Music

This wonderful posthumous collection gives us another half an hour in the company of Leonard Cohen

There are so many wonderful soloists with whom, if you simply close your eyes and listen, the performance experience is complete. Not so with American fireball Sandy Cameron, a virtuoso violinist whose visual artistry is fundamental to her musical delivery.

In his first SCO season concert since assuming the SCO principal conductorship, Maxim Emelyanychev unveiled intriguing clues of what we can expect from the 31-year-old Russian as he develops his relationship with his new orchestra.

Kate Bush only ever embarked on one tour in 1979, effectively retiring from playing live before undertaking her 2014 residency at the Hammersmith Apollo. But before the release of her debut album The Kick Inside, she gigged regularly in pubs and clubs around London with musicians Brian Bath, Vic King and Del Palmer, performing covers and originals.

The British Heart Foundation is set to benefit from the release of a ‘new’ Beggars Mantle album – 30 years after the popular Fife group disbanded.

Kate Tempest wants us to shut up and listen. A reasonable request at a gig, and an underrated quality in life, when there are so many channels through which to express thoughts and views. There is a lot of listening to be done at a Tempest show, such is the relentless, eloquent flow of her words which she delivers as part performance poetry, with some of the momentum of rap and even a hint of melodic structure at points – Tempest’s words sing, even if she doesn’t.

Even during this solo gig, the spectre of the combustible family rivalry that has boiled away since Oasis emerged 25 years ago wasn’t far from Liam Gallagher’s mind. “I want to take this opportunity to apologise for my little brother and the shit he said about your country,” he said to a very onside crowd, referencing his elder brother and former Oasis compatriot Noel’s jokey, Lewis Capaldi-baiting description of Scotland as a “third world country”. “Scotland’s the bollocks and so are her people.”

The Two Ghosts performer is set to perform Glasgow's SSE Hydro as part of a UK-wide arena tour

Later this month Gerry Love will make his first live outing since he and Teenage Fanclub went their separate ways in 2018. The singer-songwriter talks to Fiona Shepherd about how it all ended and his hopes for new group Lightships ahead of their Great Western Festival gig

Livingston duo Gravelle, comprising Monique Maurel and Kyle MacNaughton-Wright, announced their arrival on the Scottish music scene with the release of Liquid Skin late last year. The meaty EP was an impressive debut, drawing on 80s synth sounds, punchy beats, a splash of techno and an unashamedly goth aesthetic.

NEVER having experienced an LSD trip, I can only imagine it as something similar to hearing Richard Strauss’ madcap tone poem Don Quixote.

SELDOM a group to play it safe with a conventional classical gig, the Scottish Ensemble collaborated for its short Elemental tour with trad violinist and composer Aidan O’Rourke and jazz keyboardist Kit Downes, in programmes that collided together uncompromising, somewhat monumental modernism with far more tender, thoughtful contributions from the two guest musicians. It made for a fascinating, if sometimes slightly jarring, combination of styles – and, it has to be said, quite a lot of stage-shifting between pieces.

IF NOTHING else, it was a heavy evening for Gina McCormack. The Brodsky Quartet’s recently appointed new first violinist – a chamber musician of no little experience – played a prominent role in all three of the meaty Elgar chamber works that made up the foursome’s deeply rewarding evening with pianist Martin Roscoe, the first of the new season of New Town Concerts at the Queen’s Hall.

Indie-rockers The Killers have announced a UK stadium tour for 2020.

Never having experienced an LSD trip, I can only imagine it as something similar to hearing Richard Strauss’ madcap tone poem Don Quixote. It is, in every sense, the set of “fantastic variations on a knightly theme” described in the full title: the wild extremes of the hero’s imagined exploits – their horror, whimsy and sheer lunatic visionary distortion – expressed through music so aberrant, at times so agonisingly discordant, that fantasy and reality become impossible to distinguish.

A group of talented family members and friends have formed the Warm Hearts Collective (WHC) and recorded a song designed to get everyone in the Christmas spirit.

Scottish pop rockers Deacon Blue have announced a string of 2020 tour dates in support of their ninth studio album.