John Shand Posts

June 10, 2014 / Album Reviews - Archive

The Mango Balloon Volume 3 (Romero/Newmarket)  Comedies are shorter than dramas because they find our boredom threshold faster. Music is the same: jollity palls sooner than ripping out our hearts. Few operate in both camps, and fewer still effect a balance. Guitarist Julian Curwin is one. When he first started…

June 7, 2014 / Concert Reviews - Archive

City Recital Hall, June 4 In layering jazz into traditional and contemporary Greek music Charles Lloyd and Maria Farantouri miraculously avoid creating another anaemic cultural fusion (to join the world-wide infestation). The triumph is how remarkably intact and separate the two elements remain while intertwining, like two lovers whose individual…

June 5, 2014 / Concert Reviews - Archive

York Theatre, May 31  Confession time. I know critics aren’t supposed to deal in the currency of expectations, but I’d half-envisioned being smoothed into a state of erasure by a Larry Carlton concert, or exhausted by the unrelenting good taste. More fool me. Yes, Carlton’s guitar playing was impeccably tasteful,…