Italian acoustic guitarist Antonio Forcione has been a Fringe regular for more than 20 years and while his approach to his own instrument during that time has remained focused on his punchy, percussive rhythmic style and flinty melodic lines, he's never been averse to varying the company he keeps to add different musical colours.
His run this year has coincided with the release of a new album, Sketches of Africa, and after a few personnel changes, by last week he was fronting a trio featuring a Brazilian acoustic bass guitar-percussion partnership, which give Forcione's often simply conceived but atmospheric compositions a grooving, muscular momentum and chiming, shaking, chirruping punctuation that might be a continent away from the lands that inspired these pieces but seem entirely in sympathy with their aims.
In among a joyful, dancing Mandela tribute, Madiba's Jive, the slow-building, raga-like Tar and the more reflective Stay Forever, Forcione gives his colleagues a break while he revisits the percussive solo tone poem Touch Wood, showing both delicate fingering and dramatic pacing, before the trio reconvenes to vanquish the sound-spill from a neighbouring tent with a tight display of exuberant, flowing creativity.
THE VOCAL ORCHESTRA, UDDERBELLY
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The continuing popularity of a cappella music, especially on the Fringe but elsewhere too, has given rise to a trend for groups that are rather more easy to admire than they are actually to like, to say nothing of what is becoming the tyranny of the human beat box. So it is with the Vocal Orchestra. There's no denying the skill, timing, choreography and probably prolonged dedication that's gone into routines such as the septet's time machine, where they drop in on the 80s, 60s, 90s and the 1700s with accurately observed items from each era, or their bandmates-as-drumkit competition. Viewed overall, though, it's tempting to see this as a series of party tricks, with quite a lot of self-congratulation and possibly the longest goodbye of Fringe 2012 making up the hour, which are enjoyable enough in their own way but a bit light on real musical appeal.
HOT, C NOVA
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The self-styled diva Damsel Sophie faces a dilemma: how do you follow up a smash hit, award-winning cabaret show? Do you take another artistic route altogether or revert to type? And over a hectic, going on bonkers hour, after which you may feel you've shared her emotional and physical turmoil, she explores more avenues than are contained in a New York A-Z. In the process she takes a mirthful sideswipe at the Fringe's needy, OTT cabaret and burlesque performers, by being needy and OTT big time herself, strums a ukulele in row three, muses on Buddhism and Celine Dion and goes all Madonna with her forcefully conscripted male dance troupe finale. All good late-night fun but beware: forming an escape committee's not easy in the small, tightly packed studio.
All shows end today.
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