Vote often
Rocking out at home is one thing but you can’t beat the live experience – as this year best gigs demonstrated. So who blew your mind this year, asks TONY CLAYTON-LEA
IT’S SUBJECTIVE, of course, so if your favourite gig didn’t make the cut this year, don’t worry.
At this point, we all know live music is the best way to cut to the chase. Yes, you can download or stream to your heart’s content, and that’s fine in the comfort of your headphones and your home, but unless you’ve been sectioned, you’re left with limited choices: tapping your toes, strumming your fingers, diplomatic body-popping and humming along to the melodies.
But what if you leave this passive, sterile, lonely environment behind for more socially interactive pursuits? Such as people (sometimes lots of people) and music that you can feel in and around your body and not just in your ears? Music that, by virtue of its nature and via the channeling of musicians, can take you from here to there without physically picking you up and dropping you down?
The subjectivity of the experience makes it difficult to pin down. For every person who shouts out for Jack White’s gig at the O2, there’s someone else who would put their life on the line for Patti Smith at Electric Picnic.
Ditto for Jay-Z/Kanye West at the O2 over Band of Horses at the Olympia; Chic at the Galway Arts Festival over Spiritualised at Vicar Street; Bruce Springsteen at the RDS over Bad Plus at the National Concert Hall.
So, it’s hard to let one act through and push another act aside. The Ticket’s top three gigs of the year demonstrates this: just how do you choose between the Jay-Z/Kanye West double whammy at the O2, Patti Smith’s powerhouse performance at EP, and Jack White’s lesson in raw excitement (again at the O2)?
The sheer diversity of the music (as well as of the venues – even a venue as big as the O2 works if you have the right act digging for gold) is what makes the live experience such a marvelous, moveable force to be reckoned with. May that marvelous, moveable force be with you.
BEST GIG
JACK WHITE
(O2, Dubliin)
PATTI SMITH
(Electric Picnic, Co Laois)
JAY-Z/KANYE WEST(O2, Dublin)
BEST CLASSICAL
Mahler from an Italian orchestra? Spacious, detailed, splendid. A wonderful start to a new Beethoven cycle from American pianist Jonathan Biss. Consorts to the Organ by one of music’s great originals, William Lawes, (1602-1645) played with telling insight. Early percussion pieces by John Cage, hugely appealing pieces played with palpable relish. Arias written for a great castrato that concentrate on delicacy and refinement rather than overt virtuosity. And, in close contention, the Freiburger Barock Consort’s exploration of the adventurous Heinrich Schmelzer (Harmonia MundiHMC902087), a return to form in baroque laments from mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter (NaïveV 5286), Olivier Marron and the Arcanto Quartett giving Schubert’s String Quintet a fresh makeover (Harmonia MundiHMC9022106), pianist Stephen Hough in top form in a French Album (HyperionCDA67890), and an excellent Arvo Pärt collection under Paul Hillier (Harmonia MundiHMU807553).
Michael Dervan
MAHLER:SYMPHONYNO6
Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/Antonio Pappano EMI Classics 084 4132 (2 CDs)
BEETHOVEN:PIANO SONATAS VOL 1
Jonathan Biss (piano) Onyx 4082
WILLIAM LAWES: CONSORTS TO THE ORGAN
Phantasm Linn Records CKD399
