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The Specials, Newport Centre

12:53pm Friday 24th May 2013

ARMS ALOFT, the crowd chants: "Specials...Specials". On they come, Terry Hall, cool in black suit, the bass thumping, and launch into Concrete Jungle.

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Welsh National Opera, Wales Millennium Centre

12:37pm Friday 24th May 2013

The hero of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin probably wishes he’d never set foot in a society corrupted by a power struggle that goes to the wire and beyond in Antony McDonald’s exceptional new production for WNO.

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Tubular Bells for Two, St David's Hall

12:33pm Friday 24th May 2013

TWO men. Too many instruments.

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The Blues Brothers Approved, New Theatre

12:31pm Friday 24th May 2013

HUNDREDS of screaming theatregoers were transported to 1980s America as the Blue Brothers came to town this week.

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Hot Mikado, Dolman Theatre

1:14pm Thursday 23rd May 2013

Inspired by Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, David H Bell and Rob Bowman’s jazzed up version, Hot Mikado fuses jazz, soul and swing to liven up a classic score for a modern audience. In the hands of WAWWA, the musical youth, this translates into an evening of sassy, infectious energy in a 1940’s Japan injected with a large dose of Americana.

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The Horne Section, RWCMD

3:01pm Monday 20th May 2013

The Horne Section (a 6 piece band with their frontman - standup comedian Alex Horne) brought their very own special mix of music and comedy to Cardiff on Friday evening. Improvisation was at the heart of their performance (one suspected that the band were in the dark as to what direction the show would go at any one time) and this was both the strength and weakness of the evening.

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The St Woolos Players, Llantilio Crossenny

2:59pm Monday 20th May 2013

There can be few composers whose music is as fitting for a sunny spring afternoon concert set deep in the Monmouthshire countryside as Gerald Finzi. His Eclogue for piano and string orchestra is suffused by the serenity and pastoral warmth so typical of the composer. It was a perfect piece of programming.

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REVIEW: Godspell, Christchurch Hall, Newport

3:28pm Friday 17th May 2013

Christchurch Music Society’s latest production, Godspell proved a hit with both younger and older members of an eager audience at Christchurch hall. Energetic, powerful and as fresh today as when first staged back in the early seventies, the messages contained in the Gospel of St Matthew, upon which this musical is based, have clearly not lost any relevance.

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Murdered to Death, Dolman Theatre

3:27pm Friday 17th May 2013

It is 1936 and an eclectic selection of characters gathers at the country house of the widow Mildred Bagshot (excellently played by Eileen Symonds) for the weekend. Alas Mildred is the first to meet her end on the murderous weekend and the spoof whodunnit is set in motion.

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Sinfonia Cymru, The Riverfront

3:45pm Tuesday 14th May 2013

With reputations at stake, celebrity musicians can be understandably fussy about the company they keep.

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Llantilio Crossenny Festival

3:42pm Tuesday 14th May 2013

String sextets are embryonic orchestras and most compositions for them acknowledge the fact.

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Newport Philharmonic Choir, St Julian's Methodist Hall

3:41pm Tuesday 14th May 2013

A choir having fun with music is always disguising the serious business of making it happen.

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The Real Thing, Savoy Theatre, Monmoutrh

3:39pm Tuesday 14th May 2013

No big hair and flares this time around, as The Real Thing turned the clock back almost (ahem!) 40 years, to the school disco hand stamps of our youth. Monmouth's Savoy Theatre lent itself well to this touch of nostalgia, and it took only minutes for the capacity audience to get on their feet and join in with these Liverpudlian soul legends.

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Suggs, The Riverfront

3:38pm Tuesday 14th May 2013

Today’s comedians are often regarded as having the same status pop stars did back in the 70s. So how brilliant that Madness front man Suggs has tipped the theory on its head by delivering a part comedy, part tragedy, but completely vaudeville stylised show which came to Newport Riverfront on Friday evening.

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Save the Last Dance for Me, New Theatre

2:55pm Thursday 9th May 2013

Musicals that are constructed around a collection of songs by a particular artist or group (such as the recent Spice Girls musical ‘Viva Forever’) have recently been much criticised by no less an authority than Andrew Lloyd Webber who referred to them as ‘jukebox musicals’. This musical clearly falls into this category with its flimsy storyline (the only cutting edge being some brief comment on attitudes to race in the early ‘60s) and the way in which every piece of dialogue does little more than line up the next song. Having said this it is difficult to be too critical of a show as unpretentious and so full of that most overused cliché, ‘the feelgood factor’.

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Philharmonia Orchestra, St David's Hall

2:53pm Thursday 9th May 2013

It takes a great orchestra playing at its most effortlessly revealing to show just how complex some composers are.

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Thomas Trotter, St David's Hall

11:18am Wednesday 8th May 2013

Almost every new concert hall comes with a huge, inbuilt pipe organ, which is strange considering that they’re hardly ever used.

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Ballet Cymru, The Riverfront

11:17am Wednesday 8th May 2013

Modern dance treatments of classical ballet are common nowadays but the half-realistic, half-idealised scenes in Ballet Cymru's lyrical realisation of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet enhance the efforts of a company incontestably at the top of its game.

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Monmouth Choral Society, Wyastone Leas concert hall

11:15am Wednesday 8th May 2013

Only someone embarrassed by the expression of deep personal feeling could dislike Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.

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Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, St David's Hall

11:13am Wednesday 8th May 2013

WNO’s status as a world-class opera company makes its orchestra, by extension, something special.

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