Guardian UK Newspaper Review
’Atlanta singer Lizz Wright's calm authority, technical elegance and cool sophistication as a jazz vocalist can make you forget how deep her roots in church music go. But in live performance, those qualities reverberate around a room like the boom of an organ. Church minister's daughter Wright is a natural choice to sing on the Barbican's tribute to Nina Simone, on a bill shared with the operatic vocalist Dianne Reeves, with West African singer Angelique Kidjo and Simone's daughter, who has recently released the big-band tribute album Simone On Simone.’
I had the pleasure of first seeing Lizz in Manchester a few years ago and since then I was hooked. I enclose a few videos that demonstrate the calibre of the assembled cast. I suggest that the strength of the assembled musicians and the music of Nina Simone has the potential for a cracking night.
Half-glimpsed through laser-illuminated gloom, Karin stands motionless in a heavy robe, face painted to a deathly pallor, singing lines that less resemble the concerns of a conventional pop song than some eerie nightmare. "Who is that to come by my house?" she asks, as synths ring like wind chimes in some deserted Japanese garden. "Stands outside my window," she continues. "Sucking on the berries/Eats us out of house and home..." It's pop, of a fashion - but pop scripted by the Brothers Grimm, filmed by David Lynch, and never to appear on any Now compilation, lest it freak out children of the future who might wonder what the kids were boshing out in 2009.
"I have a problem with normal," says Karin - who is not, incidentally, a cave-dwelling witch, but a polite, well-adjusted mother of two from Gothenburg, Sweden. "Normal is something that we have created. All the things we have created around gender, how male and female artists should look, and sound."Fever Ray
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Originally, klezmer (plural klezmorim) referred to musical instruments, and was later extended to refer to musicians themselves. It was not until the mid-to-late 20th Century that the word was used to identify a musical genre. Early 20th Century recordings and writings most often refer to the style as "Yiddish" music, although it is also sometimes called Freilech music.
The Rough Guide to Klezmer Revival
Lady G wore five costumes including Union Jack-branded bondage/biker gear, a see-through bubble coat, a glass dress that made her look like Paul Stanley's mirror guitar and others too fruity to describe in detail here.
Following another costume change into a nipple-revealing black outfit she donned a bra that fired sparkle-flames from her breast area when she sang the chorus to 'Eh Eh'.
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