John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts

June 27, 2016 / Album Reviews - Archive

LIVE (Alister Spence Music) 8/10 Whenever the drama, invention, energy and repetition-based voodoo of this band suddenly drops away to Toby Hall’s glockenspiel I am instantly transported back to a world where teddy bears and tip-trucks were as big as I was, and reality was a dull place peopled by…

June 25, 2016 / Features - Archive

He always thought differently. At high school he wrote “Mr Weird” on his clarinet case. No one argued. Wayne Shorter’s verbalised thoughts come out like his saxophone lines: squalls of rapid–fire ideas, some cryptic asides, and big pools of lucid silence while he lets what he’s said sink in. His…

June 22, 2016 / Concert Reviews - Archive

Joan Sutherland Theatre, June 4 6/10 No show has had a high-contrast beginning, middle and end quite like this. Of course it’s not often one’s middle name becomes the catalyst not just for a new persona, but for a whole body of work. Esperanza Spalding took time out from her…