The new Glasgow Hydro!

The new Glasgow Hydro! – SSE Hydro Arena

Capacity 13,000

Opened this week with artists Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac.

The hope for the new venue is to be one of the world’s top five entertainment venues, only Madison Square Gardens NY and the 02 London are bigger. 

The Hydro is a purpose built concert arena – rather than the SECC’s multi use exhibition and conference centre.  Every seat has a good view and audio. The new venue will attract bigger artists all year round.  

I look forward to gigs here, hopefully soon!  

Mercury Prize 2013

From indie folk John Hopkins, to veteran rocker David Bowie, drum and bass Rudimental, electronic pianist James Blake and rock band Foals. Laura Mvula is there too, although her over predictability is too much for me. And dance, rock, post punk. 
Favourites for the prize may be dance duo Disclosure and respected singer songwriter Laura Marling.  http://www.mercuryprize.com/ 

I saw Marling in concert at the Old Fruitmarket a few years ago when she was barely 19 and she seemed so young – and passed her in a café nearby earlier that evening. She has been living in LA the past year to work on her latest album. I thought there was something fragile and ethereal about her then, and she did have the audience spellbound. 

Laura Marling Old Fruitmarket

I saw James Blake Oran Mor in 2011 - the gig was charged and packed out and I thought his set was engrossing. I love the cover for his second album Overgrown. I enjoyed his cover of Feist's song 'Limit To Your Love.'  In my review I wrote his music was like Unexpected Journeys. 
http://www.musicfootnotes.com/2011/06/james-blake-at-oran-mor-glasgow
 

James Blake Oran Mor

The American music reviewer Mikal Gilmore is concerned at the state of the music industry today however -

Labels sign artists for a certain sound, quirk, style, niche or whatever – and are loathe to allow those artists to expand or develop much beyond that one thing. That is partly why we see so many one hit wonders .. These artists are milked, drained, toured and discarded before they even have a shot at that second round. It’s a new kind of pop hegemony – a blockbuster mentality that has made so many modern films tiresome, predictable and limited.   

Quote, Night Beat, Mikal Gilmore.

PS James Blake was the unexpected yet deserved Mercury prize winner 31st October.

Edinburgh Book festival PHOTOS 2013

Charles Glass

Artemis Cooper

Alan Bissett

Jenny Rooney

Jerome Ferrari

Kengo Kuma

Kevin Maher

Laurie Penny

Sahar Delijan

Shani Boianjiu

Edinburgh International Book Festival photos 2013 - the festival was a great deal of fun and very interesting as it usual.  One of the highlights of my year. Love it! More reviews on this site. Copyrighted.
My EIBF images 2013 gallery - http://pkimage.co.uk/edinburghbookfestival

The Women Impressionists

Berthe Morisot

This was the first group of important women artists with a new voice and they exhibited thier work at the Impressionist shows in Paris. This was part of a new and rebellious attitude to have women in the shows apparently! 

I was surprised to learn of this group as I had never heard of any women impressionist painters. 

Berthe Moriot was often painted by Manet and other male painters and as she was very striking and beautiful perhaps they were unable to take her work as a painter serious enough?

Barthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot

Morisot’s painting was brave and new art with lightning blot brush strokes and instinctive insightful painting. She was known for beautiful crisp white painting

The joui de vivre of impressionism.

Mary Casat

Casat portrayed an emotional blankness in her paintings.

 

Mary Casat

Marie Brackamot

She made beautiful Impressionist pots.

Berthe Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.
In 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. Sponsored by the government, and judged by academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons until, in 1874, she joined the "rejected" Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. It was held at the studio of the photographer Nadar. She became the sister-in-law of her friend and colleague, Édouard Manet, when she married his brother, Eugène.

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