Jonathan Trew: Rightly or wrongly, opera has often been accused of being elitist

Offbeat artist David Shrigley, along with composer David Fennessy and director Nicholas Bone, aim to change that with Pass the Spoon. A Magnetic North production which is being staged at The Tramway, it is described as “a sort of opera about cookery’.

Set in a daytime cookery studio, it pitches the hosts June Spoon and Phillip Fork in a battle to the death against a range of ingredients. It sounds fantastic. Who hasn’t dreamt of James Martin being assaulted by a bunch of celery or Simon Rimmer going toe to toe with an angry artichoke? Looking at it another way, this could lead to crossovers in the other direction. Ramsay singing through an episode of Kitchen Nightmares USA would be a ratings winner and Nigella would surely make a fine Valkyrie?

On an equally alternative note, tomorrow evening will see one of the Dr Sketchy life drawing classes take place in The Tiki Bar on Bath Street, Glasgow. This column has mentioned the Dr Sketchy classes before but it’s worth bringing the story up to date. The classes were started by an art-school dropout in a dive bar in Brooklyn in 2005. The idea was to update moribund art school life drawing classes by holding them in bars and using unconventional life models such as burlesque artists, contortionists and sideshow freaks. The idea caught on and there are now Dr Sketchy classes in more than a hundred cities all over the world. The Glasgow branch usually meets in The Tron Bar on the first Sunday of each month but tomorrow’s extra class has moved venue. Fire performers and hula girls are promised.

Moving to the rather larger stage of the Clyde Auditorium, tomorrow night sees the keenly anticipated return to Scotland of the American singer Gillian Welch along with David Rawlings, her partner in music and off stage. Your scribe saw the duo play at the Barrowland a good few years back and, for a venue that is normally as rowdy as a rigger on payday, you could hear a guitar pick drop during the more introspective numbers.

An admirer and student of her musical roots, Welch would probably appreciate most of the events taking place at the Scots Fiddle Festival this weekend. One of the highlights will be tonight’s concert at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall. From new talent such as fiddle player Kristan Harvey, the 2011 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the year, to veterans such as Alasdair Fraser, it promises to be a satisfying snapshot of Scotland’s contemporary fiddle scene.

www.tramway.org; www.rhymeswithpurple.net; www.gillianwelch.com;