Rosa Luxemburg at the crib
Dec. 15th, 2020 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe last time we saw the Melrose Quartet, back in May 2019 (at the Sage, with the Bears - oh, happy days!) they were already working on Christmas material for a new show. We didn't catch that show last Christmas, and we wouldn't have caight it this year either, if their Live to Your Living gig had happened, as originally scheduled, in November. But the Quartet are couples with school-age children, so it was no big surprise that someone ended up self-isolating, and what we got on Sunday was a not-entirely Christmas show after all. A Covid compliant show, live from Sheffield's Yellow Arch studios, in which the band had reordered their usual on-stage positions to benefit from Jess Arrowsmith and Nancy Kerr being a bubble, while maintaining maximum distance between Richard Arriwsmith and James Fagan (&uot;we are no longer together," explains James). I don't know how this works, but I am fascinated by the details of how people negotiate what is possible; it adds to the illusion of being present at something live (no, not exactly an illusion, but not exactly not, either).
Also adding to the sense of actually being there, wherever 'there' might be, was the pleasure of spotting old friends. Starting with the person hosting the show for LTYLR, the one making the pleaseturn off your mobile phones mute yourself announcements. I thought, isn't that Alex Cumming (the absent Teacup)? and then immediately, no, can't be - because he's in the States (yes, I know. Silly.) It was only when the band thanked him by name that I knew it had been him all along. The other encounter was more of a Zoom artefact: the transition from full screen on the performee to gallery view occasionally flashes through full screen on a random (I assume) participant, and as the main performance ended we got just a fleeting glimpse of two people with whom, if circumstances were not as they are, we would have been preparing to sing carils in London. So all that adds to the atmosphere of the concert.
The music was good, too. Some non-seasonal favourites (notably Santa Georgia and Dominion of the Sword) some Sheffield carols, plenty of Rudolph variations. And something completely new to me, John Kirkpatrick's Chariots: ,aybe not a carol, says Nancy, but certainly a Christmas song, "it's as if you were looking at a Christmas crib, and realised that one of the little figures was Rosa Luxemburg." Nothing wrong with that!
Also adding to the sense of actually being there, wherever 'there' might be, was the pleasure of spotting old friends. Starting with the person hosting the show for LTYLR, the one making the please
The music was good, too. Some non-seasonal favourites (notably Santa Georgia and Dominion of the Sword) some Sheffield carols, plenty of Rudolph variations. And something completely new to me, John Kirkpatrick's Chariots: ,aybe not a carol, says Nancy, but certainly a Christmas song, "it's as if you were looking at a Christmas crib, and realised that one of the little figures was Rosa Luxemburg." Nothing wrong with that!
