adambowie.com

Category: Music

  • Classical Music Downloads

    Let’s revisit an issue from a few years ago. In 2005, BBC Radio 3 presented the first in their now regular “Experiences” when they broadcast the Beethoven Experience. They broadcast, non-stop Beethoven for six days including pretty much everything he composed. As part of the Experience, they made available as downloads, a new recording from…

  • Amiina

    My favourite Icelandic band were in town tonight, and I was in XOYO in London to see them. I last saw Amiina at Latitude in the summer where some members of the group performed a live musical accompaniament to the animated films of Lotte Reiniger. Prior to that, I’d seen them in the Queen Elizabeth…

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey – Live at the Royal Festival Hall and the See Further Festival

    2010 is the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society. We’ve had a special series of In Our Time earlier in the year, the president of the Society, Martin Rees has given the Reith Lectures, and there’ve been numerous talks and lectures. Over the weekend, the Royal Society’s annual summer exhibition moved to the Southbank Centre…

  • Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra

    I’m beginning to lose count of the number of times I’ve seen Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra playing their big band jazz, but it doesn’t really matter, as it’s a joy to see them every single time they’re in the country. This time around it’s an especially good treat as…

  • Not Completely My Own Composition

    Over the weekend I read a really good piece in the new issue of Word magazine written by Eamonn Forde that detailed some of the more famed musical “squabbles” when it’s discovered that an artist has “ripped off” another artist, usually by sampling them without permission. The most recent example mentioned in the piece was…

  • Jonny Greenwood – Doghouse

    (This photo has nothing to do with the concert, but I took it down the road from the BBC’s Maida Vale studios). I’d never been to the BBC’s Maida Vale studios. But this evening I was off to them to see the BBC Concert Orchestra playing the world premiere of Jonny Greenwood’s new piece as…

  • Amy MacDonald

    Amy MacDonald played a set in London’s Hard Rock Café for Absolute Radio earlier this evening. The set, promoting a new album, was great and should be going out on-air next Monday. In the meantime, even though I wasn’t right at the front, I’m pretty happy with some of the photos I took. As well…

  • Transatlantic Sessions

    Transatlantic Sessions is one of those TV programmes which you may have seen if you spend any time watching BBC Four, BBC Alba, or (I guess) BBC Scotland. Jerry Douglas hosts a variety of musicians from Scotland, Ireland, the US and elsewhere as they record – well, sessions – which are then broadcast in a…

  • The Beatles Reissued

    Today marks the day that The Beatles complete catalogue is re-issed on CD (and quite possibly digitally – but we’ll find out later). The original CDs were – seemingly – fairly rushed affairs and during the intervening years, technology has marched on, and many less famous classic albums have had the remastering process applied. For…

  • Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra

    Next year, the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra is starting something of a residency at the Barbican and other venues in East London. It’ll happen for at least a couple of years in the run-up to the Olympics. All I can say is that on 1 October, when tickets go on sale, you should…

  • Some Recent Music

    I’ve seen some great concerts recently which were all very different, but all worth mentioning here. 15 May saw Icelandic “Music Through Unconventional Means” which featured the Southbank’s artist in residence, Shlomo, who’s a beatboxer, performing with one of my favourite groups, Amiina, and another Icelandic performer, Valgeir Sigurdsson. The first half of the concert…

  • The Peatbog Faeries

    The Peatbog Faeries are a band that I really came across when I was up in Skye last year. I’d seen posters for all over the place for a concert I wouldn’t be able to make, and was vaguely aware that I’d seen coverage of them in things like the Celtic Connections TV programmes that…

  • Secondary Ticketing Redux

    The other day I was talking about secondary ticketing and my despising of the general dishonesty of it all. Well now Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has explained the situation from a band’s side of things. He doesn’t like secondary ticketers, or “re-sellers” as they’re known. Like me, he considers them touts, or scalpers…