Greg Holstead, Author at North West End UK

Benedetti & Sitkovitsky: Tribute to Menuhin – Usher Hall

14Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Benedetti & Sitkovitsky: Tribute to Menuhin – Usher Hall

Nicola Benedetti kicked off the evening with a warm welcome, telling us it was going to be “a lot about the violin” and a tribute to Yehudi Menuhin. She mentioned that in her early career she had often played second violin to Alexander Sitkovetsky, but tonight she certainly wasn’t playing second for long. The atmosphere was set, intimate, personal, and just a bit cheeky.The concert opened with Elgar’s Serenade for Strings, lush and romantic, a soft embrace of a piece that filled the hall with warmth and a gentle nostalgic glow. Its three movements flowed effortlessly, a perfect opener that drew the audience in with grace rather than bombast.Then, Alexander Sitkovetsky took the stage for Panufnik’s Violin Concerto, a deeply spiritual work written for Menuhin. It’s reflective, lyrical, and q...

14Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Wild Thing! – Summerhall

A riotous eco-comedy that shape-shifts into a moving requiem for our planet’s vanishing creatures. Wild Thing! - Laugh Now, Cry Later! Summerhall’s TechCube 0 is already a bit of a womb for oddball creativity, and Wild Thing!, the latest creation from Tom Bailey’s Mechanimal, is like an ecological fever dream with a sense of humour. It’s part comedy, part requiem, and part, “what on earth did I just witness?”, in the best possible way. We enter the performance space together, the audience in single-file, like a school trip with no teacher. Bailey is already mid-flow, becoming a carousel of creatures, some endangered, some right on the edge of existence, some that sound like they’ve escaped from a Monty Python sketch. “Cheerful Pheasant,” “Fearful Owl,” “Polymorphic Rubber Frog...

Bury The Hatchet – Pleasance, Queen Dome, Potterrow

14Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Bury The Hatchet – Pleasance, Queen Dome, Potterrow

Bluegrass, courtroom drama, and Victorian murder meet in a sharp, witty retelling of the Lizzie Borden’s story. “Myth always makes for a good story.” Quite right. We get the back and forth on whether we’re here for drama or history, and before you know it, they’re breaking the fourth wall to bicker about the whole thing. At one point, an exasperated “Come on, this is GCSE drama level!” gets lobbed into the audience. It’s all very knowing, very winky, and the crowd laps it up. The set up is straightforward, Lizzie Borden, accused of axing her father and stepmother in 1892, faces us, the jury. It’s clear in this telling that she cannot stand her stepmother. Old Yankee stock, dripping in mill money, she hardly needs the inheritance, which makes the whole “why would she?” question al...

Escape the Past, Escape Room: The Deacon’s Cabinet – 25 Nicolson Square

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Escape the Past, Escape Room: The Deacon’s Cabinet – 25 Nicolson Square

History, high stakes, and a heap of puzzles, Brodie’s neck isn’t going to save itself. I’m standing in the cramped workshop of Edinburgh’s most notorious thief, Deacon William Brodie, with an hour to save him before the hangman comes calling. It’s my first escape room. My friend’s done a couple before, but neither of us is exactly Sherlock Holmes in a hurry. Before we begin, the ever-vigilant assistant, Ronak, greets us and with a quick waiver to confirm that neither of us are wearing a pacemaker; jump scares and magnetism within the game are noted, we begin. Cloaked, lantern in hand, we are given a quick primer on Brodie’s life, gentleman by day, burglar by night. Then we’re off! The clock is ticking, and we aim to make the leader board! The first task, which I don’t think gives ...

Darkfield Radio: Visitors – Summerhall, Old Lab

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Darkfield Radio: Visitors – Summerhall, Old Lab

Darkfield has a well-earned reputation for bending the mind through total sensory control, and Visitors is no exception. Presented in complete darkness with only a pair of high-quality binaural headphones as your lifeline to the outside world, it’s a strikingly intimate encounter. The sound design is astonishing, voices slip behind you, whisper in your ear, or circle the space with uncanny precision. Every creak of a chair or shuffle of a foot lands with hyper real clarity, making you question what’s in your head and what’s in the room. The premise requires two people and sees your +1 sit opposite you as Jean and Alex, two characters clearly existing somewhere in the afterlife, make their presence known. There’s a gentle eeriness to it, an unsettling suggestion of being used as a ve...

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Bizet’s Carmen Suite – Usher Hall

Strings, percussion, and a little mountain magic, but no conductor, and sometimes I notice. The NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra from Wrocław brings a conductor-free evening to the Usher Hall tonight, led from the violin by their artistic director Alexander Sitkovetsky. No figure in tails waving a baton tonight, just Sitkovetsky steering the ship from within. Apparently, that’s perfectly normal in the chamber-orchestra world, but for those of us used to the “point and wag” approach, it takes a moment to adjust. The first half gives us Grażyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra, brisk, crisp, and with some feisty edges, followed by Strauss’s Metamorphosen, a more reflective and sombre piece that seems to hang in the air. Both benefit from the precision and democratic energy t...

11Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Up Late With Kathryn Joseph – The Hub

Kathryn Joseph has never been shy of reinvention, but her late night set at The Hub felt like a decisive step away from the bare boned intimacy of her early work and into something bolder, denser, and more electrically charged. Where her debut once had candle light flickering over piano and breath close vocals, tonight the pars flooded over synths, drum programming, and a lattice of processed keys that turned the room into a too-brightly lit echo chamber.Joseph was joined by longtime collaborator Lomond Campbell, whose fingerprints were everywhere, shadowy textures, pulsing low end, and those slow blooming arrangements that make a small melodic idea feel cathedral sized. The pair leaned into the aesthetic of her new era, stormy, sensual, and frequently punishing, in a way that made the set...

11Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Fibonacci Quartet – The Queen’s Hall

I arrive early at Queen’s Hall, buzzing for the International Festival debut of the Fibonacci Quartet. Two of their members, Kryštof Kohout and Findlay Spence, were here last year as part of the Rising Stars programme. Now they return with the full ensemble, joined by Luna de Mol and Elliot Kempton, for a morning programme that mixes Scottish contemporary writing with Czech emotional candour.Before the music starts, the announcer tells us about the Young Musicians Pass scheme, which has given 2,500 young people tickets to the festival this year. Fifty of them are here today, dotted through the audience, and you can feel the ripple of energy they bring to the room.The Queen’s Hall, once a Georgian church, is now one of Edinburgh’s most diverse and beloved live music venues. Its conversion h...

Up Late with Alabaster DePlume – The Hub

10Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Up Late with Alabaster DePlume – The Hub

It is one of those nights at The Hub that I will not quite shake off, in both the best and the slightly sourest sense of the word. Alabaster DePlume, Angus Fairbairn, mid-forties Mancunian jazz poet supreme, takes to the stage in Palisadeau colours. ‘Genocide’, he gives it a name, and then he mentions that one of the festival’s backers also supports the regime in Israel. That the Festival by association supports the regime. A couple of audience members stand up and quietly leave. The tension is immediate, and it ripples through the room. It does not need to go there, but maybe it was always inevitable, he has, after all, never been capable of separating his politics from his performing.But, politics aside, back to the music. The saxophone work is exceptional, rich with tone, breath, and at...

10Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Bach and Bartok – Usher Hall

The Edinburgh International Festival treats me to a musical triptych tonight at the Usher Hall, a concert in three sharply contrasting acts, delivered with precision and flair by the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer. Fischer, now in his mid-70’s and one of Europe’s most admired conductors, has the air of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing and, perhaps, is savouring these final years at the helm. Co-founder of the orchestra back in 1983 with Zoltán Kocsis, he’s built a reputation not only for musical excellence but also for a willingness to experiment, from autism-friendly “Cocoa Concerts” to informal beanbag performances. There’s an ease and playfulness in his direction, the sort of confidence that comes from a career well cemented in the history books, but still curious...