Dhafer Youssef at the ROH Voices of the World Festival

This is an oud. It's an Arabic lute that Tunisian composer and singer Dhafer Youssef strums, picks, attacks like a rock guitar, pounds like a drum, even sings into to produce a looped echo. He opened the Royal Opera House's Voices Across the World festival last night along with Armenian doudouk master Lévon Minassian and Japanese percussionist Satoshi Takeishi for an evening of haunting and timelessly modern music. Can't get much more world music than that. I highly recommend his album Divine Shadows which also highlights his amazing voice (a deep plaintive wail that can climb to a pure falsetto he produces through his nostrils.)

Lest you think I'm more worldly than I am, it was Tim's initiative to go.

I can't recall the last time I spent a Sunday evening swaying in a gentle breeze in the courtyard of a 16th century mansion watching a Scottish band play sweet pop songs two decades old whilst the seagulls cried overhead and the stagelights cast colourful shadows on the old architecture.



As an early bday present, Tim and I saw the Blue Nile last night at Somerset House. Matt Hale (aka Aqualung and shockingly fresh-faced for a 34 year old) stood in front of us. We saw Will Mellor at dinner. But the highlight was still Paul Buchanan's pleading voice singing 'Downtown Lights'.



And I didn't wake up a year older.

Collision

Alex Ross writes about two of my current interests: China and classical music, in this brilliant New Yorker article.