Space is very tight today, so just one point.
Back in March, I attended the launch of this year's Perth Festival of the Arts, which runs from May 21 to the end of the month. In a conversation with festival chairman Peter Rutterford, it became clear he felt a degree of sensitivity about one aspect of the festival music programme: apart from any classical splendours in the line-up, including Harry Christophers' choir, The Sixteen, the BBC Philharmonic and Angela East's renegade baroque band, Red Priest, the Perth Festival, for the first time, will venture into Raymond Gubbay territory.
Gubbay is the big-time London promoter of overtly populist classical concerts, whose enterprises routinely attract sniffiness and dismissal from hard-nosed classical snobs. I should add that Gubbay gigs, as they are known, have been covered systematically for decades in The Herald, where we are not into snobbiness.
The show, on Wednesday 27, is called Simply Gershwin, and will feature a selection of Gershwin's deathless melodies, extracts from Porgy And Bess and the Rhapsody In Blue. There will be a small array of tap and ballroom dancers, two vocalists and pianist Jonathan Scott. Orchestra for the night will be the Scottish Concert Orchestra, an ad hoc band (more sniffiness, usually) compounded of musicians from the national orchestras and the freelance community. It'll probably be done on a single rehearsal (yet more sniffiness).
All of this usually comes from people who have probably never seen the inside of a Gubbay gig. And the band, by the way, is a totally professional outfit, seasoned veterans in these operations. As for the content, last time I looked, George Gershwin was one of the 20th century's great composers, full stop. No dumbing-down entailed here. It should be a fine night's entertainment.
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