John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts

November 17, 2017 / Album Reviews - Archive

NAT KING COLE & ME (Blue Note) 7.5/10 It takes a certain vocal quality to even attempt this. Choose your own metaphor: whether velvet, honey or melted chocolate, lushness is mandatory, as is the ability to soothe. Nat “King” Cole was a primary influence on the young Gregory Porter, and…

November 15, 2017 / Album Reviews - Archive

MY NAME IS NOBODY (mynameisnobody.com.au) 9/10 There’s a sense of space here: vast vistas that can replenish the soul with their sprawling beauty, or unsettle it because of that very same expansiveness. Most of us, after all, cling with our fingernails to this continent’s seaboard, our backs to a desert…

November 12, 2017 / Concert Reviews - Archive

Foundry 616, October 26 9/10 He could write melodies as exultant as a leap in the air, and first lit up the world 60 years ago, his radical conception already fully formed. This was a complete reimagining of what an alto saxophone, a bass clarinet or a flute could be;…