Three Festival Shows

The loveGods at the Spiegeltent

I've been working so many hours this month that I haven't had much opportunity to catch many Festival shows, so I was delighted on Monday when I was able to fit in three shows in addition to my nine hour shift in the office. At lunchtime I took an hour off to see the lovely Nicola Benedetti (www.nicolabenedetti.co.uk) perform in the Pavilion Theatre. She's the violinist who won last year's BBC Young Musician competition. She played pieces by Schubert, Debussy and Brahms and finished with a sublime interpretation of Gershwin's It Ain't Necessarily So - and then returned for a well-deserved encore. Early evening I was at the Dome to see Nick Hornby (www.nickhornby.co.uk) read from and discuss his latest novel, A Long Way Down, which follows the lives of four characters who meet on a roof-top on New Year's Eve as they each prepare to commit suicide. I finished my evening at the Spiegeltent watching The loveGods (www.thelovegods.com). It was another decent performance from our local heroes, and the tent provided a fitting surrounding for this sold out show - just a shame about the amount of chatter by the bar. In addition to such favourites as Heroin the band have now added some new songs to their repertoire, and their final track, Disco, took quite a diversion into clubland which sounded fantastic!