murraybramwell.com

March 06, 2017

Daily Review – WOMADelaide Celebrates

Filed under: 2017,Archive,Music,Womadelaide

Daily Review

WOMADelaide Celebrates

Murray Bramwell talks with WOMADelaide director Ian Scobie about the music festival with a difference.

It is now 25 years since WOMADelaide, that strange acronym grafted on to the name of an Australian city, was first heard about. In 1992, as part of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival, negotiations took place between Brookman, his colleague Ian Scobie, and Thomas Brooman, the director of the UK WOMAD (aka World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival. The idea was …

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June 20, 2016

Breath of Heaven

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Cabaret,Music

Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton
Dunstan Playhouse
Adelaide Festival Centre
June 18.

Murray Bramwell

Lisa Fischer has performed on the biggest stages in the world. She played to more than 500,000 people in Rio, and to sold-out stadiums from London to Berlin, the US to Australia. Since 1989 – along with keyboard player Chuck Leavell and bassist Darryl Jones – Fischer has been an indispensible part of The Rolling Stones touring band. Stones fans will never forget her show-stopping solo …

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March 03, 2016

All Delighted Audience

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Festival,Music

Sufjan Stevens
Thebarton Theatre
Adelaide Festival
February 29, 2016

Murray Bramwell

Last time we saw Sufjan Stevens it was his 2011 Age of Adz tour. Inspired by the paintings of the schizophrenic visionary Royal Robertson, the concert featured massive back projections of Robertson’s ecstatic, vibrantly coloured imaginings while Stevens and a ten piece band produced a symphonic event, festooned with samples, loops and intrepid orchestrations.

For his 2016 tour Sufjan Stevens is in lyric mode. With just four band members …

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March 01, 2016

Navigating the New World

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Music,Womadelaide

Murray Bramwell previews WOMADelaide 2016

It is less than ten days until WOMADelaide opens again for three days and four nights of intriguing and often exhilarating music, performed by 400 musicians from more than 30 countries. From small, but nonetheless impressive, beginnings in 1992 under the wing of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival, WOMADelaide, now in its 20th incarnation and an annual fixture since 2002, has become a major national festival. Noted for its consistent quality, and the depth and …

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February 08, 2016

Sublime the Revelator

Filed under: 2016,Archive,Music

An Evening with Gillian Welch
Her Majesty’s
February 3.

Some things really are worth the wait. And Adelaide has waited a very long time for a first visit from the incomparable Gillian Welch and her brilliant musical partner David Rawlings. It has been eleven years since they last toured Australia and then it was Eastern States only. This time they drove to South Australia from Perth – 28 hours by car, they proudly report, but- with some regret – not …

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March 31, 2015

The Odes of March

Filed under: 2015,Archive,Music

Augie March
Her Majesty’s
March 26

Murray Bramwell

It is several weeks on from the Ides of March, now it’s time for the Odes of March. Augie March, that is – back from a seven year hibernation for a national tour featuring their 2014 album Havens Dumb. Led by the prodigiously talented, singer songwriter Glenn Richards, Augie March appeared on the Australian music scene in 1998 and released their first album Sunset Studies in 2000. Now fifteen years and …

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March 09, 2015

Adelaide Festival 2015

Filed under: 2015,Archive,Festival,Music

Daily Review
Murray Bramwell

Roses and Bryars

Gavin Bryars Ensemble
March 3. Elder Hall

Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet
and selected orchestral works
March 5. Adelaide Town Hall

One of the highlights of this year’s Adelaide Festival has been composer-in- residence Gavin Bryars. Yorkshire-born, Bryars has been prominent in minimalist music since the late 1960s, with works such as The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet in 1972. Both were first released on …

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October 27, 2014

Match-fit Stones reach us in blistering form

Filed under: 2014,Archive,Australian Texts,Music,Theatre

The Rolling Stones
(with special guest Jimmy Barnes)
14 On Fire Tour
Adelaide Oval
October 25.
Duration: 130 minutes.
iEG Entertainment, Frontier Touring and AEG Live.
Bookings Ticketek .

The Rolling Stones have arrived – like a crossfire hurricane. Their tour is called 14 on Fire and, for once, the description matches the product. With their March dates cancelled because of the tragic death of Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, L’Wren Scott, the band only returned to performing in Europe in late …

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September 03, 2014

Time Changes and Tempo Too

Filed under: 2014,Archive,Music

Bob Dylan
Adelaide Entertainment Centre
August 30.

Murray Bramwell

It’s not just the times that are a-changing. Things have Changed. Bob Dylan is back on stage in Adelaide and his opening song, Academy Award winning theme tune to the 2000 film Wonder Boys, tells us – “People are crazy, times are strange/I’m locked in tight , I’m outta range/ I used to care but things have changed.” Except, with Bob, the more things change, the more they also stay …

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February 25, 2014

Music World

Filed under: 2014,Archive,Music,Theatre,Womadelaide

Murray Bramwell previews a selection of the singers and sounds from Womadelaide 2014, opening March 7 to 11. Botanic Park, Adelaide.

For more than twenty years the first week in March in Adelaide has heralded, not just the Festival and Fringe, but Womadelaide, the enduringly popular music event with the portmanteau name that is both a local and national institution. First staged in 1992, under the wing of Rob Brookman’s Festival, Peter Gabriel’s UK concert venture Womad (that’s acronym for …

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