Nigel Kennedy *****

By Sheena Hastings
Published on Friday 20 January 2012 11:39

York Grand Opera House

NIGEL Kennedy, with his punkish hair, trousers decorated with safety pins and Doc Marten boots, has an approach and style that’s about moving with the movements and using a piece’s basic shape as a departure point. This show consists of his own composition The Four Elements and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to start an amazing musical journey. Accompanied by the marvellous strings of the Orchestra of Life, two sets of drums, two electric guitars, a jazz trumpeter, the percussionist from Massive Attack, and four singers with voices blended into the whole like another instrument, Kennedy moves between his Stradivarius and an electric violin, which is at times boosted into wailing effects by a Moog synthesiser controlled by foot pedals. Despite the pyrotechnics, the energy, earthiness and sheer brilliance of the music-making are what lure you in and fix your whole attention on this ensemble and the man in the middle with the sorcerer’s command of all about him. His 2012 take on the Four Seasons is intensely flavoursome and urgent, peppered with bongos and trumpet, and interrupted now and then for a side order of something else. One such detour is via a couple of Bach’s Two-Part Inventions, sublime musical conversations between Kennedy and the gifted cellist Beata Urbanek-Kalinowska. New sounds, semi-improvised riffs (full marks to orchestra leader Lizzie Ball for following Kennedy’s mercurial cues), a touch of Hendrix here, a spot of Duke Ellington there. These musicians had a ball, and so did we.

Original article here

Classico Latino in El Pais

Classico Latino in Nuevo Siglo magazine part 1 and part 2

Here’s a little bit about it from the Orchestra’s Live site and you can read the Norwich Evening News article here

Orchestras Live, Norwich City Council and the Britten Sinfonia have been working on a project bringing together different musical genres and performance styles. The project aims to develop participation and engagement with professional orchestral music by involving groups of young people who would not normally be involved, and at the same time broaden the repertoire of young orchestral students with a view of each group learning from the other, facilitated by a professional orchestra and workshop leaders.

The project is now underway, with the participants working towards a performance in April 2011 at the Theatre Royal in Norwich.

Nigel Kennedy BBC News Documentary

When Kennedy played he was brilliant. An hour of Vivaldi concertos was segued almost seamlessly. Works that can sound prim or pedestrian sprang to life when played with such vitality and freedom of spirit.

Slow movements were rapt and finales infectiously exciting. A double concerto played by Kennedy and the orchestra’s leader Lizzie Ball soared off into a scintillating jazzy improvisation that became the evening’s highlight.