Joan Sutherland Theatre, June 4 6/10 No show has had a high-contrast beginning, middle and end quite like this. Of course it’s not often one’s middle name becomes the catalyst not just for a new persona, but for a whole body of work. Esperanza Spalding took time out from her…
John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts
RATJA YALIYALI (CAAMA Music) 8/10 We Johnny-come-lately settlers seem to have built a wall around indigenous culture, not to protect it, but to isolate it. We can squat here for a lifetime, flitting overseas for “culture hits” and never engaging with what is in our backyards, let alone beginning to…
City Recital Hall, June 3 7.5/10 The moment came in Skylark. The almost relentlessly buzzing imagination and invention fell away as Gary Versace began a piano solo so soft, so sparse and so fragile that Ulysses Owens stopped playing the drums altogether and Clark Sommers provided the barest underpinning on…