Music

It’s a treat to watch SK Shlomo close-up, taking our oohs, aahs, and roars and brilliantly making dance music out of them on the modest machine he calls The Beast.

It’s always good to start with a joke.

OUTSIDE the National Piping Centre’s thronged Street Café, someone is sporting a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Bagpipes – putting the ‘Fun’ back in Funeral”. It’s a witty manifestation of what is often a very serious business, as Glasgow becomes a drone-centred universe during Piping Live!, the city’s week-long count-down to today’s World Pipe Band Championships on Glasgow Green.

“DO YOU like rock ‘n’ roll?” hollered Bathgate superstar Lewis Capaldi, to an enthusiastic roar from a crowd which had already gleefully hollered his name in football chant fashion to the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. “Well f*** you, I don’t play that shit,” he shot back. “You like sad songs, you bought a ticket to see me.”

With the Edinburgh Summer Sessions in full swing, it’s Glasgow’s turn to get a taste of the music.

A concert performance that can lift Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice out of the commonplace - it is far from commonplace, of course, but of its time intrinsically stylised - and release the passions and tensions locked within its no-nonsense score can often be more helpful to understanding its emotional struggle than even the most glamorous full-blown stage production.

Misha’s Gang – otherwise known as the Russian String Orchestra and conductor Misha Rachlevsky – are a busy lot.

Forget doom and gloom and lose yourself in one of these spine-tingling anthems or put together a playlist of your own most motivational songs, suggests Jim Duffy.

A replacement for the scheduled Christine Goerke, American soprano Amber Wagner brought something of the stereotypical diva to her morning recital yesterday.

Is there a venue more perfect for this 5-concert series of Bach’s Keyboard Concertos than the intimate 18th century St Cecila’s Hall?

Throwing a spotlight on just a few of the collaborations current in Scottish contemporary jazz, this opening night was a creatively sparky and often exciting showcase.

THE Summer Sessions continue to be the highlight of the Edinburgh live music scene over the coming week with three much anticipated concerts starting 15 August, when James takes to the Princes Street stage, followed by Courteeners on 16 August and the legendary Madness on 18 August.

If this breezy and affable chamber concert, featuring the SCO’s new principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev on piano alongside a clutch of the orchestra’s principals, is reflective of what is to come under the Russian maestro’s leadership, then friendly times lie ahead.

What better way to pass an afternoon, during Edinburgh’s current tropically unpredictable climate, than in the intimate upstairs venue of Leith Depot, with a cool beer and some pretty hot jazz?

Finnish string quartet Meta4 clearly think long, hard and deeply about their music.