John Shand Posts

April 5, 2018 / Features - Archive

Years after he had a hit with a bossa nova version of Paul McCartney’s song The Fool on the Hill, Sergio Mendes received a letter from the Beatle thanking him for his interpretation. Burt Bacharach was similarly appreciative of what Mendes did with The Look of Love. In the late…

April 3, 2018 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Lennox Theatre, March 17 5/10 The gap between intent and outcome is the hardest artistic chasm to bridge. The second hardest is to detach the work of art from the causal impetus, so it becomes self-contained, rather than being reliant on the audience’s sympathy for the artist’s peeves du jour.…

April 1, 2018 / Features - Archive

The luminous soprano extension to her voice melted away years ago, but that was just the snowy peak of her singing, anyway, not the mountain. The mountain was her conviction. Even back in high school Joan Baez took a lone stance against participating in a nuclear war drill. This was…