The Islington Festival bows out for 2025
This year’s Islington Festival came to a very splendid end last weekend with a flurry of concerts – and a last round of harp and yoga!
First up on the Friday night at the Little Angel Theatre was the delightful Intesa viol duo, Lucile Musaelian and Nathan Giorgetti with a captivating programme which managed to weave 17th century madrigals, Armenian folkdances, Radiohead and Charles Aznavour seamlessly together.
Then on Saturday morning was the festival’s second Coffee Concert – this time Beethoven trios (which I hope Jo, Dorothea and Kirsten are going to reprise for us sometime over the next few months). Followed early on Saturday evening by what I understand (sadly I could not be there) was a great exploration of Spanish Music with the Cygnus Trio – and later on Saturday night by festival directors Joana Ly and Martin André with tenor John Gyeantey and a delightful recital of French songs.
The Grand Finale on Sunday was an intriguing programme which included music by Franz Waxman (composer of 144 film scores and founder/director of the Los Angeles Music Festival); Dvořák (a terzetto for three violins); a splendid piano quintet by the American Florence Price which smacked seriously of a ho-down in those wide open prairies – and, for those brought up on Leonard Bernstein‘s only oeuvre being West Side Story, a fascinating Meditation for cello and piano from his 1977 Mass – a theatre piece for Singers, Players and Dancers based on the Tridentine Mass of the Catholic church.
To give you a very brief flavour here are tiny clips from Intesa; Jo, Martin, John Gyeantey and Massenet’s Elegie, and Kirsten Jenson and Martin with Bernstein’s Mass.
Meanwhile, get onto the festival mailing list for advance notice of what will be on offer next year.
Breaking Bach
Followers of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment may already know that since 2020 they have ‘lived’ at Acland Burghley School in Tufnell Park, not only basing their offices there but regularly performing in the school hall with both Acland Burghley and other school children. (If you are interested in how this unusual and fascinating partnership came about there is an excellent section on the OAE site not only about how they arrived at AB but the many programmes that have arisen out of it.)
And in the middle of August you could also join them for preview run-throughs of the show they are taking to Edinburgh, Breaking Bach.
For Breaking Bach Danish choreographer Kim Brandstrup has worked with professional dancers and a group from Acland Burghley’s dance community ‘to create a piece that embeds the breaks, beats and phrasing found in street dance in the music of JS Bach’. If that sounds unlikely, listen to the short video on this page in which he talks about the amazing rhythmic synergy that exists between Bach and hip hop.
Or, if you fancy seeing for yourself, come along to the run-throughs on 15th and 17th of August – or, if you happen to be going to the Edinburgh Festival, catch them there on August 20th.
Jeremy Nedd – From Rock to Rock
A piece that I fear you won’t be able to see, but I did last week, was choreographer Jeremy Nedd’s From Rock to Rock at the QEH. According to a very helpful review on The Review Hub it ‘interrogates the theft of black cultural expression through the story of the court case brought by rapper 2 Milly against the video company behind Fortnite for appropriating his dance move Milly Rock.’ And I expect it did but since I am afraid that I knew nothing about either Fortnite or the Milly Rock, that passed me by.
However the piece itself, which did move extremely slowly (so slowly that the lady next door to me got up and left 15 minutes in) was mesmeric and, eventually quite gripping. The five dancers who start tangled in a rock-like lump in the middle of the stage, glided backwards, forwards and around the stage for a long time, sometimes in silence, sometimes to a slow simple drum beat. Eventually they softened, joined in clapping moves, one appeared on a hover board, two in granite block shoes one, one sung a haunting solo and the piece ended with a poetic monologue which encapsulated the core message – ‘I gotta be me, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be me for free.’
Put it this way, I was not much wiser at the end of it but, if I see something else coming up by Jeremy Nedd, I will certainly go.
Meanwhile, don’t forget……
31st August – Jazz in the garden at Hampstead Lane
Join us any time between 1.30pm and 8pm on the 31st August – for jazz with Sol Grimshaw and his group, bread, cheese, fruit, wine and beer.
Go here for more details and to book.
5th October – Trio Notturno in the Salons of Vienna
For more details and to book – go here.
For other events see our Upcoming Events page.
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