Rowley Gallery Blog
Club d’Elf: Dervish Dance (traditional Sufi, arr. by Mike Rivard)
Sand animation by Kseniya Simonova
Musicians:
Brahim Fribgane: oud, hand drum
John Medeski: keyboards
David Fiuczynski: guitars
Mister Rourke: turntables
Mike Rivard: double bass, tamboura
Dean Johnston: drums
We received a flying visit from a group of whirling dervishes. They came and went in a flurry and a spin and were gone almost as soon as they arrived. Continue reading “Whirling”
“A friend of Nick’s, brilliant Irish filmmaker Myles O’Reilly, has made a beautiful short film with our new song To The Island as a soundtrack. It introduces an inspiring couple, lifelong partners Eddie and Elsie, with wise words about love, nature and dreams. It’s so hopeful and tender. We should take their words and their world to heart.” – Neil Finn (Crowded House)
Crowded House: To The Island – Myles O’Reilly’s Arbutus Yarns
I’ve had the live album recording of this concert for as long as I can remember, first as a double LP then later as two CDs. It’s just about one of the best live albums ever, with Joni at the peak of her powers and she’s got a great little backing band! But I’d not realised that there’s also a film of the performance. And it’s a total delight! It doesn’t get any better than this.
Joni Mitchell – guitar, vocals; Pat Metheny – lead guitar; Jaco Pastorius – bass; Don Alias – drums; Lyle Mays – keyboards; Michael Brecker – saxophone; The Persuasions – backing vocals on “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” & “Shadows and Light”; Toller Cranston – skates.
Shadows and Light is Joni Mitchell’s 1980 double live album, recorded at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in September 1979 on the Mingus tour.
So this one’s for Jonny, for his Rowley’s Record Bar, a toe-tapping thank you tune to get you down off the gallows and back on the straight and narrow – Shake a leg but don’t break it then break an egg but don’t shake it!
One of a collection of new videodances created to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Mark Morris Dance Group.
It features Lauren Grant who has been dancing with MMDG since 1996, and who I first saw perform with them twenty-one years ago at Sadlers Wells.
Offertorium / Mark Morris Dance Group
This time last year, as relief from the winter gloom, we went down to Margate to see an exhibition of paintings by Patrick Heron. This year there’s no need to travel quite so far; the Art Space Gallery in Islington is full of winter sunshine until the end of January. I don’t know why I’ve never been before. It’s an intimate series of rooms and alcoves and niches, presently framing some wonderfully joyful bursts of colour by John McLean. It’s a memorial exhibition for a sharp, bright and generous spirit. Continue reading “Being John McLean”
These days I seem to be mostly listening to cello music. I was recently introduced to this wonderful video performance by Ashley Bathgate of a piece written for her by Andrew Norman, inspired by J S Bach’s Prelude from the Fourth Cello Suite. It’s energetic, bouncy, playfully repetitive and fantastic.
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Brazilian dance ensemble Grupo Corpo performing their 1997 piece Parabelo, choreographed by Rodrigo Pederneiras with music by Tom Zé and Zé Miguel Wisnik. “From working and devotional chants, from the memory of the rhythmic baião and from the exuberant and an ever present, entangled, rhythmic points and counterpoints, emerges choreography full of hip swaying and feet stamping. It’s a ravishing statement of maturity and of the expressive teachings, developed throughout many years, by the maker of Missa do Orfanato and Sete ou Oito Peças para um Ballet.”
Brazilian dance ensemble Grupo Corpo performing their 1996 piece Bach, (“it’s like a game between what one hears and what one sees”), choreographed by Rodrigo Pederneiras with music by Marco Antônio Guimarães (channelling J.S.Bach).