John Shand Posts

May 16, 2018 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Hayes Theatre, April 28 7.5/10 They were both married, so it was just a brief affair in the Mexican summer of 1937 between the political revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, 57, and the artistic revolutionary, Frida Kahlo, 29. “What,” asks the eccentric musical Carmen Live or Dead, “if that affair had resulted…

May 13, 2018 / Album Reviews - Archive

MOTHER (ABC) 8.5/10 In concert George Xylouris and Jim White conjure up a mighty sound for just a duo, given that the former plays lute or lyra and the latter (of Dirty Three fame) a drum-kit. Here that sheer mass often seems like a wall of water: a vast wave…

May 12, 2018 / Features

Jacob Collier’s response to Quincy Jones’s offer to produce his first album was certainly novel: “Can we just be friends?” This was a London kid, whose ingenious reimagining of such songs as Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely? had gone viral on YouTube, knocking back the producer of all those Michael…