John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts

October 5, 2019 / Concert Reviews - Archive

Ashfield Town Hall, September 15 9/10 Here was one to lodge in the memory. Here were sounds, idioms, moods and torrential energies never before combined, and together they made an unfamiliar emotion well up inside you, I believe called joyousness.  This was what the Sydney Sacred Music Festival has been…

September 30, 2019 / Album Reviews - Archive

EVANS IN ENGLAND (Resonance/Birdland) 8/10 Before the tour on which this previously unreleased double album was recorded at Ronnie Scott’s in London, Bill Evans’ mother caught the pianist’s trio in Washington DC. Coming backstage, she said she couldn’t hear her son because Marty Morrell’s drums were too loud. Following no…

September 29, 2019 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Drama Theatre, September 13 6.5/10 “What’s so good about putting words together?” asks Henry, a playwright. Tom Stoppard, a real playwright, incorporates reviewing his own writing into what he facetiously – or not – calls The Real Thing. In fact, one could almost review this play entirely using Stoppard’s words…