West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg In the new West Side Story Leonard Bernstein’s magnificent music and Stephen Sondheim’s incisive and witty lyrics have all been preserved and bring as much pleasure as before.
music
Poetry review – SERVICE CANCELLED: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is impressed by Neil Fulwood’s novel approach to the lockdown poem
Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, Victoria and Albert Museum. Review by Carla Scarano. .”..a marvellous but unsettling journey through the origin of Alice’s stories and their adaptations and reinventions in films, art, music, fashion, photography and design.”
Poetry review – RANSOM: Thomas Ovans particularly admires the Olivier Messiaen inspired central section of a new collection by Michael Symmons Roberts
CALLED BACK: Neil Fulwood is impressed by John Hinshelwood’s CD of songs and instrumentals inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poems
PAUL McLOUGHLIN 1947-2021: John Lucas recalls his friendship with the late Paul McLoughlin and reprises some of the poetry and music they shared
Paul McLoughlin was a frequent contributor to London Grip both as a poet and as a perceptive reviewer and his recent death is a sad loss to his family and his many friends. Here John Lucas recalls Paul’s rather unorthodox route into poetry .
WE COME FROM THE SUN: Sue Wallace-Shaddad leads us through an innovative album of poetry, music and sound compiled by Cerys Matthews
L’Heure Espagnole, Grange Park Opera – an hour of escape into Maurice Ravel’s gloriously light opera bouffe that allows a woman to juggle three lovers with impunity.
Even more than an outpouring of passionate pacifism, Benjamin Britten’s Owen Wingrave is a universal exploration of the heroic strength of character required to reject decades of blind allegiance to an unholy cause.
If you can embrace it, lockdown’s shift from the real to the virtual is a liberation that makes anything possible.
Poetry review – SIEGE AND SYMPHONY : Emma Lee reviews an eclectic collection from Myra Schneider
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, music, poetry reviews, year 2021 • Tags: books, Emma Lee, music, poetry