Irish Times writers review Ryan Adams at the Olympia in Dublin, Beyoncé at the Point Depot, Dhafer Youssef's Digital Prophecy at Whelans and the Russian State Opera of Rostov at the Mahony Hall.
Ryan Adams
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
Tony Clayton-Lea
Deary, deary me. We came to celebrate the volatile talent of Ryan Adams and left feeling duped. We came to pay tribute to one of the better singer-songwriters of the past five years and walked away wondering how he gets away with such arrogance. This was a gig in which the main act shot himself in the foot and didn't have the resolve to limp off stage.
It started well, with Adams and his rock band taking position - the band looking something like the fallout of auditions for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, with Adams the pinched possessor of a thrift-shop suit and NHS glasses. The first few songs were identikit modern rock: good if you were feeling generous, average if you were being honest. Then the atmosphere dipped when generally unfamiliar material was played at the speed of mediocrity.
Audience good will can carry a gig only so far, and when it became clear that Adams wasn't planning to veer away from his blinkered and bruising promoting of his latest album, Rock 'n' Roll - a record borne of his frustrations with music-industry politics and interference, and one he was effectively forced into making - heads began to shake for all the wrong reasons.
A selection of songs from Rock 'n' Roll's counterpart record, Love Is Hell, Pt 1, brought a much-needed change of pace, but when they were dispensed with we were sent back into the foxhole to sit uncomfortably besides Adams's sloppy indifference.
Mercurial and occasionally brilliant though Adams is, he clearly has a creative itch he just can't stop scratching. That constant picking proved his undoing with a set that seriously undermined his off-centre, louche appeal. Someone put the man's arms into a straitjacket, for God's sake.
Beyoncé
The Point, Dublin
Anna Carey
It takes a lot to overwhelm a superstar, but for a moment, standing on the edge of the Point's vast stage, Beyoncé Knowles seems a little overwhelmed. The crowd is so enthusiastic that she pauses before starting the next song, seemingly on the verge of tears. Eventually she smiles shakily. "Can I play here every night?" she says. Dublin obviously loves Beyoncé - and, judging by her dazzling performance, Beyoncé loves Dublin right back.
Knowles is the antithesis of most of today's pop princesses. She's an incredibly sexy performer, but it's a joyful, exuberant sexiness, a million miles from the contrived skankiness of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. She eschews the robotic, overchoreographed dancing style favoured by her peers; instead, she grooves like an old-school soul star, doing the best version of the Pony since Tina and the Ikettes shook their tail feathers to Nutbush City Limits.
But what really raises her above the pack is the quality of her songs and of her voice. Yes, the ballads are boring and slushy, but the funkier songs are fantastic, and she performs them with panache - although it was a shame that she squashed all the fabulous Destiny's Child songs into a medley instead of performing them in full.
Like her dancing, Beyoncé's voice is pure vintage soul, and one of the evening's highlights is the magnificently retro Work It Out - when she hollers the line "I like this!", you believe her.
She's a born showwoman, and by the
time she leaves the stage for the final time, borne aloft on a crane while waving an
Irish flag (no, really), she's proved that in a world of pop princesses, there's only one Queen B.
Dhafer Youssef's Digital Prophecy
Whelans, Dublin
Ray Comiskey
Like the celebrated Tunisian oud player and vocalist himself, Dhafer Youssef's Digital Prophecy quartet believes in crossing cultural borders. Eivind Aarset (guitars/ electronics) and Rune Arnesen (drums/ programming) are both from Norway, and bassist Dieter Ilg - the only holdover from Youssef's previous visit, when the great guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel was with him - is from Germany.
What they add up to musically is a mix that has a decidedly north African flavour: highly rhythmic but with something deeper and older than the other elements that make up the often compelling amalgam they produced.
Jazz is part of the mix - the group has the improvisational, tonal and rhythmic flexibility associated with the idiom - while the Norwegians' ability to add their skill with electronics, so much a feature of the cutting-edge Scandinavian scene, gives it a range of colour beyond what might be expected of the instrumentation.
But in the leader's vocal effects and playing the music also gains a spiritual dimension in sometimes stark contrast to the sheer sensuality of the music when the group settles, as it did frequently, into a rocking groove capable of sweeping all before it. The underlying tension that resulted, and the talents of Aarset and Arnesen in expanding the textures electronically, disguised what was often the simplest of musical subjects and ideas.
Heard live it was exciting and enjoyable, but how much of it stands up to repeated listening is something else. Although the leader failed to identify most of what they played, if memory serves correctly much of it came from his latest CD, Dhafer Youssef's Digital Prophecy. As an example of the kind of musical miscegenation increasingly common in Europe, Dhafer Youssef's Digital Prophecy is something to be welcomed; who knows where it will lead.
Russian State Opera of Rostov
Mahony Hall, Dublin
John Allen
The Rostov's performances of Rossini's Il Barbiere Di Siviglia and Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin were among the best I have experienced from touring companies in Dublin. Stylish, well-rehearsed and elegantly dressed stagings by Soussana Tsiriouk, given in good sets - especially that for the Barber - were complemented by assured music-making.
An efficient small chorus and a disciplined orchestra of 40 mainly young players were presided over by two authoritative conductors. In the Barber, Alexey Shakuro occasionally lost momentum catering for his singers' less-than-prefect articulation at speed, but otherwise he led a taut performance. The balance between bucolic frolicking and serious tragedy in Yevgeny Onegin was admirably controlled by Andrei Galanov.
Pyotr Makarov sang the title roles in both operas. He is a vibrant baritone, with a wide range and an impressive stage presence, whose brooding Onegin might have benefited from just a fraction of the ebullience he brought to his Figaro.
Likewise, Irina Krikunova was a vocally flawless soprano heroine in the Tchaikovsky opera who needed just a mite more passion to make her the perfect Tatyana. Anna Markarova's warm mezzo provided a good foil as her more outgoing sister Olga, just as it had enhanced her sprightly performance as Rosina the previous evening.
The leading tenors were underpowered. Aleksander Leichenkov , who had some vocal charisma but no flexibility as Rossini's Almaviva, was better in Triquet's cameo scene in Onegin. As the poet Lensky, Sergei Muntyan offered characteristic Slavic plangency in his preduel lament, but he was otherwise ineffective.
In the bass clef, Nikolai Mikhalsky was a sonorous but bland Basilio; Aleksander Moussienko had all the necessary gravitas in his moving performance of Gremin's aria in Onegin. Vladimir Taissev gave a virtuoso buffo performance as Bartolo; the lesser roles in both operas were all strongly cast.
