
an oversized pile of old vinyl – has been as worthwhile as stamp collecting.
In the outside world, the media’s treatment of Britney Spears was singularly
disturbing; we mock dumb Britney, we fear for classy Amy – it’s not good.
After what was portrayed as a career-ending low with her performance at the
VMAs, it was a vindicating thrill to hear Britney’s best single (Gimme
More) since her debut. Her fifth album, Blackout, in turn, was
more demanding and absorbing than anything the gormless new arrivals Jack
Peñate, Kate Nash and the View did in the name of pop.
We needed Girls Aloud’s Tangled Up, with its melancholy Abba-isms
and filthy consumerist humour, and the universal love for Amy Winehouse to
save British face. The soundtrack of the year, to be used whenever TV
programmes need a succinct summary of 2007, was Rihanna’s Umbrella.
Album of 2007: Fiest – The Reminder (Universal)
Phoebe Greenwood
Hurling flares off the side of a fishing trawler to kick off a remote
Icelandic music festival, I thought: ‘Wow, this is the life!’ Organised by a
musician, Mugison, and his harbour-master father, Papa Mugi, in the aptly
named Isafjdor (Icy Fjord), the festival proved to be a truly inspiring
labour of love, a spirited way to try and put the region back on the map
after climate change and corrupt fishing quotas have robbed it of its two
main economic pillars – winter sports and fishing.
This year it was held in a portside pallet warehouse and over two days 1,500
kids, hip things and grand-parents threw devil horns to bands with such
names as Slugs, Puke and Pork. A male choir roared. And a local mayor, a
policeman and a doctor made their debut as a punk supergroup. There was even
an underwater concert at the local swimming pool arranged by some of Sigur
Rós.
All free, state-funded and sponsored by a national bank, no banners required,
it rammed home my main revelation of 2007, that I’m a grumpy git who can’t
stand that most gigs today in the UK have something of the whiff of two
marketing men high-fiving each other, thanks to the increasingly crass
presence of corporate sponsors. Seeing the Gossip flanked by two screens
showing Wella hair adverts as they performed at this year’s NME awards
show was particularly toe-curling.
Yes, Iceland has one of the world’s highest GDPs, so you can argue that it can
afford to fund amazing music schools and free music festivals. Yes, you can
argue that in a world where recorded music is no longer a money earner and
major labels are foundering, corporate sponsorship is fair enough as
musicians need to earn a living. Even so, I just won’t buy the line this
year that “brands are the new patrons”. Quite simply the great patrons did
not have a commercial agenda. They were into edifying and sating their
vanity, not shifting product.
In any case, it’s a bit of cop-out to blame “evil” brands for muscling in,
when the problem seems to be more that we Brits don’t really care whether
gig and branding opportunity become synonymous. This year British gig-mania
remained at fever pitch, yet there wasn’t so much as a peep at local or
national level when we lost two key London venues thanks to rapacious
developers.
OK, the iconic Hammersmith Palais, bulldozed for offices, may have lost its
sense of direction recently, but on a very simple level, time at the office
versus life outside of the office, a no brainer surely?
The loss of the Spitz was an even greater tragedy. East London, supposedly the
capital’s edgy, arts district, now boasts a Nando’s but not a decent,
independent live-music venue. In fact the Spitz, a charitable organisation,
was a one-off – championing new artists and supporting those genres that
nourish the soul, such as blues, country, jazz and experimental stuff rather
than lining its pockets. It is London’s loss if the Spitz is unable to find,
and more importantly afford, a new home. Donations to www.spitz.co.uk.
Album of 2007: MIA – Kala (XL)
Stephen Dalton
Motoring home through the country lanes of Somerset after All Tomorrow’s
Parties in April, a simple new law occurred to me: anyone under 40 should be
barred from making pop music. Not just because I recently passed that
dreaded mid-life milestone myself but because, for the first time all my
musical peaks in 2007 have involved artists of my age and above.
It’s been a vintage year for old farts. The unprecedented rash of niche
festivals aimed at open-minded older listeners is a major factor here. After
years of boredom and discomfort at washed-out Glastos and dismal Readings,
the most inventive musical mix this summer was mostly to be found in
off-the-map locations with comfy sofas, working toilets and chalet
accommodation. Nick Cave, who turned 50 this year, was explosively brilliant
at ATP. The Beastie Boys and Primal Scream, all well north of 40, played
blazing shows at the inaugural Connect festival in the Scottish highlands.
Likewise the Big Chill, Latitude and Bestival were jammed with middle-aged
artists showing the youngsters a trick or three.
It wasn’t just festivals either. Polly Harvey and Radiohead both released
transcendentally beautiful, career-best albums as their forties loomed. At
the O Arena, I saw a 49-year-old Prince transform a soulless shed into a
sumptuous, shag-pile sex party. In the same venue, the Rolling Stones
sounded vital and virile in their mid-sixties.
Of course, there are exceptions to this new golden oldie policy. So let’s make
one thing clear: Led Zeppelin are, and have always been, irredeemably
dreadful. But somehow all those fawning, testosterone-drenched reviews
failed to mention their horribly screechy vocals, preposterously priapic
lyrics and bloated guitar histrionics. Ugh. This is the band who ruined rock
for generations. Spinal Tap without the jokes. Please shut up now.
Then again, ask me once more when I turn 50.
Album of 2007: New Young Pony Club – Fantastic Playground
(Island)
John Bungey
I am sitting in an antique hotel room that reminds me of my late grandmother’s
parlour. Across the table is hedgehog-haired Nigel Kennedy eating egg
sandwiches and drinking a sickly brew of tea and Ribena. He has just made an
unfunny joke about Stan Collymore and dogging. He has nattered about Aston
Villa being rubbish in the Carling Cup. Now he’s talking about his new
favourite team, Cracovia, in his adopted home of Poland. “Yeah, man, when I
started going they were so shit the only entertainment was trying to spit on
the opposition’s shirts.” With his sports leisurewear and his Mockney
banter, he is trying so hard to be everybloke that it hurts.
Then, for the Times photographer, he picks up his fiddle and he plays.
First it’s some Gypsy jazz, then some Bach. The sound is exquisite. It is as
if shafts of light are entering the room; on the back of my neck the hairs
are standing up. Through sublime manipulation of gut and horsehair he seems
to be able to access higher realms. Here is an artist who has dedicated his
life to his muse (losing any semblance of a normal childhood) creating
sounds that are deeply personal, deeply moving. Then he stops, shrugs, “OK,
man?” and puts the instrument away.
For a journalist the moment is a salutary lesson – that however much you
question musicians about their lives, their homes, what they had for lunch,
if you really want to understand who they are, you are better off just
listening to them play.
Album of 2007: Herbie Hancock – The Joni Letters (Verve)
Neil Fisher
It says a lot for my concert experience of the year that I wasn’t even in the
concert hall at the time. Instead, I found myself turning up the volume on
BBC Four as it relayed the Vene-zuelan dynamo Gustavo Dudamel leading the
players of the Simón BolÍvar Youth Orchestra through their blisteringly
fabulous Prom.
And what was even sweeter than hearing them rampage through Bern-stein, and
watching them hurl their instruments around with an unerring, intoxicating
showman-ship? Coming into work the next morning to find that – shock – other
people had noticed it as well. Yes, orchestras are fun too, I felt
like shouting out loud, except that I didn’t need to. The teenagers clad in
Venezuelan-flag tracksuits had demonstrated that already.
As easily the most hyped classical musician on the planet in 2007, Dudamel has
come in for some stick recently. And it’s true that his interpretations of
the big symphonies certainly aren’t the last word in idiomatic style. As
chief conductor-designate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he still has
plenty to learn.
But that doesn’t mean that he – and, even more so, the orchestra he always
calls his “family”, the extraordinary BolÍvar players – haven’t got
something very important to teach us. It’s not about how music can lift the
poorest children out of shanty towns (though it can). It’s not about
classical music reaching a part of the world with no mainstream tradition of
it (thought it can). I see the main lesson of that Prom as a simpler one: if
every orchestral player played with the same enjoyment as these musicians,
maybe we’d build a few more bridges from us to them. Hell, maybe there
wouldn’t be an “us” and “them” at all.
Album of 2007: John Eliot Gardiner – Bach Cantatas, Vol 16
(SDG)
Ed Potton
It was a year of striking juxtapositions. Mike D of the Beastie Boys roaring,
“Wassup, you pirate motherf****s?” to the eye-patched, parrot-toting
onlookers at Bestival will live long in the memory. But my weirdest and most
wonderful musical moments all came at the Lake of Stars festival on the
white sandy shores of Lake Malawi in southern Africa.
This was an event at which local bands beat out rhythms on oil cans under palm
trees, while yards away DJs from inner-city Liverpool spun Timbaland’s
latest stab of digital R’n’B. Where African teenagers went wild to British
drum’n’bass. And where Lucius Banda, one of Malawi’s biggest and most genial
stars, played back-to-back sets with the Petebox, an indecently talented
human beatboxer from Nottingham. The crowd, a mixture of Malawians,
backpackers, NGO workers and ligging journos, went equally crazy for both.
Now that’s entertainment.
Album of 2007: Burial – Untrue (Hyperdub)
Hilary Finch
With the Maggie Teyte and the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, with the BBC Cardiff
Singer of the World and the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition, and
with two important British song festivals, 2007 was an exceptional year for
song. There is no reason to doubt that everyone can sing; and the
instrument is free. The most important musical work going on in schools at
the moment (where it is even allowed or affordable) is that of bringing song
back to children – not to stand, stare and gawp at song as a spectator
sport, but to open the lungs, feel the rhythms of lung and heart tuning in
to music’s own rhythms – and to sing again!
Only a few will be able (or even wish) to make a career out of singing. But
those who do give enormous pleasure – as was evident when the soprano Anna
Leese collected her Maggie Teyte award, when Katherine Broderick won the
Kathleen Ferrier, and when singers such as Elizabeth Watts, Shen Yang,
Martha Guth and Ben Johnson delighted their audiences in Cardiff and London.
Competitions’ own necessary evils can, at times, turn the whole business back
into a form of spectator sport in itself. But competitions are as much about
giving generous platforms to a large numbers of young singers as they are
about winning. So perverse is even the fairest competition system that it’s
often the “losers” who go on to make the real careers. So watch out too for
Levente Molnár, Benedict Nelson, Owen Gilhooly, Ryan de Ryke and Catherine
Hopper, among many others.
Festivals are even more fun; and the best tend to come round only about every
two or three years. The Festival of English Song in Ludlow in May, musically
masterminded by Iain Burnside, was a model of immensely variegated
programming (from the darkest corners of rare English repertoire, to the
Celtic twilight, and on through Finzi and Britten to Christopher Robin and
Edward Lear) – and the word-lively baritone Roderick Williams was as
revelatory in Ludlow as he was later in the year as Purcell’s Aeneas
(Edinburgh Festival) and Mozart’s Papageno (English National Opera).
LeedsLieder, in October, added a plus sign to its name – and no wonder, for
this wonderful long weekend (directed this year by Roger Vignoles) also
teemed with masterclasses and workshops that poured out ever more new
singers and new compositions.
Album of 2007: The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, conducted by René Jacobs
– Don Giovanni (Harmonia mundi)
Geoff Brown
It was July 14. Believing my knowledge of Cheltenham to be more intimate than
it was, I walked westwards when I thought I was heading north. I asked
directions. I asked again. I arrived at the Pittville Pump Room in disarray.
My turmoil stopped the moment that the two bright sparks performing, the
Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova, aged 21, and the French pianist Cédric
Thiberghien, a youthful 30, started in on Elgar’s Violin Sonata.
This was fitting music for the Cheltenham Festival, enveloped by Elgar’s
beloved Malvern Hills; but alien territory for them. What they gave us was
something very precious: a performance bursting with new life, fresh
thoughts and the passion of discovery. Thiberghien gave Elgar’s piano part a
delicious French polish; Ibragimova amplified Elgar’s passions with
authentic Russian fire. Nothing was hesitant or parochial; this was Elgar
the big international composer, not the small national monument.
That in itself was refreshing. But this Pump Room concert, a show-case for the
BBC New Generation Artists scheme, offered something more: the pleasure of
young musicians on the march. I’d first heard Ibragimova in 2000, when she
was a pupil at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Even as a tender teenager she
played with an eloquence and technical flourish many professionals would
envy. Not every child star breaks through as an adult. But Ibragimova is
shooting ahead, a fully-rounded performer, impassioned and unafraid – even
of the unfashionable music of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, featured on her debut
on CD. Classical music needs her fire and daring.
Album of 2007: Yevgeny Sudbin – Tchaikovsky/Medtner (BIS)
I agree ALina Ibraigmova is magnificent. I saw her perform with Britten SInfonia at the QEH in Ocotober and they were just amazing!!!
melaniemew, London,