MUSIC REVIEW: Swingle Singers

An eclectic, effervescent vocal tuneathon adorns the City Of Derry International Choral Festival

As the third gala concert of Derry-Londonderry's second annual international choral extravaganza begins, a formal, chatty atmosphere, with green and blue lights bathing the rear of the St. Columbs' Hall stage, gives way to welcoming applause for the BBC's Sarah Brett and the seven striking souls that will follow her introduction – basses Edward Randell and Kevin Fox, tenors Oliver Griffiths and Christopher Jay, alto Clare Wheeler and sopranos Sara Brimer and Joanna Goldsmith-Eteson.

They are the Swingle Singers (hereafter the Swingles), four men and three women of remarkable vocal agility and ability who are set to raise the roof of this historic theatrical and musical arena like never before.

We are promised a mixture of reworked classics and timeless old favourites to go with the Swingles' own material. And we begin auspiciously, with airily Celtic oohs, aahs, hums and whistles that tie neatly into a sweetly seductive mellow melody backed up by percussion. Except there are no instruments to speak of: all accompaniment comes from the singers themselves in a performance fully in line with the nature of the festival. Call it "cantata a cappella".

As the air fades away, the lights dim, briefly casting shadows before the spotlight bursts upon a high tempo power percussion with Brimer, Goldsmith-Eteson, Randell and Fox fully working out their voices. If the opening tune inspires claps, this one brings roars, paving the way for "Gemiler Gerisune" a Turkish love song about two young lovers destined to be separated forever. The shift in tone from frivolous to forlorn is not damaging at all: rather, one can only marvel at the clarity, pitch and versatility of the vocalists in this multi-levelled choral concoction.

It's apparent that the Swingles thrive on being playful with chords, back beats and chants, an approach that comes to fruition in a male vocal bebop swing duet that encourages, nay, demands, audience participation. Even if we can't repeat every line or beat, we are fully in the mood of this very Bobby McFerrin-esque turn. "Don't worry, be happy"? Almost certainly.

Their broad, booming and quite brilliant take on Elbow's "Weather To Fly", which implies that the Swingles are having “the time of (their) lives” (and most, if not all, of the audience appear to be too) precedes a high-tempo, multi-layered jazzy take on Bach's “Two Sisters” that transcends the classic for a contemporary crowd. Loop recording comes in very handy here as up to 21 vocal strands are heard from the performers' voices. Impressive though it is, it's merely an appetizer for the breathtakingly beautiful rendition of John Martyn's "Couldn't Love You More" (listen above), arguably the highlight of the evening.

"Inspiration can come from anywhere", the group will later say, and they are right: they have already proven, and they will continue to prove, to be bittersweet romantics, children's storytellers and melodious musicians all at once. Eclectic entertainers. A reputation solidified by the very Toto-esque rock that soon follows along with a more quietly gloomy, yet soothing, approach to Bach.

They will later handle Debussy with the care and craft he deserves, their delicate, delectable Claire De Lune sandwiched in between the irresistible choral flourish that is "Piper", the catchy, uplifting "Burden", the neatly choreographed "Reservoir Kids" and, most impressively, a perfectly pitched, melancholic rendition of Mumford & Sons' "After The Storm".

On the whole it is a rather breathtaking tuneathon, lyrically and musically, the perfect tonic for the stormy conditions outside. The Swingles are ultimately testament to the power of the voice, and the voice alone, to enrich, enlighten and entertain hearts, senses and minds: which they do, in the most effervescent, elucidating manner possible.

MUSIC REVIEW: DJ Snoopadelic

To be in the company of Snoop Dogg is to be in good company, usually: beyond the controversy and misogyny, the rapper, songwriter and, er, actor (everyone remember Starsky & Hutch?) has a rocking and rolling repertoire to go with a rather rocky reputation. Ideal for any musical city.

What better time is there, then, for this temperamental tuneaholic, less glamorously known as Calvin Broadus, to descend upon Derry-Londonderry with his first DJ Snoopadelic set in Ireland?

The flat and gravelly foundations where the giant tent named the Venue once stood are enveloped in cold winds, cloudy skies and damp drizzle. One could be forgiven for wishing the tent is still sheltering them as Type One, aka Christopher Ferry, does his utmost to warm the cockles with a steady set. The calm, concentrated Ferry lets his music, the screen lighting and occasional chants from a small but loyal band of air pumping punters do the talking.

Further uplift is provided by the literal zen of Zenemy: a clown faced DJ, mildly colourful language and cheeky chappy cheerleader rappers that cheer up, chant to and charge the growing crowd animatedly. The unanimously, unexpectedly booming atmosphere is now ready for the unifyingly bouncy beat of the main man; the rain and cold are now much less relevant.

Alarm bells and sirens are heard, and strobe lighting becomes prominent. Onto the stage steps Snoop Dogg, on a mission to deliver good time by playing every musical genre he likes for the people.

And he does a rather fine job too. A deliciously jazzy hip hop beat elevates the mood, preceding a funky techno rap that emanates from an aura of cool behind the turntable. With shades donned, dreadlocks in place and arms wide opened, Snoop relaxes as Derry roars, his king-like demeanour projecting a newly found confidence to those watching.

Techno and hip hop later merge with rap, rock and funk to create a suburban disco beat entirely in keeping with the surroundings. The on stage screen graphics, punctuated by shots of the clapping, singing crowd, are sometimes garish but never dull. Accompanied by tried, trusted and toneful tuneage, including Lady Gaga, Queen, James Brown and Los Lobos, it's a recipe for success.

If Snoop is not overly talkative, he doesn't need to be: his modus operandi isn't centred around friendly interactivity, but rather a close encounter of vibrant visual video and animated audio. One that sends the young Derry populace to happy homes.

(The original version of this review appeared in the Belfast Telegraph on Friday October 24, 2014.)

MUSIC REVIEW: A Musical Gathering (A Stór Mo Chroí)

A successful celebration of the dedication and craft of eight Irish traditional musicians, the A Stór Mo Chroí collective's Musical Gathering is everything one can hope for an evening of folk music – inspiring, enriching, stirring, but, above all, heart-warming and genuine. The collective – four men and four women – come together to celebrate their love of story-telling with pipe, flute, string and vocal harmonies, and melodies of varying tone and tempo.

At times feeling like an Irish dance hall, at other times a reassuring living room fireside, the packed MAC alternately crackles and cools with electric energy and effortless ease in an atmosphere rich in folky familiarity and familial unity.

All four female vocalists shine alongside the entertaining and affable John Spillane and the skilled instrumentalism of Dónal O’Connor, Donagh Hennessy and John McSherry: in particular, Mary Dillon's determined, regretful but unmistakeably sweet vocals work superbly as a mellow counterpoint to the more dominant and booming, but no less impressive, vocals of Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh.

As the band play on and the singers change tunes, confidence rises on and off stage: jocular chat and random Irish cultural references intersperse with melodious compositions and varyingly interpretative lyrics. It is all so easily accessible; one does not need to be a folk buff to find their spirits lifted, heads bobbing and feet tapping throughout.

(The original version of this review appeared in the Belfast Telegraph on Tuesday October 21, 2014. It can be read here.)

THEATRE REVIEW: Chateau Le Fear

Derry-Londonderry's newest "nightmare" is a castle of confusion, chaos, creeps and creative characterisation. Inspired, in the words of creator Phil Ruddock, by "too many late night movies and a little communing with the dead", Chateau Le Fear gathers up a series of talented actors, artists and technicians for a genuinely mysterious and naturally frightening haunted house this Hallowe'en.

The setting is an old brick building in the corner of Ebrington. Screams can be heard even from outside the walls on this particular dark night: one half expects to hear thunder clap and see lightning flash directly above the musty house.

When one finally walks through the Chateau doors, they are in for a highly memorable interactive walk-through show. Webbing dangles from ceilings and blood drips down walls in a dark maze where numerous ghosts, ghouls and zombies eagerly await your company.

The sights and sounds here can reduce confident strides to tentative crawls in a matter of seconds: zombies who reach out but don’t quite touch your leg, deceptively innocuous girl ghouls, creepy hotel clerks and intestine eaters, to name but a handful. It's the sort of exhibition you really can't predict, and is cleverly structured so that horror film buffs – especially Romero and Hitchcock fans – can play along with the "undead". All that's missing are vampires.

Chateau Le Fear is essentially a House Of Cheap Thrills And Shocks, but never pretends to be anything else, and the results are gut-wrenchingly, grippingly gruesome, guaranteed to give you chills. And when one walks away from those musty old bricks towards a relatively safe, well-lit city, they can tell themselves "it’s only theatre". Or is it?

(The original version of this review appeared in the Belfast Telegraph on Wednesday October 15, 2014. It can be read here.)

Judith Roddy And A Particular Dread

The actress discusses her role in the Lyric Theatre's production of Pentecost

Last year, Derry-Londonderry born actress Judith Roddy found herself at a Q and A film director Danny Boyle was giving for young, aspiring film students at the Foyle Film Festival. How, one student wondered, did Boyle get where he is? How did he get his break?

Boyle told the student that the error of striving for success lay in "wanting to get away". He advised him to write and direct about the places and people he knew: who you are and where you're from, he said, is your strength, and you bring it with you. Anyone can aspire to a different life, but the richest life arises from embracing your roots.

That was how Roddy felt about her home town, and it is how she feels still.

And soon, the experienced young actress, who stood out in the premiere of Sam Shepard's A Particle Of Dread at the Playhouse Theatre last year, will be joining the cast of said play for its US Premiere in New York from this Sunday, October 19, onwards. But for now, she is enjoying – or should that be "enduring"? – another particular dread in Stewart Parker's Pentecost, currently in the final week of a one-month run at Belfast's Lyric Theatre.

The production has received praise from all corners, this website describing it as "a remarkable achievement – intelligent without being impertinent, driven without being didactic". Roddy herself was attracted to the production because of its late writer: "(Parker) was razor sharp and eloquent. His work, particularly this play, holds a mirror to both us and our times. His characters are striking, but they can melt you with humour."

Pentecost especially resonates with Roddy because she is from Northern Ireland yet rarely gets the opportunity to work in these parts. It is the first play she has starred in at the Lyric. Like A Particle Of Dread, there's a contained foreboding energy in Pentecost that penetrates a confined space: both plays feel like memory pieces, recollections of strange haunted histories.

But Roddy also finds beauty and challenge in the language of Pentecost: claustrophobia sets the scene from the outset, ensuring that focus is in textual inhabitation.

"There's directness and honesty here like no other in the north, but also terrific buoyancy", she says. "The text has to be lived in, but not leaned on. Parker has done the work; lightness of touch on the actors' part is the challenge."

Roddy has often been cast in very physical roles on stage. Prior to Pentecost, she played Susie Monican in the National Theatre's production of The Silver Tassie, who was a big presence in a cast of twenty-two. The role of Marian, who functions as some sort of "leader of the pack" in a party of five – four people, and one ghost – appears no different, both roles giving Roddy a welcome opportunity to "score" their physicality, like music. "The 'score' here lies in the arc of the play, with Parker setting up moments and breaking them with laughter in the same beat. I love it."

When rehearsing, Roddy found it impossible to ignore Marian's strength, practicality and sense of humour, but ultimately, what all those things were masking in her. Portraying the character's stern but open exterior was paramount. "If, as an actor, I choose to play her as damaged or neurotic, I've nowhere to go. I chose a more difficult path, because while there might be little sympathy for her, the payoff is undeniably better: she reveals her very core as the play unravels. It feels more truthful to me, and most important.”

Yet despite the undeniably unifying bond that forms among the four human characters, no bond seems more significant than that between Marian and the ghost of Lily, the previous owner of a house Marian is now trying to habitate. Both, it would appear, have more in common with one another than either would like to admit, and Roddy sees this bond as essential: two characters united by a shared loss.

"Without the connection, Marian would never reveal herself, and Lily would never tell her story. It creates moments of stillness in the play. The audience can see a tangible character going through a crisis, and another character reliving her past and a haunted presence."

It's an indisputably downcast tone that Pentecost presents, one that represents much collapse: in characters, society and religion. But Roddy sees a less downbeat message, one in which Marian ceases to bite her own wounds and the characters come to accept and make peace with themselves.

"Pentecost is a play about history. It speaks of the past through the present in the characters and looks to the future. The resolved cadence in the piece is very tricky, but magical. The lights may literally be off in the play, but there's brightness in its future."

And there's brightness in Roddy's future as she prepares to set off for an experience like no other on Broadway. "I'll be there until the New Year, and possibly longer. It's an exciting time. The nieces and nephews better improve their Skype skills or they won't get any Christmas presents!"

Pentecost runs at Belfast's Lyric Theatre until Saturday October 18.

Synge & Byrne

Si's Sights And Sounds investigates Derry-Londonderry's latest "coffice", or "caffice" on the day of its official opening

Once upon a time, a Guardian staff writer coined a concise, catchy, crossover term – The Coffice. Half coffee shop, half office, hence the name, it is a word that now seems fitting for all coffee houses or cafes in existence. There's coffices, or caffices if you prefer, everywhere. Eateries and drinkeries, transformed into workplaces for the freelancing writers, project developers and entrepreneurs of our wired world, with free wi-fi, nice background music, a dependably delicious menu and a lovely window view.

The latest Derry-Londonderry coffice, or caffice, Synge & Byrne, has all of the above, and a little more: a friendly ambience and a unique aesthetic that blends both past and future elements of its city of residents to create a new monument to its surroundings. A trifle and a tribute can be enjoyed within brothers Damien & Adrian Garvey's "coffee kitchen", situated right at the top entrance of the Foyleside Shopping Centre, close to the historic walls and Ferryquay Gate. It's the third of its kind, following successful Synge & Byrne openings in Newry and Newtownabbey, and may well establish itself as the welcome, modernist "cousin" of the popular Legenderry coffice near the Guildhall Square.

Synge & Byrne, however? What a name, catchy yet comedic. When someone reads those words, he or she surely can't help jocularly suggesting that the food and drink in the cafe may singe and burn them. Although, according to co-owner Damien Garvey, he stumbled across the name purely by chance: "I was putting up bunk beds at home one night. My youngest daughter was bouncing on the top bunk, and my wife said, 'Be careful, your hair will singe and burn the lights!'"

Eureka. That was that. The name of Synge & Byrne had originated. Although the backstory runs deeper than that: J(ohn) M(illington) Synge was a key figure in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century Celtic Revival, and co-founder of Dublin's Abbey Theatre. Charlie Byrne was an eight foot tall man famed for parading himself in country fairs and on village greens in the eighteenth century.

An artistic giant and a literal giant, with names that wouldn't sound out of place when spoken in the food business. It really does work well.

The logo (pictured above) represents the historical Synge and Byrne as a kind of yin and yang, a two headed schizophrenic beast. "One is modern and one's traditional", says Damien. "It's like looking forward and looking back at once, and it encapsulates what we're trying to do with an artisan cafe that resembles both sides of who we are in Northern Ireland."

As owners of O'Briens, the Garvey brothers have already been operating in "Stroke City" as businessmen for nearly seven years, and they find it a fantastic city for business. To them, it is small, but very proud and vibrant, the ideal place for another “coffee corner” - for Damien, the events of the City Of Culture year and Music City attest to that.

"Each cafe must find its own environment, and here we've found somewhere to develop the musical and culture side, where everyone from the shopping centre and the centre of the town can get involved. We've opened, we look good, but that's the easy part – keeping it going for the next ten years is the hard part."

It is left for me to sit back and enjoy a Synge & Byrne coffee in the corner of this "coffice" while hoping that the Garveys' latest venture pays dividends for both brothers and this historic city.

THEATRE REVIEW: Josef Locke – A Grand Adventure

Derry-Londonderry's Playhouse Theatre presents a hard-knuckled, reflective tribute to one of its musical legends

You might think of Josef Locke – A Grand Adventure as a slideshow featuring a pompous, prima donna of a music man bickering with his son and his manager over the direction he thinks his career is going to take, the direction he feels it should take, and the direction it ultimately must take, with a series of famous songs performed along the way.

And you'd be right. Almost. For this Josef Locke is bickering with neither his son nor his manager, but with himself. This Grand Adventure, sharply penned by Felicity McCall and brought to life on the Derry-Londonderry Playhouse stage by Kieran Griffiths' steady directorial hand and Kristine Donnan's slickly adaptable musical direction, could easily be re-titled The Three Faces Of Josef Locke. It's a fascinating angle from which to approach the career of the Derry-Londonderry icon, and despite a rather protracted running time, it certainly packs a punch, both musically and emotionally.

Entering the Playhouse Theatre, the audience's eyes rest upon a large vinyl record of a stage floor with sheet music and spotlights scattered all around. The very centre of the "record" is inscribed with "Josef Locke, Hear My Song", undoubtedly referencing the sheet music that seems symbolic of the effort put into Locke's famous catalogue. The white spotlights appear very Christmassy, alternately suggesting snow flakes that haven't melted, but frozen... maybe we are set for a musical cum drama like Frozen? Well, yes, but free of Disneyfication. This is a hard-knuckled tribute full of grit and gumption.

It begins with a triple-pronged rendition of the classic Derry air "Danny Boy", led by a child (Brenn Doherty), continued by a bearded man (Peter E. Davidson) and concluded by another man (Karl McGuckin). The child is Josef Locke's "identity", the innocent, inquisitve son of Derry. The bearded man is Josef Locke's "reflective" persona, who exists to keep the idealism of the "other man", who has the most prominent singing voice, in check. He is Josef's "alter ego" the kind who believes his vocal chords forgive him everything, including a hedonistic life. 

Comedy flows as "alter ego" Josef (originally Joseph McLaughlin), debates the merits of his life with, and seeks to vocally impress, his reflective self through dialogue and song. We get insights, sometimes amusingly and sometimes soberly, into how Locke's experiences shaped him into becoming the artist he was and the legend he is. Brenn Doherty's Josef acts as a conscience, a source of Josef's origins and precociously innocent wisdom, while Peter E. Davidson's reflective Josef is the flipside of all this – the precautions and consequences of lost naivete and harsh reality. Like the rim of a coin, McGuckin's Josef feels in a state of imbalance, a strong presence trapped between opposite sides of the same entity.

This imbalance is smartly solidified in McCall's script by McGuckin's positioning on the vinyl record floor during his songs, including classics like "Kathleen" and "Galway Bay". One notes that he remains in the very centre of the "record" when he sings the songs that matter most to him, and it is no surprise: these are the moments when he cannot afford to feel as fragile and unstable as the rim of a spinning record. Only when the happy-clappy frivolous numbers such as "Blaze Away" take over does he lose that self-consciousness and not care where he stands – it's light-hearted relief for both this Josef and an audience keen to sing along whether they know the words or not. Although it must be said that for all McGuckin's efforts to break the fourth wall and "conduct" the audience, we really prefer to hear him sing. His baritone voice is that impressive.

The remainder of Josef's adventure is handled skilfully by Griffiths, traipsing a tentative but never torturous path through Josef's battles with egotism and harsh fiscal realities while keeping the soulfulness of the play intact. Even as the colour, confidence and creative freedom visibly drains from McGuckin's features throughout every song and inner debate, his Josef is clearly cleverer and more courageous by the end of his "adventure", if at a price. McGuckin's final, mournful solo rendition of "The Town I Loved So Well" is a fitting conclusion to a play in which the soulful sentiment in wishful thinking has been deconstructed, but not damaged, on a journey to reflective reality.

Josef Locke – A Grand Adventure concludes tonight, Saturday October 4, at Derry-Londonderry's Playhouse Theatre.