Albums: Ian Sinclair

It’s been a strong year for North American singer-songwriters. Twenty-something Canadian Dan Bodan relocated to Berlin eight years ago and has now released his debut album Soft (DFA), an astonishing set of ultra-modern, electronica-infused romantic songs that hark back to greats like Chet Baker and lonely-era Frank Sinatra.

Having started out with the critically acclaimed Red House Painters in 1992, San Francisco-based Mark Kozelek’s new album Benji (Caldo Verde) — released under his current musical moniker Sun Kil Moon — may just be the best thing he’s ever done. Though his lyrics have always been deeply personal, since his 2012 album Among The Leaves Kozelek’s songs sound like virtual diary entries.

Benji takes this approach to a whole new level, full as it is with life-affirming songs about childhood memories, romantic and familial relationships and, most of all, death.

The instrumentation throughout is superb, moving from the 10-minute long Led Zep-referencing I Watched The Film The Song Remains The Same to gorgeous horns on the mid-life crisis of Ben’s My Friend. Kozelek’s voice on the album is so authentic and intimate it makes everything else sound overblown and affected in comparison.

Country legend Rosanne Cash’s The River and the Thread (Blue Note) is another career high-water mark.

Much like the work of fellow red bird Lucinda Williams, the album is imbued with the history, geography and culture of the US Deep South. The quality and cohesiveness of the songs are top-notch, chock-full of wisdom and universal truisms, without sounding cliched or preachy.

As popular music’s mad scientist, the endlessly inventive Neil Young (below) has had a particularly busy year, releasing two albums, touring incessantly and promoting his energy-efficient Lincvolt car and Pono music player.

Amazingly, he’s also found time to lend his support to the protests against Canada’s tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline.

His 35th studio album Storytone (Reprise) is inspired by his involvement in the latter and, allegedly, his new relationship with actress-activist Daryl Hannah and his divorce from his wife.

A kind of eco-Blood on the Tracks, Young sings with a 92-piece orchestra and a big band, asking: “Who’s gonna stand up and save the Earth?” in that naive and infectious way only Young has.

Performance: Gordon Parsons

Oddly, this has been a year of notably adventurous yet very worthwhile near-misses.

Sam Mendes at the National Theatre attempted to scale the Shakespearean Everest King Lear with Simon Russell Beale as the ageing dictator-king stumbling into dementia and in the process unleashing chaos. This lost the thematic richness of much of the play. Squeezing it of pity, it’s a production which acutely mirrored the savagery of our contemporary world and in consequence lacked something of the humanity that ultimately informs this darkest of dramatic visions.

The RSC’s epic treatment of Hilary Mantel’s Booker prize-winning novels on the life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies also featured a remarkable central performance by Ben Miles as Henry VIII’s manipulative trouble- shooter.

The problem such a production faced, as so often with dramatising novels, is encompassing the weight of narrative detail. Mike Poulton’s adaptation, supported by a magnificent cast, will have thrilled those in the audience who had read the books but must have taxed those unfamiliar with them.

When the company returned to their house dramatist with the two parts of Henry IV, the Bard’s supremacy in handling the tapestry of history shone out.

Gregory Doran’s direction brought out every nuance of the play’s symphonic structure with part one in a major, part two in a minor key.

Antony Sher’s Falstaff, an impish troll with a scabrous wit and a ruthless determination to survive, provided a comic centrepiece to a study of the interplay of politics and personality, youth and age.

Again the RSC served the Bard magnificently with the recent Love’s Labours Lost and Love’s Labours Won, aka Much Ado About Nothing.

Christopher Luscombe ingeniously links these two plays, setting them respectively either side of the first world war. The duels of wit between the central couples lose the gaiety of the early play, set in an Edwardian summer landscape, and acquire a sharp edge of delusion in a post-war world purged of frivolity.

Another impressive but uneven epic formed the centrepiece to the Edinburgh festival’s drama programme.

Rona Munro’s The James Plays trilogy charted the emergence of Scotland’s nationhood through the 15th-century reigns of Scotlands first three King James’s.

In the final play the Danish TV star Sofie Grabel as Queen Margaret delivered what could only be recognised as a magnificent independence rallying cry at the time of the referendum.

This combined production by the national theatres of Scotland and Great Britain must have taxed the ears of Sassenachs when the plays transferred to London.

Away from these theatrical blockbusters, the pioneering Graeae company’s The Threepenny Opera by Bertholt Brecht carried a special impact with its integration of disabled actors, emphasising the musical’s savagely ironic attack on our corrupt society.

This touring production brought a freshness and elan to a classic with an all too current relevance. “What is robbing a bank compared with running a bank?” as Brecht asks in this great work.

Finally, Brecht again — but this time a rarely seen gem. The Mother, an early “teaching” play based on a Maxim Gorky novel, was part of Birmingham Rep’s Epic Encounters festival.

Director Tessa Walker had assembled a huge cast from local communities but there was nothing amateurish about a production that mirrored the experiences of actors and audience alike — proof that theatre can uniquely tell it how it is.

Music: Peter Lindley

The much-anticipated performances of the last compositions by Sir John Tavener premiered throughout the year from the summer to winter with the BBC Proms, the Royal Festival Hall and The Barbican all taking part in the homage to the composer’s most mysterious of works.

Gnosis — “knowledge” — was dedicated to mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, whose singing of the work was a touching and spine-tingling treat. It was all too short and it was left to the larger choral works, each compelling yet different in their own right, to raise the intensity of Tavener’s unreleased final output.

Especially memorable was O Where, Tell Me Where for chorus and tubular bells and the focus on the Scottish song tradition with The Blue Bells of Scotland, My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose and The Skye Boat Song.

Flood of Beauty, a juggernaut of sound if ever there was one, had singers and orchestra positioned around the auditorium as they performed this integration of ancient Hindi Sanskrit poetry and sound. It was literally a colossal performance, with cellist Natalie Clein getting the biggest audience response with her brilliant playing and total commitment to the piece’s concept.

But the most touching and gentle of the four new works was Requiem Fragments, performed by The Heath Quartet with Carolyn Sampson and the amazing Tallis Scholars, under the baton and direction of Peter Phillips.

In the spring Michael Nyman (right) celebrated his 70th birthday with a national tour culminating at the Royal Festival Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a most fitting place for Nyman to receive his much deserved accolades.

Alexander Balanescu on violin and John Harle on saxophone gave extraordinary performances.

Of the older works, Where the Bee Dances and Draughtsman’s Contract for Orchestra were uplifting and, of the premieres, Violin Concerto and Symphony No2 were the most dramatic.

Autumn brought a sensational performance of works by Max Richter, a new blood now firmly ensconced in the experimental classical music scene with his Blue Notebook series and the audacious and totally unforgettable Four Seasons Recomposed with Daniel Hope on violin grabbing most attention.