He wrote his first piece when a boy, by way of trying to woo a girl. That he failed in his quest didn’t cause Wayne Shorter too much angst, however, because he already saw art as a doorway to adventures of a more internal sort. Chasing girls was put on…
Category: Features – Archive
He was 75 when he finally did it. That’s an age at which most singers’ breath-control is declining, their range diminishing and their tone becoming clouded with rasps and wheezes. No one told Tony Bennett. He walked into a New York studio in 2001, four weeks after 9/11, and delivered…
Graeme Thompson SMALL HOURS – THE LONG NIGHT OF JOHN MARTYN (Omnibus) 8.5/10 Samuel Taylor Coleridge described the performances of great early-19th-century actor Edmund Kean as “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning”. Something similar could be said of listening to John Martyn’s most compelling music, with his lyrics carrying…