The Hub Archives - North West End UK

19Aug

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

The Unseen Truth: Sarah Lewis – The Hub

Sarah Lewis takes to The Hub stage at this year's Edinburgh International Festival, analysing the power of culture as a means of justice rather than by law in her talk The Unseen Truth. Lewis is an art historian and Associate Professor of the Humanities and African American studies at Harvard University, leading the popular course, Vision and Justice: The Art of Race and American Citizenship. Discussing ideas from her book of the same title (The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America) Lewis delves into the historical misrepresentation of people of colour in America and focuses on those who combated this misrepresentation, most notably the work of abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965). Lewis explores Dougla...

Up Late with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – The Hub

19Aug

By Danielle FarrowNo Comments

Scotland

Up Late with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – The Hub

Against the backdrop of an ornately carved wooden pulpit and screen, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith communes with her audience through her music, with Persian rugs below her black modern-tech-laden table, and colourful rib vaulting arching high above her in The Hub’s Main Hall, originally a Church of Scotland debating chamber. This juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary creations is a suitable setting for her distinctive voice and compositions. Smith uses Buchla synthesizers, whose original creator Don Buchla apparently intended his instruments to make new sounds, rather than simply imitating existing instruments and sounds. This marries very well with Smith’s pioneering work, which draws on classical training and a type of synesthesia in which sounds form physical sensations for her. Wat...

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...

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...