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British newspapers review Ether Festival
The Telegraph has a review online of the Ether Festival with Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke:
[...] All these things were fascinating, but they didn’t support or illuminate each other, so the evening never really gelled. Only at the very end, when everyone joined together to perform two Radiohead songs, did the audience start to thaw.
As Radiohead singer Thom Yorke came on, a ragged cheer broke out. The first song, Arpeggi, struck a tone of troubled melancholy, with the six ondes martenot playing an entrancing lattice of cross-rhythms.
Then Salame joined Yorke for Where Bluebirds Fly - and what a contrast they made, she all voluptuous hip-swaying ease, he all thin, wiry energy, hair sticking up at odd angles. It was a funny and touching moment, which made the wished-for musical encounter seem suddenly real.
The Times reviewed the Ether Festival as well, and rated it with 3 stars out of 5:
The wonder of hearing all seven Ondes, with Greenwood added, failed to arrive: during the new arrangements of Radiohead songs, the concert’s climax, the tender creatures became submerged in the sound mix. Still, if you came for fusion, here it was. Arpeggi and Where Bluebirds Fly pulsed and oscillated impressively, with the Sinfonietta supplemented by the Arabic colourings of the Nazareth Orchestra and the sunburnt vocals of Lubna Salame.
These Radiohead numbers were Greenwood’s finest minutes. And we needed more of them, especially after the 12 eaten up earlier by his new concert piece Piano for Children. The motivating idea here was intriguing, with an out-of-tune piano soloist (the unflappable John Constable) clumsily proceeding like a child, cradled by strings. Nothing intriguing, though, about the gauche music. Better results followed from his recent Smear, with smeary sounds dangling in the air from an ensemble and two Ondes (a favourite instrument, obviously).
The Guardian was a bit more generous with 4 stars out of 5:
Pop-idolish applause greeted Greenwood’s Piano for Children, a deceptive piece that began as drawing-room music, then veered off into woozy piano discords and disintegrating time signatures. Later, the same composer’s “smear” brought together the noise you make when rubbing the top of a wine glass with orchestral passages of pastoral lushness.
The finale brought a further helping of ecstasy for Radiohead fans: arrangements of Arpeggi and Where Bluebirds Fly with Thom Yorke on vocals. Yorke, hair standing on end as if he’d been blasted out of a wind tunnel, was joined on the latter piece by vocalist Lubna Salame and her comrades from the Nazareth Orchestra, whose performance of the Arabic epic Enta Omri had been an earlier highlight. Plenty of brain food for one evening
… and here’s a review from Planet Halder on the Ether Festival
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