A musical marriage made in heaven opens a week of outstanding Festival performances at Norwich Theatre Royal. In the first half Michael Nyman and his band play some of his best-known music. After the interval, Nyman is joined by David McAlmont to perform works from The Glare, their beautifully crafted and critically acclaimed album released at the end of 2009. One of British pop’s most precious hidden treasures, McAlmont has selected 11 classic Nyman compositions and transformed them into songs. Written in the first person, these new songs draw on a variety of world news topics, from 21st-century piracy and lothario world leaders to drug mules and banking errors. The result is an extraordinary and intensely beautiful musical collaboration.
Comments and reviews
Your comments
Nyman / McAlmont: First half - Michal Nyman band (Nyman was his usual charismatic self !!!) Good performance but a disappointing set list - mostly stuff from Greenaway films over 20 years ago - he’s done much better stuff since then. Second half with McAlmont was just sublime, but someone should have told him to turn his mobile off!
By Horsford Dave from Norwich on Mon 10 May 2010
Add a comment
* Indicates required fields.
Press reviews
Review 1
David McAlmont is one of British pop's most precious hidden treasures. His voice is a sublime and miraculous thing, able to convey unimaginable reserves of vulnerability and inner strength in one wavering syllable.
And if his mercurial career hasn't touched you yet, here's your catch-up listening list: "Unworthy" by Thieves, "Yes" by McAlmont And Butler (and the whole of their Bring it Back album), "Diamonds are Forever" with David Arnold, and that barely scratches the surface.
Michael Nyman is less in need of an introduction, being probably the country's most celebrated living composer. The idea of putting them together as a duo is almost too good to be true: it cannot, surely, live up to its potential. Except that it does. The Glare is a daring project in which McAlmont has scoured the world's regional newspapers (the Ottawa Citizen, the Las Vegas Journal and so on) for poignant under-the-radar human-interest stories, and set them to some of his favourite Nyman works. The result is a kind of conceptual operetta, with broad themes of release and escape.
2 Nov 2009
Review 2
David McAlmont, the extraordinary singer from Croydon who sounds like a celestial mix of Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Antony Hegarty, has pulled off an idiosyncratic triumph with this collaboration. Inspired by contemporary news stories about the glare of the media, McAlmont recasts them as soul songs, set against rearrangements of some of Nyman's movie themes.
Though McAlmont has often worked with jazz artists in the past, there's no jazz here, but the pieces often thicken and intensify with a spontaneous-sounding drive. Evocative ballads such as Secrets, Accusations and Charges (set to Nyman's The Departure, from Gattaca) or Friendly Fire (over a sombre swirl from The Actors) show the singer's ability to impart reverberating impact to the softest murmurs, but several of the pieces unfold over pounding minimalist riffs with a pop-infused directness.
McAlmont's lyrics occasionally creak under the weight of their serious subjects; and the 17-minute closing instrumental Songs for Tony is such an effective balance of Nyman grooves and modulating sax lines as to make one wish there had been more instrumental variation throughout the set. But it's a fortuitously inspired collaboration all the same
14 Nov 2009
Review 3
No disrespect to the likes of Thieves, Bernard Butler and Jools Holland, but you can tell how much David McAlmont's stock has risen by the identity of his more recent collaborators. Having laboured through the 1990s, burdened by the novelty of being the only black indie singer of the Britpop era, Croydon's answer to Smokey Robinson has spent the 21st century finding a happier niche working with composers David Arnold and Craig Armstrong and jazzers Courtney Pine, Guy Barker and Terence Blanchard.
This path has finally led to the music he was always capable of making – a unique blend of classical, soul and avant-garde pop in tandem with Britain's most lauded modern composer Michael Nyman. The Glare also qualifies as the first great collaboration to result from musician looking up singer on, of all things, Facebook.
2 Nov 2009
Ticket information
£36, £26, £21, £16, £6
Where available, under 25s £5 tickets can only be booked in person or by calling the Festival hotline on 01603 766400
Tell us if you're planning to attend this event…
Favorite eventPrincipal Sponsor National Express East Anglia
-
National Express East Anglia
Gallery
Video
Nyman-Take the Money
You will need the Adobe Flash Player plug-in to view this content. You can download it for free from Adobe's website, click the button below:
Location of event
Event located at Norwich Theatre Royal
Sorry, your browser is unable to render the Google Map.
Theatre Street
Norwich
NR2 1AR
01603 630000
Visit website
This event has been assigned to the following categories
