Irish Times critics review Scissor Sisters, Fire Face and Sarah Field with the RTÉ NSO in Dublin and Hille Perl and Lee Santana in Belfast
Scissor Sisters
The Village, Dublin
They are mouthy, sexually provocative and probably wear feather boas to bed, but beneath the boho-chic veneer Scissor Sisters are a stubbornly conventional pop group. They write old-fashioned rock songs with grandiose, rather obvious choruses. They like glam, disco and, disconcertingly, Elton John. In fact, if Scissor Sisters were any squarer they could poke your eye out with their shoulder blades.
This, however, has not prevented the New York five-piece from emerging as the first compelling pop story of 2004. A giddy, electro-punk version of the Pink Floyd smack anthem Comfortably Numb has gatecrashed the charts. Their début album, a glittery jumble of piano ballads, sneering rock and retro electronica, is drawing slavering reviews. The public has been no less enthusiastic, embracing the Sisters as though forlornly holding out all these years for a lippy collective of gender-bending glam revivalists.
You could tell there was a buzz around the group as they took the stage for their first Dublin show, because even casual fans hunkered by the bar stopped nattering for a moment. Dressed like refugees from a sci-fi rock opera, the Sisters delivered an electrifying set: confrontational, occasionally hysterical, relentlessly uplifting.
They were at their most intriguing when mingling retro and contemporary sounds. Comfortably Numb emerged as a cavorting techno monster, the swaying crowd as integral to the performance as singer Jake Shears's frenetic pelvis-wiggling. A treacly Laura confirmed the Sisters' love for classic pop while the pulsating disco stomp of Filthy/Gorgeous hinted at the Bee Gees trapped in a lift with Felix Da Housecat.
Shears, who claims to be a former stripper, is a frontman you cannot look away from, a scraggy chunk of charisma. He even managed to appear cool in a silly hat - the hallmark of a pop god in the making.
As her screamingly lame stage name suggests, co-vocalist Ana Matronic was, in contrast, profoundly infuriating. She is a powerful stage presence, but her banter puts you in mind of Ruby Wax playing at being a punk rocker. Someone tell her she isn't funny.
Of course there was plenty to sneer at, if you came to sneer. Leave your misgivings in the cloakroom, however, and you get a sleazed-up thrill ride of a show. The middle of the road has never felt so exciting.
Ed Power
Hille Perl, viola da gamba; Lee Santana, chitarrone
Linen Hall Library, Belfast
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Folias Mediteraneas - music by Diego Ortiz, Girolamo Kapsberger and others
The Linen Hall Library has been a focus for Belfast's cultural life since the 18th century, but it is only recently that a large-scale refurbishment of its premises has allowed it to become a performance venue. The intimate space on the library's second floor, at once chamber and concert hall, was just right for these fine-toned instruments.
The players' job is to play, but if they can also introduce their performances with the laid-back charm of Lee Santana it does no harm at all, especially as this 17th-century repertoire will be unfamiliar territory for many listeners.
Diminutions - the art of breaking up longer notes into shorter ones - by the German virtuoso Hille Perl brought these pieces by Bonizzi, Notari, Rognono and others to life. Florida-born Santana began playing in rock and jazz groups before discovering early music and the lute family, including the long-necked chitarrone. If, just occasionally, his improvisations had a touch of the west coast about them, who's to say it's wrong? The one way of playing this music that is definitely wrong is to play it exactly as written. Diego Ortiz, the main composer featured here, himself wrote a manual on how to elaborate on the given notes.
A brilliant arpeggio piece from the eccentric German Kapsberger and variations on the Folia theme stood out; Carolan's Dream was an attractive addition. The prevailing impression was of the beauty of the instruments, as lovely to look at as to listen to, and the delicate beauty of the music.
Tour continues to Portstewart tomorrow, then Mullingar, Clifden, Tinahely and Dublin
Dermot Gault
Fire Face
International Bar, Dublin
In 1929 W. B. Yeats assessed his continuing Cuchulainn cycle with characteristic modesty. "Everyone here is as convinced as I am," offered one letter, "that I have discovered a new form by this combination of dance, speech and music."
It's hard to know which "here" he meant. The Abbey's repertoire had already succumbed to theatrical realism, leaving his verse dramas, which grafted the aesthetic of Japanese Noh theatre onto Irish mythology, to harrumph away from the unappreciative hoi polloi and retire to the drawing rooms of the middle classes.
The daring new theatre company Nervousystem has wrestled Yeats's symbolist theatre for its meaning and, as an actor-centred ensemble, prised open the potential in Yeats's "plays for dancers". Emerging to a bare stage and obscured by robes with drooping cowls, the cast ceremoniously don startling masks. Borrowing as much from the grotesque embellishments of commedia dell'arte as the courtly distance of Noh, these masks allow director Aiden Condron to both efface and exalt his performers. Manipulated faces float through the space to conjure unsettling heroes or craven mortals in highly physical, transfigured portrayals.
Chronicling Cuchulainn's legend from At The Hawk's Well and On Baile's Strand through The Only Jealousy Of Emer and The Death Of Cuchulainn, the narratives can struggle against the cramped performance space.
Such confinement makes an arcane vocabulary of movements seem cluttered at times, while allowing the unmasked "low characters" - Sean Duggan's excellent Blind Man and Condron's fluttering Fool - to steal our sympathies.
If the austerity of Yeats's drama and the starkness of his verses suffer from Condron's decision to largely sever them from music, the bravery of this undertaking is still arresting. Nervousystem has stepped purposefully onto a path of experimentation that began a century ago, stumbling occasionally but always guided by an assured and compelling strangeness.
Runs until March 13th
Peter Crawley
Sarah Field, RTÉ NSO/ Houlihan
NCH, Dublin
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John Adams - A Short Ride In A Fast Machine.
Eric Sweeney - Soprano Saxophone Concerto, Three Pieces for Orchestra
Each of this year's four concerts in the Horizons series (which has moved to Tuesday lunchtime) follows a format: one Irish composer's choice of their own music plus at least one work by an admired contemporary.
Eric Sweeney has taken an active interest in minimalism, so John Adams made a natural partner for this programme.
Even those who loathe minimalism tend to respect this master craftsman's ability to reveal new shapes out of the familiar. For that reason, and for its roller-coaster energy, his Short Ride In A Fast Machine, from 1986, is well on its way to becoming a classic.
In this performance and throughout the concert the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Robert Houlihan had just enough of the precision, though not quite enough drive.
In Sweeney's Soprano Saxophone Concerto, from 1998, the poised and sensitive soloist was Sarah Field, who gave the première in Manchester last year. The music shows a quiet command of the possibilities offered by the combination of saxophone and string orchestra and some adroit shifting of ideas between groupings of instruments. Like so much music that uses minimalist techniques, however, it has no inherent sense of scale. The material is inherently periodic, but the manner of treatment means it could last for five minutes or 15.
To some that is one of the fascinations of this style. I found it significant, however, that the most compelling music was that which owed a thing or two to Adams's tight-reined manipulation of asymmetrical rhythms. That was especially evident in the first and third of Sweeney's Three Pieces For Orchestra, from 1998, which was receiving its première. Despite the characteristic issues with scale, some beautiful scoring and intriguing rhythmic patterns ensured that these pieces held one's attention.
Martin Adams
