Reviews

Reviews include Antony & the Johnsons in Vicar Street and Xuefei Yang at the National Gallery, Dublin

Antony & the Johnsons

Vicar Street, Dublin

When Antony Hegarty sings, an extraordinary thing happens. The room hushes. All you can hear, besides the frantic rattle of the air-conditioning fans in the rafters, is that spectacular voice. Antony sings, the audience sits in stunned silence. Not once or twice, but over and over again.

Anyone who has heard his breakthrough album I Am A Bird Now could not fail to be moved by its succession of deep, brittle epics, each delivered by a voice which seems to have come from another planet. Reminiscent of Jimmy Scott at his most heartbroken, Nina Simone at her most majestic and Tim or Jeff Buckley at their most dramatic, it's as expressive as voices come.

The back-story is just as colourful: the mixed-up English kid with Donegal kin grew up as a bit of a misfit in California before eventually finding his feet on New York's downtown performance art scene.

Initially championed by the likes of Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, Antony is now reaching a much wider audience.

It's not hard to see why. As Antony and his five Johnsons produce a performance which swoons with passion, emotion and dramatic mood swings, there's magic in the air.

Initially Antony scuttles shyly onstage and bunches up behind a grand piano. He looks uneasy, as if he's not quite sure what he's doing here, or why all these people have shunned an evening watching rich pop stars making simplistic political statements on TV to see him instead. When he starts to sing, though, any shyness quickly dissolves.

That rich, powerful falsetto coats songs such as For Today I Am A Boy, You Are My Sister and a mighty version of Leonard Cohen's The Guests with considerable intensity.

It's soul-stirring gospel time, if only more gospel tracks had been written about transsexual woes and gender confusion.

The band supply soft shapes and fringes throughout, cello and violin in particular embellishing each song with chamber-like solemnity and direction. Largely, it's Antony's piano which projects the pitch of each song. At one stage, he taps out stark beats on the piano lid, and on Dust & Water it's the audience humming which creates the backbeat.

He closes with a version of Candy Says and that huge voice rolls and tumbles in every direction. Tonight's show was sold-out; heaven only knows how many will show up next time around to be wowed.

Jim Carroll

Xuefei Yang (guitar)

National Gallery, Dublin

The classical programme of last week's Waltons Guitar Festival of Ireland spanned the generations to include the world's most celebrated guitarist - in the person of John Williams - and a player among those hoping to be the "next big thing".

Xuefei Yang was born in Beijing in 1977, the year after Mao's death. Yang was for 10 years the sole student of the guitar at China's Central Conservatory. She went on to continue her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London where she now resides, along the way attracting the endorsement of the late Joaquín Rodrigo and of John Williams.

Here Yang reprised much of her Wigmore Hall recital from May, although opening with a pair of (unidentified) Scarlatti keyboard sonatas arranged for guitar. Even though they made for a slightly shaky start - with secondary voices in the counterpoint sometimes sounding a little strained - you could hear at once what the fuss is about.

Her tone is warm, the playing clean, and the expression understated but vibrant.

She maintained her resolutely soft focus in more technically demanding Hispanic repertoire, avoiding the kind of machismo bite that can cheapen music such as El decameron negro by Afro-Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, or the growing complexity of the variations in Tárrega's Carnival of Venice.

In a selection from Raise the Red Lantern, short pieces written for her by Welsh composer Stephen Goss, Yang evoked images of the delicacy and unpredictability of a kite, the sorrow of a young girl facing an arranged marriage, and the suicide of a king's concubine.

These were Irish premières, as were her selection from Carlo Domeniconi's I Ching, also composed for her, in which she traversed a wide emotional range in a series of short pieces.

Michael Dungan