MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

  I rarely write reviews but I have been a fan of Nicki Wells for many years, rowing her boat on Twitter endlessly for the quality of her voice, an instrument that has been best demonstrated in the Indian classical music that she has become known for (particularly in her work with Nitin Sawhney and Kefaya among many others).    The stratospheric heights she can reach are startling in that idiom, but the voice has greater flexibility and range than is shown in that work, and on this solo album, we get to hear its unique quality, precision and expression.   Ellipsis  is a restrained, but very immediate album, with the voice often upfront in the mix, raw and uncompressed, and we even get to hear the guts and moving parts of her piano. Wells is an accomplished musician and melodist too; on 'Carry On', a song about rebirth and overcoming whatever is set before us,  her multilayered vocal harmonies burst from the tight mix into an epic choral tapestry create...

When - eventually - the world is declared 'normal' again and there are no lockdowns, enforced social distancing, closures of theatres and coronavirus is largely suppressed by vaccines, the performing arts world will emerge a very different beast. So, too, will audiences. It is optimistic to think that audiences will flood back as before, and although a large proportion of them will, I think that the immediate post-pandemic period may be even riskier than the disruption of 2020 itself. COVID was unquestionably a disaster for many companies (and particularly individuals) but I would also wager that many mid to large scale companies will have actually found their finances in decent order this year. The largesse of audiences, a reduction in the spending on work, often panicked, opportunistic staff reductions and the risk elements of audience response removed, the balance sheet will be better for some than it has been for many years. The support of furlough along with the man...

Since the start of this pandemic, we have cycled through endless conspiracy theories about why we are in lockdown, why we shouldn't be in lockdown and even whether the virus is anything more than a mild head-cold. One of the most common justifications for covid denial is that 'there is an epidemic of suicide' as a consequence of it. There isn't, but that won't stop people using it as a reason to unleash furious diatribes on that basis. And the real kicker to all of this is that the people who often use it are the sort of Brexit/Tommy Robinson 'libertarians' who really don't give a fig about the deaths of people (I find they are also Grenfell-deniers and racists, too). Which leads me on to what I have been recently observing on an almost daily basis as a perfect demonstration of the kind of duplicities these people can indulge in; mental health baiting. The exemplar target of this would be Janey Godley, a Scottish comedian who came to my attention pri...

I had it all planned. Tonight would have been the 31st opening night of my Opera Holland Park career. And my last, too. I retire from the company  on the 30th September  this year and I had intended to use the ten weeks of music-making and the conviviality for which the venue is famed as a backdrop to say an awful lot of farewells. Those after show drinks, served in coup, flute and miniature and usually filled with a concoction of James Clutton's invention will be no more. Anxious looks at the weather forecast are gone too (not a loss) but most of all, I have been shorn of the chance to celebrate with all the team after each – always different – adrenalin filled night of wonderment; committed professionals who, like the singers who come off the stage, are crackling with the release of the night's pressures, having made a contribution to the enrichment of a thousand people. After all, that is the particular elixir we crave and it is why we do it. I'm not dwelling too much on...

Today it was announced that on September 30 th , 2020, I will be taking early retirement from my role at Opera Holland Park.   Ernest Hemingway once said that 'retirement is the ugliest word in the language' and in recent months, as I contemplated my own, I have come to know what he meant. Even though it is merely a word to describe my departure from Opera Holland Park after thirty-one years, it does 'catch' a bit. Which brings me onto George Burns who said that 'retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.'  I still have metaphorical pimples and remain as childish as ever, so I'm sticking with George's philosophy.    I'm not retiring in the conventional sense. I am retiring from Opera Holland Park, a formal, recognised conclusion of a life's work. It says 'my work here is done', not that my working life is. There are one or two big projects still in me. I am grateful to th...