Lyric HiFi Music Musings - October

Belfast Festival time

Jan Garbarek & the Hilliard Ensemble 

Mix avant garde jazz with classical singing and you make a memorable, unusual, and uplifting night of music. Staged in St Thomas' church Lisburn road, the acoustics gave a wonderful soaring quality to both voices and Garbarek's soprano saxaphone. While their precise rythms set a strict pacing and order Garbarek's dancing sax phrases lifted your spirits and took you elsewhere.

An unrepeatable concert, check out their albums on Spotify 

Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler

 I'm ashamed to admit that I can be a bit mean about paying big money for concert tickets. I'm lucky enough to have seen many of the jazz great, some of my heroes, at a time when tickets weren't too expensive. I also find some great concerts from brilliant performers at reasonable prices. Martin Stephenson at Mchughs last year is a brilliant example. £14 very well spent!

So £ 90+ for a concert usually happens when Kathryn, my generous music loving wife, is the driving force for an outing.

Last year she arranged a trip to see Leonard Cohen at Lisadell, stunningly good, so Old Bob had a lot to live up to.

Knopfler fired up early, 7.30 on stage, and concentrated on his newer stuff. Enjoyable, not brilliant, but superb guitar playing and really got going when he played a few old Dire Straits numbers. His folky repertoire is pleasant but doesn't really do it for me.

Then Bob. What a presence, what a band, what a performer. A big surpise was his harmonica playing which was fantastic. I have seen Sugar Blue live and Bob, different style admittedly, is right up there.

Again the newer stuff I really enjoyed, but to really bring the house down you need to play 'Like a Rolling Stone', and he did.

My personal fave Dylan album has always been 'Blood on the tracks', so to hear him do a modern version of 'Tangled up in blue', that was my highlight of the night.

Thanks Bob, thanks Kathryn.