Suzanne Vega at Cadogan Hall

We went to see Suzanne Vega tonight at Cadogan Hall in London (Suzanne seems to like that venue, she's played there enough times now). This is part of her short British tour to promote the new album,  'Lover, Beloved' that holds the music for her stage show about Carson McCullers. The new record is released on Friday and Suzanne played six of the songs from it - all well worth investing in. She's already played around Europe and the photos are from one of her shows in Germany (courtesy of Willem Melsson on Facebook).

It was a show of several parts, starting off with a selection of her greatest hits (she has so many that it's always a surprise which she chooses to play) followed by a set showcasing four of the new songs followed by more hits. The encore gave us two more of the new songs.

We had 'Marlene on the Wall' (with the top hat, obviously), 'Luka', 'Tom's Diner', 'The Queen & The Soldier', 'Gypsy', 'I Never Wear White', 'Crack in the Wall', 'Small Blue Thing', 'Caramel' and a host of others. I've said it before and I probably will say it again, but I love Suzanne's voice and it's as strong as ever. It soothes and relaxes, it forces her words into your brain almost effortlessly, usually accompanied by her strumming on her guitar.

And that's something worth considering for the new songs - some of them lead off with piano and it was quite a surprise to hear her singing to a largely piano backing. It created a different tone to the new songs, a new feeling when guitar isn't the lead musical instrument - and I liked it.  The new songs are part of a whole, a show about a specific person, so they do sound a bit different to the rest of the set - they're out of context so they would do - but they're really good and bring another layer to Suzanne's voice.

As ever, it took Suzanne a few songs to start talking, more than a 'thank you' to acknowledge the applause, and I love hearing her talk, her dry wit and obvious humour.  She's been at this game for a long time now and has played all over the world with all sorts of other artists but she's still herself, almost stubbornly so. And I wouldn't have her any other way. She's still creative and gets out there to play her songs. She's written some classics in the past and she's still pushing forward with new songs and projects and the songs from the Carson McCullers show sound excellent - I look forward to hearing them all. Even better, hear them all in the context of the show. It's opening in America next year so here's hoping it's a success and is brought over here at some point.

Thank you for a lovely evening Suzanne - I look forward to the next time!

Fra Angelico at Museo del Prado, Madrid

I first heard about the Prado in Madrid and it's marvellous treasures forty years ago in 1976 when I started doing history of art at school but I'd never visited it until last month.  I was sensible and bought tickets in advance online so avoiding the enormous queue for day tickets. It was incredibly exciting to walk into that building for the first time after all these years of hearing about it - I wanted to see everything straight away, all at the same time, to bound round the corridors drinking in the incredible art on its walls.

But, first, I had to visit the Fra Angelico paintings and, as luck would have it, a large sign was hanging from the ceiling pointing the way to the Prado's latest acquisition, the 'Virgin of the Pomegranate' straight ahead and turn right. I couldn't help but catch the colour palette of a small Raphael on my left as I went into the room but it was the Virgin that my eyes were fixed on. There were a couple of people obscuring the view as I walked up to it but, miraculously, they moved on just as I got there. The Fra was with me.

The painting was acquired earlier this year from the Alba ducal collection along with a small panel that's on display behind the Virgin, apparently the last painting by Fra Angelico in a private collection. It's acquisition was a great triumph for the Prado and lucky for us that we can now see it at the Prado whenever we want. It's not very big but is truly gorgeous, covered in gold leaf and dripping in bright colours - the lapis lazuli used to create the blue of the Virgin's cloak probably cost as much as all the gold in the painting.

The colours have been marvellously preserved, probably because it's been in a  private collection for so long. The tooling of the golden haloes is astonishing and the golden cloak held by the angels is a marvel to behold, almost with the texture of silken chain-mail - it doesn't show in this photo but get up close to the painting and you can see it. Imagine seeing this painting in context back in the 15th Century lit by flickering candles and it must have been blinding in its magnificence, the colours having a heavenly glow about them and the light reflected back from all the tooling and reflections in the golden cloak. It must have been astonishing.

Mounted on the back of the display cabinet for the Virgin is a small predella panel for the 'Death of Saint Anthony Abbot'. I'm not sure which altarpiece this was part of the predella for (the paintings along the bottom of the main altar image) so that leaves me with some homework. My favourite person in the painting is the monk to the right with both arms raised in shock that echoes the actions of one of the monks in Giotto's frescoes in the chapel in Santa Croce in Florence on the death of Saint Francis.

Standing in front of the Virgin and looking to the right, through the doorway and up a few stairs is a masterpiece by Fra Angelico that I've seen many times in books but never in the flesh, 'The Annunciation'. I don't know if the frame is original but the glorious altarpiece retains its predella with scenes from the the life of the Virgin, ending with her death and ascension.

The colours in this altarpiece are wonderful, with rich pinks and blues and the gold leaf haloes you expect to see. On the left we see Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden in rough clothing, a scene that merges with the Virgin's garden outside her house, full of delicate plants and flowers - I saw carnations in bud in the garden but couldn't identify the other plants. Gabriel is ethereal and delicate, bowing gracefully before the mother of god to be as he delivers the news that she will be the mother of the Christ.

After I'd looked at the details I took a few steps back and sat on the bench conveniently situated in front of the altarpiece to gaze and absorb the beauty of this painting. So simple and so complex at the same time. How beautiful it is.

Then, with a backward glance, I went off to explore the rest of the Prado's amazing collection (and the Raphael I'd glimpsed earlier). Halls full of Rubens and Titians and Velazquez's and so many, many more, lunch in the full to capacity cafe, then Goyas and a host of artists I'd never heard of. Five hours later I was back sitting in front of 'The Annunciation' and saying farewell to the 'Virgin of the Pomegranate' before heading to the shop to buy postcards and other images of these glorious paintings as keepsakes.

I've finally been to the Prado and I've seen the glory of Fra Angelico once again. Brother Giovanni never lets you down.

Impressionists and Moderns: Masterpieces from the Phillips Collection at CaixaForum, Madrid

One of the joys of wandering round a strange city is that you never know what you might find. On the way to Museo Reina Sofia, walking down the road past the Prado, we stumbled across an odd building with a garden growing on one of the outside walls and saw a large poster highlighting a Degas painting of ballet dancers. It was the Madrid branch of the excellent CaixaForum in an exciting new building which provides the perfect space for exhibitions. The current exhibition was 'Impressionists and Moderns: Masterpieces from the Phillips Collection'.

I've not heard of the Phillips Collection but it's based in Washington, USA, and is an astonishing collection of 'modern' paintings in the European tradition. There were 60 paintings in this exhibition ranging from the neo-classical of Ingres and romanticism of Constable in the early-1800s to abstract paintings from the 1970s. It almost felt like a greatest hits of painters in the last 200 years - you name him and he's there (yes, overwhelmingly male painters other than Berthe Morisot). Delacroix, Degas, Cezanne, Picasso, Braques, Bonnard, Kandinsky and so many more.

One of the early paintings that grabbed my attention was 'The Road to Vetheull' by Monet, a simple but lovely landscape painted in the late afternoon, presumably returning home after a long walk. The colours are marvellous and the shadows tell us the time but where has the artist been and where is he going? What's round the bend in the road? I want to know.  I could almost imagine myself trudging along that road, aiming for the teashop for a cup of tea and cake on my return from a day out exploring the countryside. The sight of the village in the distance shows that I'm almost there. M. Monet knows how to draw you into a painting.

Another painting that made me look again was 'The Riviera' by Pierre Bonnard, another landscape full of colour and shape and motion. Painted from a high vantage point, this painting is full of vegetation and light, bright, sunlit colours and you can imagine the bushes and trees swaying in the breeze. A chateau is central in the middle distance and, perhaps, that's where Bonnard was staying?

Another landscape that pulled me in was 'Courmayear et les Dents des Geants' by Oskar Kokoschka, again full of colour and inviting me to stride around the jagged mountains in the painting. I'm not usually a big fan of landscapes but these paintings were excellent and pulled me in. I've never associated Mr Kokoschka with sunny landscapes before so I've obviously got a lot more to learn.

A final painting I'd single out is Matisse's 'Interior with Egyptian Curtains' from 1948. He's used this kind of composition before, an indoors scene looking out of a window - often of a palm tree - and this has a power to draw the eyes. It's so simple yet so effective. I can almost hear the palm leaves rustling in the breeze outside the window, those simple dashes of green and blue perfectly summing up the swaying palm leaves. How does he do it?

There were, of course, lots of other paintings to mention but I can't do that here - buy the catalogue online if you'd like (CaixaForum had an excellent shop). The Collection really is a 'greatest hits' of the best of 'modern' art and I'll certainly keep my eyes open for any future exhibitions involving the Phillips Collection.

I'm delighted to have discover the CaixaForum, a great space for exhibiting art and a lovely comfortable feeling to the place as well. I loved the lime green toilets on the 6th floor and the garden wall beside the entrance - that's partly what attracted me to the building in the first place, seeing the gardeners tidying up the wall for Autumn.

I plan to visit the CaixaForum in Barcelona in November to see an exhibition from the Thyssen-Bornimesza Collection so it'll be interesting to compare the two spaces. I wonder if it'll have lime green toilets as well?

Winifred Knights at Dulwich Picture Gallery

I went to see the exhibition of paintings by Winifred Knights at the Dulwich Picture Gallery a few weeks ago, in it's last week so it's now closed. Winifred's is not a name I've come across before but she seems to have been highly thought of during her life-time, winning prestigious prizes and commissions. The exhibition didn't give me much of an insight into her life or motivations but it showed me a good selection of her works, including preparatory sketches for the main works.

I'll only pick out a few of the paintings that I think most represent her work and, oddly enough, they're all religious. Some of her early paintings were about working class themes, with strikers outside a factory or hordes of people streaming out factory gates - all good Methodist stock no doubt. But it's more classical themes she gravitated to, such as 'The Marriage at Cana'.

The captions tell us that she greatly admired the early Italian Renaissance painters and that's quite evident in the composition of this painting, everything clearly delineated, the light colour palette, everything calm and in good order, even hiding herself behind a tree sketching. The woman bending over at front-right of the painting will be bending over forever since there's little hint at movement in the painting. We see the guests and the marriage feast (each with slices of pink melon for some reason) and everyone turned toward the right to see what is going on. We see the studied perspective of the straight lines and the trees gradually vanishing away into the forest, all very early Renaissance as painters moved away from the Gothic styles and methods of painting. The paint on the canvas is also terribly light so you can see the texture of the canvas underneath.

Another painting that caught my eye was 'The Santissima Trinita', painted over several years in the late 1920s after Winifred and her lover had joined the pilgrimage in northern Italy, with some pilgrims sleeping in a field of the cutest haystacks ever (can haystacks be cute?) and there we have Winifred again, to the left under the open umbrella, while other pilgrims are washing in the river. Just like 'The Marriage', it uses a light palette and is very still, you can almost feel the heat making the weary pilgrims weary and want to doze off. It's rather stylised and, in a sense, is almost two paintings, the modern British post-Slade school of the bottom half of the painting while the background landscape could be in from a Piero Della Francesca painting.

The painting that shrieked 'early Renaissance' at me was 'Scenes From The Life Of Saint Martin of Tours' - as soon as I saw it across the room the colours immediately made think of small Raphael paintings using those reds and blues. The painting includes three scenes from St Martin's life: when he gave a beggar his cloak, when he cured a baby and, finally, when he had a vision of Christ. It's bright with Mediterranean sun and the colours are brilliant and shine across the room.

Interestingly, I've just noticed that the above three paintings are in rough chronological order, which is a coincidence on my part, but perhaps also serve to show how she sought her own way into her art, from draftsmanship, composition to colour and greater expressiveness? Maybe.

The painting we were supposed to go 'wow' at was 'The Deluge' from 1920, a big painting with lots of preparatory sketches hung beside it. I wasn't all that keen, to be honest. The colours are drab, the poses fixed and lack movement, perhaps a result of and demonstrating post-war ennui? I don't know, but it didn't move me or make me wonder in the way the other paintings did.

The exhibition is now closed. It was worth going to see the works of this seemingly 'lost' painter of the first half of the 20th Century. I'd be interested in seeing more of her works but I'm not sure that's likely to happen any time soon. Or maybe this exhibition will stimulate renewed interest in Winifred?

Georgia O'Keeffe at Tate Modern

Ok, so I didn't know much about Georgia O'Keeffe other than she painted simple flowers, and that's it. There must be more to her than that if she's got a major exhibition at Tate Modern, I thought, so I popped along. And now I know a lot more and am intrigued. It's also nice to know that she had her first public exhibition in 1916, exactly 100 years ago.

It's an impressive exhibition, big and well curated with a wide range of her work on display. I also liked the way her writings were displayed and I (unusually for me) took the time to read them and they helped shed light on her work. Such as a large book in a glass case that seems to be a diary with Georgia writing about how her friends all wanted to write the Great American Novel but would travel to Europe at the drop of a hat and how she wanted to paint the Great American Painting. She didn't know what that would look like so she added a stripe of red and blue to a painting of a white skull she found in the dessert and commented that people might not like it but they would notice it. I certainly did.

Elsewhere there was some writing on the wall that quoted her on flowers, 'Nobody sees a flower really, it is too small... I'll paint what I see, what the flower is to me, but I'll paint it big...' and that's exactly what she did. In a sense, that's entirely the right thing to do - this is *my* flower, this is how *I* see it - rather than trying to create a perfect reproduction in paint. She took the same approach to painting 'Autumn Leaves' and these paintings shout out loud that it's autumn, gorgeously coloured in the shades of autumn.

A lot of the paintings on display are based on the natural world, on what Georgia saw around her - flowers and leaves, lakes, hills and mountains but, oddly, I don't think of her as a landscape painter. She seems to paint elements of the landscape rather than landscapes themselves, suggesting shapes and colours that make your own mind fill in the rest.

She did, of course, also paint landscapes and these are strange and mysterious, undulating shapes representing hills, the bare landscapes around her in New Mexico where she lived.

I particularly liked 'Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico' that creates a feeling of what it's like to be in that landscape, the creased and wrinkled landscape like an old person lying there with the weight of the world on them. Blue in the distance, red up close, using colour theories to reflect the world around us. That's a landscape I'd like to explore, to tramp around, harsh but beautiful (and probably dusty). I'd take a bottle of water and a hat with me.

There's a lot to see in this exhibition and it's well worth visiting. I enjoyed it so much I bought a book about Georgia in the extensive shop at the end of the exhibition because I want to know more about her. One of the first captions in the exhibition was, 'She decided to be an artist before she was 12 years old'. Anyone who is capable of making that kind of decision at that young age and then delivering on it is worth knowing about. The exhibition is on until the end of October so I hope to visit it again and take another look at these extraordinary paintings.

Penny Arcade at Soho Theatre

Penny Arcade says 'protect your authenticity' and I take that to heart. Penny has brought her Edinburgh Fringe show, 'Longing Lasts Longer', to London but has cut it down to only 60 minutes since that seems to be the rather odd policy of the Soho Theatre. To make up for that she came out 10 minutes early to start chatting and introducing the show as people were seated. I breathed a sigh of relief when she said that people didn't need to worry about sitting near the front since she didn't pick on people - she said she doesn't need to since she already has material and the show was written before we came in. Such a sensible lady! I saw Penny four years ago when she did her 'Bitch! Dyke!' show at the Arcola Tent in Dalston so it was nice to get re-acquainted with her.

I've said 'show' a few times already but is it really a show? or is it performance? is it dictat? is it social commentary? is it stand-up? It's probably all of these things and more, written by a clever woman with original thoughts in her head that she wants to share and poke fun where you least expect it.

She started off with damning the gentrification of New York and, by extension, London. That struck a chord since I'd been to the site of the Malaysian restaurant Melati on Great Windmill Street for dinner earlier in the evening to find it had closed and was replaced by some trendy-looking restaurant/bar. The originality is being sucked out of cities to homogenise them, the weirdness and danger is being tamed by money and that's certainly happened to Soho over the last decade with music venues and sex shops being replaced by coffee bars, offices and barbers.

One of the attractions of Penny's thoughts is that she's lived through interesting times from the late 60s onwards and been part of the underground for much of that time so she has a different take on social change. She has anecdotes for every circumstance and she is funny when she wants and a killer when needed. She hones in on PR and advertising and slays it by explaining it's background and what it aims to achieve. She gets young people in her sights because of the impacts of society on them that mean they live in a different world from older people, starting off life with enormous debts for student loans rather than just having fun. She kills the idea that she's nostalgic for the past by saying she was raped in the 60s, the 70s was a trashy decade, the 80s saw lots of friends die of AIDS - what's there to be nostalgic about?

Above all, it's important to be yourself, be the you that your secret heart knows you are. That's the difference between crowds and packs - people in crowds want to blend in and be the same, people in packs want to shout out their own wild ideas and develop them. Penny is definitely a leader of the pack.

At the age of 66 (as she remained us several times) there's a lot of life left in her fighting to get out and I'm pleased she shared some of herself with us tonight. I will certainly do all I can to protect my own authenticity. Thank you for the ride Penny!

PS: Penny no longer has the red hair in the pictures, it's more of a platinum blonde with purple highlights. Tasteful as ever.  

'Kenny Morgan' at the Arcola Theatre

This week we went to see a new play, 'Kenny Morgan' at the Arcola Theatre, a play about the events that led Terrence Rattigan to write 'The Deep Blue Sea' that has just closed at the National Theatre. I saw 'The Deep Blue Sea' earlier in the summer and it's still fresh in my mind so it was easy to see the similarities in the plotting.

'The Deep Blue Sea' is the tale of a woman who leaves her older, distinguished husband for a younger and more energetic man, a war hero and pilot with glamour and a future. It opens with Hester being found on the floor beside her gas fire in her drab little flat having attempted suicide but, luckily, the gas metre has run out of shillings. 'Kenny Morgan' is the tale of a young actor who leaves his distinguished play-write lover for a younger actor with energy and the glamour of youth. It opens with Kenneth lying on the floor in front of his gas fire in his dark flat in Camden Town... So, yes, there are similarities in the plotting and this follows throughout the play but it's what happens between the characters that captures and retains the interest.

Interwoven throughout the play are themes of homosexuality which was illegal back then, although everyone in the drab little boarding house in Camden seem to know that Kenny and Carl are lovers. Kenny rails at Terrence for hiding their love affair when they were together, with Kenny having to live in a separate flat in the same building in case Terrence's mother found out. Was this true or is a plot device to help explain why Kenny left his comfortable life with Terrence in favour of the penniless actor Carl?

The play slowly unfolds over the course of the day as Kenny receives visitors after his 'accident' and we learn more about the central characters. We're told, almost as a throw-away line that Kenny first met Carl when he found him asleep in his bed, one of Terrence's cast-off play-things. Whether true or not hardly matters, it shines more light on an unknowable plot. Kenny is clearly the junior partner in the relationship with the 19 year old Carl, just as he was with the much older Terrence, and at one point kneels at Carl's feet to brush his shoes. His desperation for the relationship to continue, to have Carl "love" him, to have a meaning in his life is quite poignant in a way.

I enjoyed this play a lot, possibly more so that 'The Deep Blue Sea', maybe because it was on a small stage in a small theatre, making it feel more claustrophobic and intense. Paul Keating was good as Kenny and so was Simon Dutton at Terrence, with George Irvings as the mysterious Mr Ritter, Daffy Lloyd as the upstairs neighbour, Pierro Neil-Mee as the equally mixed-up Alec and Lowenna Melrose as Norma, the girl-friend Alec brings home for a random shag. I think my favourite was Marlene Sidaway as Mrs Simpson, owner of the boarding house and general busy-body - I thought she was excellent. It was written by Mike Poulton and directed by Lucy Bailey. Well done Arcola for staging it originally and bringing it back for a short run. It deserves a wider audience.

Let's Face It, I'm Not Going To ...

I'm not sure what's happened - maybe it's the sunshine over the summer - but it doesn't look like I'm going to blog about seeing 'Richard III' at the Almeida...

... or 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at The Globe ...

... or 'Sweeney Todd' at the Theatre Royal Stratford East...

... or 'Titanic' at Charing Cross Theatre...

... or 'The Seagull' at the National Theatre...

... or 'Macbeth' at The Globe...

... or 'Allegro' at Southwark Playhouse

... or 'Ivanov' at the National Theatre

... or 'The Plough and The Stars' at the National Theatre...

... or maybe I will when inspiration strikes. They were all good and well worth seeing.

Two Gigs - Pet Shop Boys and Proms 19 Bowie Night

In the last month or so I've been to two big gigs: Pet Shop Boys 'Inner Sanctum' show at the Royal Opera House to promote their new record, 'Super'; and the Proms tribute night to David Bowie with string arrangements of some of his classic songs at the Royal Albert Hall. Rather than gigs, these were really concerts given the venues and despite the pop/rock nature of them both. And there's nothing wrong with a concert.

As recent convert to all things Royal Opera House I was interested to see what the Pet Shop Boys would do with that venerable red and gold auditorium and how the place would cope with marauding Pet Shop Boys fans... well, not quite marauding because your average PSB fan is, shall we say, largely past the marauding age. The bar seemed to have discovered beer and the ushers even allowed you to take glasses into the auditorium (something unheard of!). Ten the lights went down, the grand curtains lifted and the thump-thump-thump of electronic beats started. It was time for the Pet Shop Boys!

The show opened with lasers flashing and two big domes slowly turning revealing the lads to the sound of 'Inner Sanctum' from the new album and then mayhem was released with the best laser show ever - the '80s were good for something after all! It really was astonishing sitting there with these incredible lights and lasers firing off everywhere and creating patterns and shapes of wonder with those loud beats (phat beats anyone?) pulsing around the auditorium. At one point I looked round wondering when one of the balconies might collapse due to the endless thumping.

Song after song kept the atmosphere electric with a very eclectic selection of hits and favourites as well as a liberal sprinkling of songs from the new record. 'West End Girls' was, surprisingly, the second song to be played, and I quite liked that - get the obvious hit out of the way to keep us guessing later on. I loved hearing 'Winner', their Olympic song from London 2012 and the best song that summer, 'The Sodom and Gomorrah Show', the bouncy 'Love, Etc', 'New York City Boy', 'The Pop Kids' from the new record, 'It's A Sin' and the great 'Go West'. The encore was 'Domino Dancing' and 'Always On My Mind' with an outdo version of 'The Pop Kids' for good measure. The 'fat-suit' dancers at the end were inspired, something totally alien to that stage which is used to the athletic, powerful bodies of ballet dancers.

The second concert was on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms summer series and was dedicated to the music of David Bowie. Back in January, Amanda Palmer and Jherek Bischoff released an EP of six Bowie songs as a tribute to his passing. All were rearranged by Jherek for a string quartet and they made a suitably startling attempt at reinterpreting some of Mr Bowie's classics. That worked really well, but would it translate into a two-hour concert with various composers and arrangers re-arranging his music for the string orchestra that filled the stage?

It was a strange affair put together by Andre de Ridder and his chamber orchestra Stargaze. I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't a long-rehearsed show of hits, but rather a set of re-arrangements for strings with guest vocalists but what worked for half an hour on Amanda's EP didn't really manage to sustain it over a full two-hours show. Possibly the problem was having too many different people doing the arrangements and too many different singers? If you're going to do something like this then you need big names and with the best will in the world you can't really consider someone like Neil Hannon 'big'.  The biggest pop name was Marc Almond and he wasn't really on form, only starting to come alive with a sing-along 'Starman'. The biggest 'cult' name was John Cale who actually brought most a band onstage for his three-song mini-set of 'Valentine's Day' 'Sorrow' and 'Space Oddity'. I liked his 'Sorrow' but 'Space Oddity' just went on and on and on ...

The women were far more powerful and imposing than the men. Anna Calvi did a haunting version of 'Lady Grinning Soul', Laura Mvula did a good job at trying to funk up a string version of 'Fame' and Amanda Palmer did a powerful 'Heroes'. Highlight of the evening was Amanda's and Anna's duet on 'Backstair' with Jherek prowling behind them with his guitar slashes.  That received a huge round of applause and, no doubt, lots of new fans for the two singers.

The concert ended with the usual 'get everyone back on stage for a sing-along' to the frankly weird choice of 'After All' from 'The Man Who Sold The World'. Why that song? Who chose it when there are so many great songs to send us out into the night on a high? Amanda, of course, brought her baby son on stage for that encore - what a collection of baby photos he's going to have when he grows up!

If a winner is needed then the gold medal easily goes to those Pet Shop Boys for a fabulous show - I want to live in that laser show! The Proms comes second for a worthy idea that, for me at least, didn't really work. But good on ye for trying.

All photos nicked from the internet, with thanks.