Rumy Haque

The kids are alright …

So I get a glimpse of a possible future as we go to see Care at the Young Vic. It’s a harrowing watch, featuring life in a care home for elderly and dementia-affected people. Alexander Zeldin’s play and his own direction of it pull you right into the care home where the brilliant Joan played by Linda Bassett is convinced her daughter Lynn – Rosie Cavaliero – and her grandson have come to take her home.

The confusion of dementia, the emptiness of the days, the loneliness while always being surrounded by others are all poignantly present in the script which has a few moments of humour and one of agonising pathos as one resident mistakes another for his late wife and they hug. As characters die off they join us in the auditorium enhancing the sense of our involvement. The final scenes are horrendously powerful and reinforced my support for the Assited Dying Bill – please get it through!

At the other end of the mortal scale, there were some 80 primary school students, 50 secondary students alongside the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for its annual community opera Life of the Sea. I was invited as a friend to attend the rehearsal and had also booked for the show in the evening. Devised by Hazel Gould, it takes the form of a TV chat show with young performers as guests. These include young musicians and dancers, a rock band and string players in various stages of school who form the Fiddlers on the Reef. The final guest is an adventurer who had discovered a new island in the Pacific Ocean. This of course transpires to be the vast area of accumulated plastics which we dump all the time and subtly delivered ecological messages are delivered. Given the maritime theme there was Purcell and Handel mixed with sea shanties and sequences written by James Redwood – a regular collaborator alongside writer Hazel with OAE’s Education Director Cherry Forbes. I’d really like all politicians who support cuts to the arts to be made to come and see shows like this as the depth of talent on show, the confidence-building association with professional actors and musicians and the sheer joy of artictic collaboration need to be appreciated by those holding the purse strings. A big thank you to all the kind people who donated time and money to ensure that activities like this can so enhance young peoples’ lives. With adequate resources and places to gather the kids are alright.

Next up were a couple of dining outings – the City Orns first Thursday meeting was small with just Fran, Richard and me at Fish! in Borough Market. On the way (ish) I popped into Yoshino to pick up my next supply of gyokuro from Lisa and had the opportunity to admire Bansky’s brilliant installation in Waterloo Place. How they did it is miraculous and I like this shot with the gilded statue representing the pinnacle of the establishment on the Atheneum Club in the background – shame they couldn’t clear the scaffolding away for me.

During dinner Richard – Surrey cricket member asked if I’d like to go to see Hampshire – my team – at the Oval on Monday. I said that would be lovely and should we go on afterwards to see Glengarry Glenross at the Old Vic after the match. Tickets booked and a pleasant evening ensued with a nightcap in Brindisa Tapas round the corner. Friday lunch at the Union Club – very non-establishment with friends Dede, Yvonne and Gwyn has been known to go on until rather late. Indeed as we left at six, there was an “Are you still here?” enquiry from reception. We had been enjoying their lovely roof terrace so away from the main areas. This was a very responsible visit for us – we must be getting old.

The Oval visit was a washout – Richard never made it at all and I saw 18 overs of cricket amid the rain delays. The weather ensured that the game ended as a draw which I’ll take as this has not been a great start to Hampshire’s season. I met Richard in the backstage bar at the Old Vic and then we went to see Glengarry Glenross. I had seen a version at the NT in 1983 and at the Playhouse in 2017. I like the play for its rapid fire dialogue among unscrupulous estate agents vying for a prize Cadillac, a set of steak knives or the sack depending on their position on the monthly deal closures board. For this revival director Patrick Marber had chosen to go with an all female cast with Indira Varma and Rosa Salazar as the leads.

I found it initially odd that they didn’t change the characters’ genders but followed the text to the letter. Soon it didn’t matter as the drama of backstabbing, conning and horsetrading, burglary and deceit just took over as it had before. It was done in the round as is all of this Old Vic season and it worked well in the office scene but the opening in the Chinese restaurant was a bit sketchy with a couple of hanging lanterns suggesting the space. It occasionally got a bit shouty but in all it was another very enjoyable encounter with a very fine play.

The next day I was at another rehearsal with the OAE – this time a very special one. Sir Simon Rattle had been one of the earliest supporters of the orchestra back in 1986 and when invited back to play in the 40th anniverary season he accepted immediately and elected to play two Berlioz works – the well-known Symphonie Fantastique and the equally brilliant but less performed Harold in Italy. The rehearsal took place in the Henry Wood Hall – previously Trinity Church until the 1960s and now a favourite space for several orchestras on account of its brilliant accoustic. They were working on Harold in Italy while I was there with the viola soloist Timothy Ridout walking around the space visiting various sections of the orchestra as he played the featured viola parts. It was fascinating to hear the interchange between various members and the conductor about stress and pace, intensity and melody. It seems all conductors demonstrate their wishes through dum de dah vocalisation – most mellifluous! On the way back I was struck by the juxtaposition of the spire of Dickens’ church St George the Martyr from 1122 and the Shard from 2012 both fine pieces of architecture gracing the area 900 years apart.

At a pre-concert talk some of the players shared their delight about playing not just ‘historically informed’ but actually on period instruments. For the baroque and classical periods they have to use excellently crafted copies of period instruments since the real ones would have disintegrated. Tonight they were playing on instruments made at the time Berlioz was writing in 1830. Their excitment was palpable.The concert itself was a huge success. In the first part with Harold in Italy Timothy Ridout with his viola approached the stage from the auditorium, as in rehearsal visited most sections of the orchestra and concluded the piece from a box. He gave a sensitive performance with clear tone and wonderful variations to match the mood of Harold’s adventures through the Italian landscape. The Symphonie Fantastique was a revelation with such clarity from the period instruments and varied dynamics in Simon Rattle’s energetic direction. The talk had suggested things to look out for and it did enhance the experience. Brilliant music performed by expert musicians conducted by a genius they are pleased to call a friend of the OAE.

Focusing on events in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s Under the shadow at the Almeida is an all too timely reminder of the effects of repressive regimes on women and of life under war conditions. With her husband off at the front, Shideh, played wonderfully by Leila Farzad, is left in her Tehran apartment with her daughter and possibly a malevolent spirit or djinn. Forbidden from continuing her studies to be a doctor because of prior political activism, Shideh is frustrated by her enforced domesticity and becomes increasingly disturbed by physical and psychological damage.

Adapted from Babak Anvari’s 2016 horror film which I had not seen, it was a thought-provoking evening with some very dramatic effects and some fine performances. Especially affecting were the rush to the air raid shelter where all the cast gather below the front of the stage and discuss their fears. And there’s one amazing coup de theatre which I won’t spoil.

The next outing was of a rather different nature. As a patron of the Orange tree Theatre in Richmond, Frances was invited to a sponsors’ dinner in the neighbouring Italian before a performance of Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy. The meal was tasty and enlivened with theatre chat from various guests. The play is a hilarious farce. What a contrast to the psychological thriller that was Equus! In a brilliant piece of staging alternate scenes are set in pitch blackness representing times when the room was lit and bright lighting when powercuts had reduced the room to darkness. The actors coped brilliantly with this trope delivering witty lines in the dark and bumping into each other in the light. The central plot of a sculptor ‘borrowing’ a neighbour’s furniture to impress a dealer provided lots of fun and some snappy characterisation.

The Courtauld Gallery has an exhibition of Hepworth in Colour. A few years back I had enjoyed a visit to the eponymous gallery in Wakefield. Some of the works displayed in London were on loan from there but, shown in a different contex, took on a new resonance. A number of sculptural works were surrounded by lots of drawings and sketches which I was not familiar with and they gave insights into her approach to colour. In one sphere with panels in yellow, red and black she displayed a surprising side of her as a Watford fan! More common were the pale blues of the sea in Cornwall where she lived most of her life and some elegant painted columns and forms in painted plaster and bronze.

Just across the courtyard of Somerset House is the blockbuster exhibition of M C Escher, the first comprehensive showing of his work in the UK. I thought I’d better go while I was here. And comprehensive it truly is with over 150 works on display alongside artifacts he used to achieve his trademark tessellations, repetitative patterns and the impossible drawings for which he is mostly famed. It’s very interactive with infinity mirror rooms, scale-distorting rooms and spheres which you hold to view yourself in a very different way. I hadn’t realised how much he had been influenced by the patterns in Arabic art he’d seen on a trip to Spain. I was particularly taken by an etching of the Cordoba mosque with its eerie Semana Santa nazareno-hooded figures and it was interesting to see the famous ‘Relativity’ in the original lithograph form and as an animated screen version.

My friend Graham was down from Bradford and we agreed to meet up in the Black Eel in Dalston for a beer and then go to see Quartet in Autumn at the Arcola theatre. This also entailed a short visit to the excellent Five Fingers for a curry on the way to the theatre. I think this was my fourth or fifth visit and the food never disappoints and service is always interesting. Barbara Pym’s novel enjoyed a vogue in the 70s and has now been adapted for the stage by Samantha Harvey whose Orbital won the Booker prize in 2024. As a thirty-something the four bickering, miscommunicating fogeys on the verge of retirement seemed a long way off. Now not so much!

The humour of Pym’s writing has been retained in the adaptation and the characters each have opportunities to explain their lives of disappointment, underachievement and give rein to their hopes and fears. Four actors sitting talking often with their backs to you is not an easy setting to manage but the experience of Dominic Dromgoole as director and of his four excellent actors makes this an evening of entertainment and emotional engagment.

I think I’ve mentioned before Gitabina, the Bengali musical group curated by my friend Rumy Haque. They had a concert in memory of Rabindranath Tagore at the Brady Arts and Community Centre in Whitechapel on Saturday. I went along with my BBPC colleagues Shamim and Samaha and got a brief hero’s welcome as I had just consulted Cricinfo to see that the Tigresses (Bangladesh Women) had soundly defeated Pakistan Women in the T20 Womens World Cup. Given the political history of the two nations this victory was especially sweet. I met several friends and acquaintances and then went into the main hall for the concert which combined singing with recitations of Tagore’s works. Rumy had helpfully provided translations for several of the songs and the readings were delivered so powerfully that detailed understanding was not required to appreciate the content of the core messages. Another interesting facet was the real time painting of portraits of Tagore in his youth and as an elderly statesman. Like being at Sky’s Portrait Artist of the Year with added music. An enjoyable evening out with a difference.

I set off early for the Henry Wood Hall for another OAE rehearsal. It’s hot and when I arrive at Lee Station there’s a train on the platform and a stream of would-be passengers coming towards me. “No trains from Lee for several hours,” says one so I join the downward flow and get a bus to Lewisham and then a train to London Bridge and walk to the hall in good time for a susprise opening. Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev calls the rehearsal to order and the strains of Happy Birthday ring out. This was a special treat for Rebecca Bell a violinist celebrating her’s today. As before, observing the conductor explain his wishes to the band was fascinating. Lots of da, da, dums and jumping in the air for “more emphasis here”. The concert of Brahms, Dvorak and Hadyn tomorrow looks like being another real treat. Just a block from Trinity Church Square is Great Dover Street along which runs the 21 bus with its destination panel saying ‘Lewisham Shopping Centre’ so no hassle with trains on the way back and a short walk to the blessed 273 to get me home relatively unaffected by the 35 degree heatwave which looks set to continue. I was glad of my gamcha from Dhaka – a scarf of quick wicking cotton that keeps the sweatiest Englishman in the world – me – from the ravages of the midday sun.

And so to the concert itself. Billed as Brahms’ Last Concert, the programme replicated the concert from 7 March 1897 in Vienna, the last time that Brahms heard his own music performed as he died just a month later. Starting with the massive fourth symphony was completely counter-intuitive to a modern concert going audience – but it worked as it filled the first half of the evening with all the emotions. Joyful dance, slow intensity and a mournful brooding final section with perhaps a hint of hope make this a very emotional ride. In the second half Steven Isserlis played Dvorak’s cello concerto with flair and passion – at the pre-concert talk he said he played the first movement on a record obsessively at the age of ten and still loves it today. It showed. The Haydn symphony gave the evening a lively conclusion with its dance beats and final headlong rush across the fields in pursuit of who knows what. Whatever it is, it gave the work its nickname of The Hunt – the final movement is actually called La Chasse on the manuscript. It was a fitting conclusion to the first half of OAE’s 40th anniversary season which they take up again in October at the Southbank after stints at Glyndbourne and the Proms.

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Music, mystery, movement and more

I had the privilege a couple of weeks ago of seeing an hour of the technical rehearsal of The Unbelievers at the Royal Court as part of Frances’s patrons’ deal. It was fascinating and set up a sense of great anticipation for the play itself. It did not disappoint. The central performance of Nicola Walker was quite stunning as a woman grieving the mysterious disappearance of her teenage son. Spoiler alert – he doesn’t appear but his absence hangs over the three intercalated time periods after his failure to return home.

The whole cast remains on stage throughout except for a couple of costume and role changes in a set that has a sparse domestic interior at the front with what looks like a police or doctors’ waiting room at the rear. Fear, anger, incomprehension, blame and violence swirl through the mother, her two ex- husbands, children and step-children. Some people, it seems, found the mingling of the day after, a year after and seven years after time periods confusing but I thought it added to the power of the writing, depicting clinically the way grieving does affect your sense of reality and time. It sounds bleak but had quite a few moments of hilarity. A serious examination of grief, guilt and sanity leavened by tender, moving and funny moments.

Next it was off to the downstairs theatre at Hampstead where new playwrights are given space to experiment. The Billionaire Inside Your Head by Will Lord was an examination of greed, ambition, entitlement and fantasy in an office setting. Echoes of Glengarry Glen Ross and other Mamet two-handlers spring to mind as a thruster and a slacker trade dreams and insults. The entitled slacker Darwin is the son of the company’s owner who as well as appearing in the drama, opens it with a chorus-like prologue as The Voice, that sets the scene for us all to examine our thoughts. The debt-collection nature of the company is perhaps a bit less exciting than Mamet’s realtor wheeler dealers but the tension between Darwin and the OCD Richie is well depicted. It was exciting, engaging and thought-provoking – just what Hampstead downstairs aims to be.

There was lots of the movement of my title in both the above but the prime expression of it this week came in Akram Khan’s Thikra: Night of Remembering at Sadler’s Wells where I had the pleasure of Rosa’s company. Devised in conjunction with the Saudi visual artist Manal AlDowayan, this is an intense hour of modern dance infused with classical Indian forms and a sound track that moves from a foreboding drone through ragas, Balkan chorale, drumming and hints of Purcell.

The twelve female dancers all have waist-length black hair that forms an important part of the performance. Would have been an interesting casting call: “Find me twelve women with equal-length black hair who can dance classical Bharatanatyam choreography”. Nine of the dancers were uniformly clad in olivey long dresses while the sacrificial victim was in white, the matriarch in red and her sister in black. AlDowayan’s involvement gave it a very graphic look that comes from her work in exploring cultures, heritage and change. The narrative didn’t really matter but was essentially about annual rebirth and renewal through sacrifice. Visually stunning, musically stimulating – an hour of total transportation into a world of magic and wonder. You can get a short glimpse of it here.

A select group of us returned to the Bridge Theatre for The Lady from the Sea. I haven’t been there for ages as it’s been wall-to-wall Guys and Dolls. I wrongly thought this was a version of Hedda Gabler but Ibsen actually wrote a play with this title so I need to brush up my Scandi classics knowledge. This was a Simon Stone adaptation, so after the Billie Piper Yerma, expectations were high for something off the wall. And we got it – the usual Ibsen anguished captive bride played bravely by Alicia Vikander resisting the cage into which her husband Andrew Lincoln, in great form, had placed her. The drama plays out on a thrust stage (the Bridge is so versatile as a space) which becomes soaked with rain in Act 2 and then turns into a swimming pool. Writing, acting, sound and lighting were all excellent but the award of the evening has to go to the set design and build – the vision of Lizzie Clachan. Another exceptional evening of entertainment.

After all this fun it was back to work – as a producer! A couple of times a year for the last few years, I’ve recorded an audiobook version of a reader for use in teaching English as a Foreign Language in Germany. I’ve now, it appears, done 11 of them – here are a few from Hueber Verlag in Frankfurt.

I have a small repertory company of actors who are brilliant at producing a range of characters in the course of the narrative – teenage protagonists, their parents, threatening outsiders, police and other officials. The stories are often a bit Famous Five but tackle issues like single parenthood, criminal behaviour, the environment and relationships. For this one, Joining the Circus,I invited Gyuri Sarossy, who I met at a Hampstead Theatre party a while back, to perform the script. It doesn’t sound the most likely name for an English language project but he is English born of a Hungarian father and English mother. The story involved a farming family setback by the father’s accident and a circus family devastated on finding their usual pitch was waterlogged and wouldn’t work. Gyuri was born in Bristol so we opted for a West Country accent for the farmers and an East Midlands for the circus people. It worked extremely well and I am constantly amazed at how these actors can switch characters seamlessly in a single sentence. After the recording Gyuri was off to Budapest to record his final scenes in a vampire movie. Another spoiler – he dies. A week later we hear that the client likes the results of the session. Great news – we’ll all get paid! A little.

It was then on to my main unpaid role as a trustee of the British Bilingual Poetry Collective. I was invited by the publisher of the collective’s anthology Home and Belonging, which resulted from a series of translation circles like the last blog’s reference to the Barbican, to chair a discussion panel at the Palewell Press Literary Festival. The day also included readings from a number of poets including Chika Jones and Nasrin Parvaz who feature in our anthology. It was fixed a long time ago and so I missed Watford’s best game of the season so far, a 3-0 demolition of Middlesbrough – such dedication to the cause, such a fair weather fan!

However the occasion was very interesting with my panellists translating from Arabic with Dr Amba Jawi and Catherine Temba Davidson as collaborators, Barbara Mitchell who translates from Spanish and Caroline Stockford who does Turkish and Welsh and finds striking and unexpected parallels. We ranged over the process of translation and the difficulties of rendering essence and spirit rather than words, the degrees of faithfulness and liberties translators are allowed and the reactions of the original authors.

In all the cases featured here there were difficulties since all the authors were in prison on political charges. Palewell Press specialises in human rights publications so this was only to be expected. The overriding message was that all art forms have to continue to expose and challenge human right abuses whever they occur.

Next day, to make it a full weekend of poetry, I co-hosted BBPC’s annual contribution to the Tower Hamlets Season of Bangla Drama. The season has a theme each year – we’ve done ‘love’ and ‘hope’ and this year it’s ‘kindness’. We decided to go all alliterative and call the session Kindness with Kazi using the poems and songs of the national poet of Bangladesh Kazi Nazrul Islam. Shamim Azad and I hosted the occasion which had performances by the brilliant singerJoyeta Chonchu of a couple of Nazrul songs , my colleague Milton and I recited one of his most famous poems “I Sing of Equality” followed by a discussion of his work and influence on people’s lives. After a short break we then broke up into pairs to talk about kindness given or received in our personal lives after which everybody wrote a short poem or piece of prose. There were some very moving contributions and very positive feedback that participants found it both enjoyable and valuable.

Monday saw me joining Frances at the Orange Tree Theatre for Hedda. Ibsen is all the rage these days it seems – well I guess he has been for a while. This is an adaptation by Tanika Gupta – well really more of a new play based on – Hedda Gabler, relocated to Chelsea in the post-war, post-partition of India period. Tanika’s take is based around the need to conceal the ethnicity of Hollywood’s Anglo- Indian stars, in particular Merle Oberon. The evening was pacy, directed by Hettie Macdonald, twisty and with a full range of emotion, fear, deception, devotion and angst.

From the dramatic opening with her lifelong maid, brilliantly portrayed by Rina Fatania, asking which face whitening she’d like today through to the realisation that she’d made a disastrous marriage believing her screen career to be over, Pearl Chanda was Merle Oberon.

A powerful performance with hints of her former influencer status dashed by the creeping reality of her current dull life. It touched a real nerve with me as I was currently reading Kiran Desai’s Booker nominated The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny which brilliantly examines the whole question of identity, ethnicity and personal authenticity. I was fortunate to be able to speak to Tanika about our Kindness event and she said her father used to sing Nazrulgeeti (KNI songs) around the house all the time. That was before seeing the play so sadly I wasn’t able to tell her how much I enjoyed it.

Another part of the Season of Bangla Drama was a presentation of kindness stories collected by long-term Bangladesh resident Peter Musgrave who had taken part in our BBPC Kazi session so it seemed only right to go to his. An added attraction was that Gitabini, the singing group featuring my friend Rumy Haque was to perform. There were stories to bring hope of new flood resistant ways of building houses and farming being demonstrated by NGO staff to educate the Bengali populace, particularly in the most threatened areas. One of the countries most prone to disappearing into the Bay of Bengal if climate change continues unchecked – not sanguine about the current COP to prevent it – but good to see alternative approaches to mitigate the effects. Gitabini sang a Kazi Nazrul Islam song and Rumy recited her conservation-oriented poem about a banyan tree and I was able to chat with a number of old and new friends at the post-event Koffee and Kake.

I’m fortunate to call the young composer Dani Howard a friend and so when her saxophone concerto was finally to receive its UK premiere I just had to whizz off to Poole to the Lighthouse Arts Centre to hear it. I did some voluntary work a few years back for the London Chamber Orchestra which had originally commissioned the concerto but then got into financial difficulties and couldn’t complete the contract. So I’d waited nearly two years to hear it. Stockholm Philharmonic and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra came to the rescue and while I didn’t make the world premiere in Sweden, I wasn’t going to miss out on the first UK performance. The journey was horrendous. The train was 30 minutes late arriving at Waterloo because of earlier signalling problems, and quite a bit more than that departing. Then we couldn’t get into Southampton Station because of other trains blocking our platform. Finally they decided to skip some stops and head directly to Poole after Bournemouth. At least Delay Repay will kick in and I’ll get some dosh back. By the time I’d checked in to the hotel, checked out the location – my first time at The Lighthouse – and gone for a walk down to the Quay it was dark. I guess one benefit of this was the bright lights of the Poole Museum shone out. A quick beer and back to the hotel to prepare for the concert. Was all the hassle worth while? Oh yes.

The concert opened with a Wagner piece I’d never heard – the overture to his first opera, a comedy called Forbidden Love. A comedy from Wagner! It failed miserably and lasted for only two performances in 1836, but the overture was fun, very jolly and lively, opening with castanets of all things! But the main event came next. Dani had written the concerto specifically with the versatile Jess Gillam in mind. In three contrasting movements the music showcased Jess’s talent but also wove evocative call and response moments with different sections of the orchestra. Lush pastoral passages alternated with bold percussive swathes and the brass were strongly featured – Dani does like her brass – one of her first pieces I heard was her trombone concerto for Peter Moore at the Barbican in April 2022, another amazing performance. Dani says the concerto is a homage to Adolf Sax who invented the wonderful instrument which finds its place more frequently in jazz clubs than in the concert hall. I love the way Dani combines pure and simple sounds from nature with a clear understanding of the power of complex orchestration. She’s a master of the medium. The Times critic liked it too: The first movement bubbles and chatters, passing ideas between soloist and orchestra, while the finale is a dazzling moto perpetuo, dispatched with seeming ease by Gillam. Best of all was the central movement, an extended cadenza for Gillam, who made it seem as if we were hearing Sax’s innermost feelings.

Jess Gillam is a master too and for her encore, chose a piece she’d played in BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 – Pedro Itteralde’s Pequeña Czarda – when the conductor was Mark Wigglesworth, now principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, whose home base is the Lighthouse. Most appropriate. After the interval we heard the orchestra in full flow with Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. It will be interesting to compare this rendition with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s approach in June next year on period instruments under Sir Simon Rattle.

Dani takes in the applause with Jess just visible beside her

What made the evening extra special was that Dani invited me to the pre-concert reception where I met her mother, Belinda, again – we had both been at the Barbican gig in 2022 – meet her sister Sam for ther first time and catch up with boyfriend Sion Jones who I’d met at the Colin Currie percussion concerto at the Wigmore Hall. Dani was of course the centre of attention with a former pupil effusing over her influence on his career and her former music teacher from Hong Kong, now working in Poole, bringing a class of her primary pupils to say hello. After the concert, Dani had some formal duties but after a while she and Sion were able to join Belinda, Sam and me in the pub where I’m afraid we stayed till they kicked us out. After all the music it was an evening of fascinating conversation eavesdropped and joined in with by locals Jeff and Jonny and covering coping with bereavement, mine and the Howards’ who lost a husband/father last year, music, the arts generally, contracts, 2027 paradigm shift and blogging among others which were continued outside the pub until we all decided to head for our rather tardy beds in three different hotels.

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Musical mystery tour

August brought three excellent musical events all with a hint of mystery. The first was a rehearsal at Acland Burghley School in Camden for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s project Breaking Bach. Bach suites and concertos played on period instuments by musicians for whom I have the greatest respect, fine – but with street, hiphop and break dance accompanying it! Really? Not much of what the OAE does fails miserably so my frequent dance companion Rosa and I made it to Tufnell Park on a Sunday afternoon for the final rehearsal before the group took Breaking Bach to the Edinburgh Festival for its world premiere in the Usher Hall three days hence. We were asked not to photograph the performance so I don’t have any pictures but you can get a feel for it from the OAE’s website in a mo. Meanwhile our tickets included some branded merchandise – Rosa accepted my gift of a tote bag – “you can never have too many tote bags” while I have two pencils with seed capsules which I hope next spring will be planted out and become sunflowers.

To say we were blown away by the performance would be to put it mildly. Did I say the dancers accompanied the players? I was wrong – the dancers added a whole new dimension through their elegant, energy-filled moves and fantastic sense of rythym. They truly interpreted the music not just performed alongside it. Choreographer Kim Brandstrup had wanted to meld street dance with Bach for some time and now was afforded the perfect solution. Some of the dancers were newly professional, several were still students at Acland Burghley School and you really couldn’t tell the difference most of the time. There were solos, pas de deux and ensemble pieces caringly matched to the emotions and rythyms of the various selections from the repertoire. At the end of the afternoon my only regret was that I hadn’t booked to go to Edinburgh to see the full performance – although whether I’d have managed to get up from a bean bag is debatable. It went down a storm with the critics as I was delighted to read the following Sunday in my Observer and everybody else who attended. There’s lots more about the project on the OAE’s YouTube channel too with interviews with the choreographer, dancers and students . We can’t wait for a full production in the UK – no wait there has been one I guess – parochialist! – I mean in London. Staggeringly risky, stunningly successful!

The next stop on the mystery tour was a trip into a different musical culture. Rumy Haque is a friend who I’ve worked with at the British Bilingual Poetry Collective on many occasions, on translations and in workshops. She’s recently concentrated her attention on forming a musical group and invited me to its launch event at the Brady Arts Centre in Tower Hamlets.

I’ve heard a fair bit of Bengali inspired- music, have co-curated workshops on the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore and – while unable to read the poster – Rumy explained that the concert was celebrating the anniversary of Tagore’s death and would feature his songs. The ensemble is called GitaBina and has Rumy, Mitali Bonowari and Sunita Chowhury on vocals with harmonium, tabla and keyboards accompaniment. As often with these events it took a while to get started – the Spanish are accused of a manaña attitude – but my Bengali friends run them close.

GitaBina gathered round a portrait of Tagore painted by Rumy Haque

However it was worth the wait. The three voices have contrasting tones but combine brilliantly in conveying both the introspective, lyrical elements and the more rousing and passionate passages in the Tagore songs they performed. The harmonium underscore, strongly accented beat from the tabla and improvised frills from he keyboards added to the atmosphere of respect for and celebration of Tagore. Interpolated between the songs were readings of poems some in Bangla, one I’m glad to say in English – thanks Rumy. It was interesting and thoroughly enjoyable. Whatever the genre or style, music speaks to the soul and mine went home refreshed.

I’m fairly familiar with song cycles from both Robert and Clara Schumann and Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn with both male and female singers and piano accompaniment. So it’s off to Acland Burghley School again with my friend Frances, who lives nearby, for another new experience.

Tonight it’s the lovely Helen Charlston singing with a string quartet! That’s new. Helen has a long association with the OAE as one of the first in its Rising Stars programme and the star of the memorable Coldplay tribute video of Dido’s Lament.

Helen writes in her programme notes that there’s no precedent for this kind of arrangement. But she thinks similar things might have happened at the soirées where these songs would have been first heard. The conversion of the accompaniment from piano to scoring for string quartet by Bill Thorp brought a whole new level of expression to the songs for me.

It was fascinating to hear how the piano sounds were expertly shared around the four instruments. The Consone (Latin for harmonious) Quartet use period instruments – they were the first such to be chosen as BBC New Generation Artists – and those familiar warm gut string sounds added new sonorities and their playing a new sense of fluency to familiar tunes. I felt a much stronger emotional reaction to the fuller sound surrounding the lyrics and maybe the intimate surroundings of the elegant hexagonal school hall at the centre of Brutalist Acland Burghley helped as well.

Three very different experiences with unexpectedly (shame on me) pleasing results. And there’s another adventure to come with a trip to the Royal Albert Hall to hear the Irish Baroque Orchestra play Alexander’s Feast by Handel which I’ve never heard so the mysteries continue to unfold.