Marwood, Power, Watkins, Hallé, Adès, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - sonic adventure and luxuriance

Premiere of a mesmeric piece from composer Oliver Leith

For the second big concert of his “residency” with the Hallé this season, Thomas Adès chose one major piece of his own, rather than a set of shorter ones. Tevot, a 21-minute one-movement work written for the Berlin Philharmonic 18 years ago, requires a huge assembly of performers, so it was probably too good a chance to miss once having taken the decision to do Tippett’s Triple Concerto, which is pretty lavish in that regard, too.

Album: Nia Archives - Silence is Loud

★★★★★ NIA ARCHIVES - SILENCE IS LOUD Sweeping influences into a giddy pop rush

Sweeping up generations' worth of influences into a giddy pop rush

At 24, Bradfordian Nia Archives has already clearly marked out her musical territory.

While many of her Gen Z contemporaries have embraced the rave, jungle and drum’n’bass sounds of the early-mid 1990s, she’s done it more wholeheartedly than most: particularly rebuilding the rolling breakbeats and deep bass of jungle as a kind of British urban folk music, collaborating with older generations (original junglists DJ Die and Randall of Watch The Ride), and demonstrating how her natural Caribbean-influenced Yorkshire vocal articulation fits perfectly into that. 

Cargill, Kantos Chamber Choir, Manchester Camerata, Menezes, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - imagination and star quality

★★★ CARGILL, KANTOS CHAMBER CHOIR, MANCHESTER CAMERATA, MENEZES, STOLLER HALL, MANCHESTER Choral-orchestral collaboration is set for great things

Choral-orchestral collaboration is set for great things

Brazil-born conductor Simone Menezes, known for imaginative and pioneering concert presentation, presided over a striking and illuminating programme shared by Manchester’s Kantos Chamber Choir and Manchester Camerata, with the star quality of Karen Cargill the icing on the cake.

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Tate Modern review - a fitting celebration of the early years

★★★★ YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND, TATE MODERN A fitting celebration of the early years

Acknowledgement as a major avant garde artist comes at 90

At last Yoko Ono is being acknowledged in Britain as a major avant garde artist in her own right. It has been a long wait; last year was her 90th birthday! The problem, of course, was her relationship with John Lennon and perceptions of her as the Japanese weirdo who broke up the Beatles and led Lennon astray – down a crooked path to oddball, hippy happenings.

Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story, Disney+ review - classic underdog tale of the little team that could

Inside story of Jenson Button's amazing championship year

When they read the roll-call of British Formula One champions, the likes of Jackie Stewart, Graham and Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell tend to grab the spotlight, but Jenson Button’s dramatic and totally unexpected win in 2009 is every bit as worthy of celebration. It get its due here, in Disney’s hugely entertaining account of how Button, team boss Ross Brawn and his unfancied and underfunded squad defied the odds and provoked apoplexy among the F1 aristocracy.

The SpongeBob Musical, QEH review - musical based on popular kids' animation sinks for lack of focus

THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL, QEH Musical based on kids' animation sinks for lack of focus

Fine performances cannot save a pedestrian book that soaks up over two hours with 20 minutes of plot

There are many things that you are not told about being a parent, a vast landscape of details that batter you with unwelcome difference from that comfortable life of Friday night prosecco and pizza. One is a whole new palette of garish colours barging into your eyeline – fluorescent yellow, eye-bleeding orange, vomity green.

Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors, National Theatre review - verbatim theatre delivered to wrenching effect

★★★★ GRENFELL: IN THE WORDS OF SURVIVORS, NT Wrenching verbatim theatre

Gillian Slovo's incendiary play points a finger at the bureaucrats at the heart of the tragedy

The shadow of Grenfell Tower has already produced Nick Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor’s dispassionately forensic but devastating documentary plays based on transcripts from the Grenfell Inquiry. Now comes a companion piece, the National’s Grenfell, a verbatim play using excerpts from the same source, but larded by Gillian Slovo into a wider account of the fire by those who were in it, to equally wrenching effect.

Album: Mahalia - IRL

★★★★ MAHALIA - IRL Decades of R&B folded into Midlands singer's most confident record yet

Decades of R&B folded into the Midlands singer's most confident record yet

Ever since she broke through in her teens, Leicestershire singer Mahalia Burkmar’s music has often been referred to as retro or revivalist R&B. But that framing is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the genre operates for young 21st century music lovers. For fans and artists of Mahalia’s generation – she’s 25 – the Nineties and early Noughties classics of Mariah, TLC, Destinys Child and co aren’t really retro in the way that Seventies and Eighties music were back then.

Blu-ray: Inland Empire

David Lynch's surreal horror wotsit, newly restored and eternally brain-frazzling

Searching for a coherent narrative thread in David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006) is probably futile, so it’s best to begin with the movie’s nervy central performance by Laura Dern in multiple, overlapping roles as “a woman in trouble” – the movie’s subtitle. Or maybe many different women in all manner of trouble.