Oh to have been a fly on the wall at the private premiere a month ago of David Lang and Peter Greenaway’s Writing on

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at the private premiere a month ago of David Lang and Peter Greenaway’s Writing on Water.
Artistic collaborations are not made in heaven and one wonders how these two – the composer Lang and the film-maker Greenaway – ever came together. As the “world’s oldest insurance market for specialist risk”, Lloyds is ideally placed to join the arts world in a commissioning capacity. Anna’s edgy soprano and Kate’s mellow mezzo wove in and out of deceptively intricate arrangements.. Another favourite, “Goin’ back to Harlan”, showed that the McGarrigle sisters’ highly original take on jazz, blues, old pop and French and English ballads, has lost none of its intangible magic. As their set progressed, it became clear that some of their more recent numbers have become more gutsy but no less refreshing in style, even if their improvised presentation was laid-back to the extent of seeming chaotic.The a cappella rendering of the Bahamian spiritual “Dig My Grave” was thrilling; the wistful “Sunflower”, with its delicate melodic counterpoint on violin, captivating. The title (“The Crying Cow”) may be a pun on La vache qui rit, a brand of processed cheese, but there’s nothing cheesy about the music, in which Kate plays guitars, banjo, piano and violin, Anna adds guitar, accordion and the occasional dash of synthesiser, and a quartet of blokes help out on the harmonies.
The events that have coloured their singer-songwriting careers – the spawning of Rufus and Martha Wainwright, and Lily Lanken, in particular, and the coming and going of love – have all informed their music-making. They did vanish, of course, but not before they had featured a remarkable range of songs, many from their latest album, a nod to their French-Canadian roots, La vache qui pleure.

No one coughed, rustled or spoke – indeed, people seemed scarcely to breathe. It was as if their fans were afraid that the elfin pair might vanish in a trice. DOWNLOAD THIS: ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own’, ‘Stuck in a Moment’, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’. The slightly weird promotional picture of the fiftyish McGarrigle sisters makes them look like something out of a sci-fi movie. But for the huge number of their fans, old folkies, who’d turned out for the Manchester leg of this short British tour, they’ve not grown any older, any more sophisticated or any less fragile than they were when they first captured hearts in the 1970s.

With their girlish banter and their gawky stage presence, they exert a hypnotic hold over men of a certain age. Yet the audience of both sexes was held captive by their elegant harmonies and elegiac lyrics. The Persuasions Sing U2 is the latest in this series, and due in large part to the religious imagery favoured by Bono, the most successful tracks are those in which the intrinsic yearning spirit is closest to the surface – notably “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, “One” and “Pride” – and those for which U2 drew most strongly on soul sources, such as “Stuck in a Moment” and “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own”. “We still ain’t got no band” is the motto featured on all releases by The Persuasions, the a cappella group discovered by Frank Zappa in 1970.

Since then, albums such as Street Corner Symphony and Comin’ at Ya have demonstrated their pre-eminence as guardians of a vocal tradition rooted in postwar R&B, beholden to neither gospel nor doo-wop, but incorporating elements of both within a sound whose majesty is a corollary of its essential maturity. In recent years, they’ve turned their attention to showcases of specific artists’ material, with individual albums dedicated to their interpretations of Zappa, The Beatles and – most curious of all – the Grateful Dead. After the brief five-day run, it will never be performed again – a surefire strategy to give his bank manager a heart attack. So, can you think of a better way to spend your money?The final Demon Days performances in Manchester take place tonight and tomorrow night ( www.gorillaz ).

“I haven’t been in a profit-making situation for years, believe it or not.” Even the huge success of Gorillaz has been counterbalanced by his profligate spending on promotion, with a loss-making tour now followed by a lavish multi-media production of Demon Days at Manchester Opera House, involving upwards of 80 performers and who knows how many crew. It was a nice idea, but when it failed, no matter – there are always more ideas than the time to realise them in Albarn’s world.He doesn’t seem to measure success in terms of fame or profitability, either, although both seem to accrue despite his nonchalance. “Everything I do now runs at a loss,” he told one reporter cheerfully. Blur were commissioned to write a piece of music for the Beagle 2 project, which, had the spacecraft survived to do its job, would have made them the first band to “play” on Mars. But Berninger adds that: “very few of the songs are autobiograph-ical Karin’s more of a muse. She’s very literary and puts things my way, like the line ‘My mind’s not right’, from ‘Abel’, which comes from Robert Lowell’s poem ‘Skunk Hour’.”"We do all that euphoric stuff when you’re full of shallow and triumphant vigour,” grins Berninger, “but then you bump up against the dumb, weak, human thing Bouncing the two off each other is something I try to do.