Music – Reviews Archive

  Berlin’s Signum Saxophone Quartet face the same challenge as any cover band. How do you stay true to the original and push the boundaries enough to say something new? The quartet’s performance at City Recital Hall with celebrated Australian soprano singer …

Music is the language of us all The Cat Empire’s latest show at the Sydney Opera House was an electrifying display of the band’s capacity to escape all limits of genre. Performing for the first time alongside the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the …

Image courtesy of Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Photo: Jay Patel. Jean Sibelius is undoubtedly Finland’s most celebrated composer. While typically remembered for his passionate symphonic works and concertos, Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä’s latest show at the Sydney Opera House reveals a more enigmatic …

Since Ray Charles created Soul music in the mid-1950s by combining Gospel ecstasy with the secular (and sexual) themes of the Blues, the genre has given us almost an embarrassment of astonishing vocalists. Charles himself, Smokey Robinson, David Ruffin, Chaka Khan, Otis …

Karakorum: A Medieval Musical Journey provides an unexpected but delightful experience as the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Choir collaborate with French ensemble La Camera delle Lacrime and renowned Australian actor David Wenham as narrator. The enterprising Paul Dyer, whose exiguous regard for concert convention has seen …

This joyful opening concert of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s 2018 season celebrates 16th and 17th century English choral and chamber music by Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell, Locke and Handel, and closes with the Australian premiere of Vaughan Williams’ ‘Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’ …

Australia’s greatest export, AC/DC, have for almost half a century kept the beating heart of rock and roll alive. Despite their sound becoming more buffed and polished as time has gone by, despite the rooms going from humid pubs to the world’s …

Picture, if you will, a medieval Italian countryside at dusk. It is the height of summer, the harvested wheat stands in sheaths, and the hum of insects fills the air. The light is gauzy with lingering heat and lengthening shadows. Such is …

Friday night at the Yarra Hotel was the place to be. That’s where The Tall Grass, a Sydney band with singer/songwriters Peter Fenton and Jamie Hutchings at its core staged the Melbourne launch of its first album, Down The Unmarked Road. Seriously …

The powerhouse duo of Vika Bull and Debra Byrne will perform Tapestry: The Songs of Carole King at the Enmore Theatre on February 10 and at Anita’s Theatre, Thirroul on February 11. These two much-loved Australian vocalists celebrated the 45th birthday of King’s …