The First Night of the Proms is always a tricky one to programme, bringing together themes of the season, perhaps a new work and, most importantly, a grand finale. This year’s Prom No. 1 ticked all the boxes, and without feeling like pick-n-mix.
Let's be honest, this is the least interesting Proms season on paper for years, at least in terms of adventurous repertoire choices, following on the heels of the best in 2017. Yet in statistical terms it's more comprehensive and multi-media-friendly than ever, starting tonight with a free "Curtain Raiser" performance before the official First Night tomorrow - see David Kettle's choice below – and ending some 75 main Proms and 11 smaller-scale beauties later on 8 September.
Many of us recognise that rather striking modernist building in Cromwell Gardens near South Kensington tube, having seen it on the way to the V&A or perhaps a Prom at the Albert Hall but not been sure what it is exactly. I hadn't actually been inside until last week when I was given a guided tour. The space was discussed at one point as a potential site for the National Theatre.
2018 has become a year of farewells as a mighty handful of musicians who have, in their different ways, defined popular music bow out. Among them is Joan Baez, a star on the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene when she made her unannounced debut at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. She was 18 and, it’s safe to say, never dreamed she’d be filling concert halls around the world 60 years later.
It was 2011 when Gregory Porter made his first London appearances at Pizza Express in Dean Street. That club has a capacity just over 100, and yet it only seems like yesterday.
For their eighth debut at the Royal Albert Hall, mesmerising French-Canadian performance art company Cirque du Soleil takes the audience on a journey into the world underfoot.
Did Simon Rattle's return to the UK as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra live up to the hype? Mostly, and when it did, the music-making was superbly alive. But it's vital to observe that another orchestra and chief conductor have been carrying on equally important and sometimes groundbreaking work in the same hall.
“Back in the Sixties, before I was born…” Robert Plant has always been as amusing a raconteur as he is a deft weaver of different musical styles, and last night’s show at the Royal Albert Hall was no exception.
It really is quite something to be admired, the sheer longevity and staying power of the Jools Holland franchise. The TV show Later...With Jools Holland, with the same core team running it, has just celebrated its 25th anniversary and put its 51st season to bed. That takes us all the way back to October 1992, just after the summer of John Bryan and Antonia de Sancha, of toes and Chelsea strips. Meanwhile, another part of the franchise, Jools' Annual Hootenanny, with a similar format has been running since New Year’s Eve 1993. Holland and his team have been building all this since his mid-thirties. He will turn 60 in January.
Two Royal Albert Hall shows, with the huge venue completely packed, of which I saw the first, marked roughly the half-way point of a 35-date British Isles tour, which will end just before Christmas. It is an album launch tour for As You See Me Now, Jools Holland’s album with his Rhythm and Blues Band and José Feliciano.
By the end the entire audience was completely energised
The TV shows have shaped a set of audience expectations over time, and the live show duly gets on with the task of fulfilling them as closely as possible. As Gary Burton once wrote, remembering what he had learnt as part of George Shearing’s band, “no matter what the artist thinks, most people really just want to hear what they already know.”
So the trademarks are all there: Jools Holland and a succession of guests, the double-breasted pinstripe suit, the familiar patter. There are opportunities to feature members of the band and to give solo spots to fine singers Beth Rowley and Louise Marshall.
Musically there is much to admire. The focus, the talk is all about boogie and boogieland, but I like the way the door is open to other styles; the full band in ska mode is an envigorating delight. I also found my ears constantly listening out for the wonderfully subtle interventions from Chris Holland on Hammond.
José Feliciano is 72, his voice is strong, but his progress on to and off the stage did seem difficult and ungainly. On the album he is at his best in Stevie Wonder’s "Treat Myself" from the 1995 album Conversation Piece, but that didn’t make it into the live show. His mini-set started and ended with his familiar covers, “California Dreamin’” and “Light My Fire”. There is also a new song "New Year", performed against a visual backdrop of Big Ben and fireworks. Thus are franchises subliminally and subtly reinforced.
Feliciano also sang “Let’s Find Each Other Tonight”. Like everything else, the Albert Hall crowd was gleefully lapping it up, while I was in my own world, quietly troubled by the versification of the couplet “If you need some Company/Come and take a chance on me”, in which the word company is set as an anapest rather than a dactyl. It is the tiniest thing, but the more I hear it, sorry, the more it grates.
Earlier, the support set had come from Mo Zowayed (pictured above), a young Bahraini folk-rock singer-songwriter who has lived for four years in British Columbia. He ploughs a similar furrow to Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs but his songs don’t – yet – stay in the mind in quite the same way.
The show built to a final blazing, burning soul set featuring Ruby Turner and the band in full cry on songs like "Let the Good Times Roll" and an original "Roll out of this Hole". By that time the entire audience was completely energised and on its feet.
Overleaf: watch Jools Holland and José Feliciano in "Let’s Find Each Other Tonight"
The Last Night of the Proms is always a beautifully choreographed event, and this year’s was no exception. The format changes little, but each year a new selection of works is chosen to fill the slots. The BBC Symphony Orchestra, always the backbone of the season, somehow manages to sound fresh for their final outing.