WHTHESOQ», saxophonist Cannonball Adderley used the pseudonym Buckshot LeFonque when moonlighting on r 'n‘ b sessions. Four decades later. another distinguished jazz saxophonist. Branford Marsalis, nicked that monicker for his own genre-hopping band project. which shares a bill with Incognito in Edinburgh.
Branford has a history of side-stepping from jazz — he had a famous bust-up with brother Wynton when he signed up for Sting‘s Blue Turtles project back in the mid-80s. He has played with bands as diverse as Gang Starr and The Grateful Dead. and had a lucrative stint as musical director on the Tonight show.
Branford got together with Gang Starr's DJ Premier to put the original Buckshot LeFonquc project together. and last year’s eponymous album brought in a pile of guests on a sometimes uneasy mix of funk. rap and hip hop grooves.
The saxophonist admits he was a late convert to hip hop. moving from a position where ‘it made me angry because it was kind of dopey‘ through to a growing regard for the likes of Public Enemy. who struck him as ‘having the kind of attitude that r ‘n’ b used to have before it went middle of the road. I dig that. because that's the attitude of the jazz musician as well.‘ (Kenny Mathieson)
Buckshot LeFonque play at the Festival Theatre. Edinburgh. on Sun 5 Nov.
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GBOTESOUEMEISIER STEVEN BEBKOFF is back in his production of Oscar Wilde’s ornately poetic Salome. Written in French, the play premiered in 1896 Paris, while its author broke rocks in Reading Gaol. Wilde’s lriend Lord Alfred Douglas translated Salome tor private performance in 1905. Its biblical basis - Herod’s lust for his stepdaughter leads to John the Baptist’s decapitation - invoked a public ban which survived until 1931. Previously seen at the 1989 Edinburgh Festival, Berkott’s elaborately stylised interpretation originated in Dublin. On its London transfer, Berkott - scamp that he is - recast it completely, commandeering the pivotal role. Still, who better to camp out on bug-eyed lechery than he? See Glasgow and Edinburgh Theatre listings.
PAVAROTTI isn‘t the only singer in history who‘s had to lose a couple of stones to keep his career going. For castrati. the physical price was as high as their voices but, as Golden Globe winning film Farinelli shows, fame and fortune could be the end result of physical mutilation. For obvious reasons. castrati aren’t on the international music circuit today. and so Farinclli‘s voice had to be recreated using a complicated sound variation on the visual ‘morphing‘ technique. A counter-tenor and a soprano recorded the soundtrack over several months to full orchestral backing; a sound engineer then edited the voices note by note using over three thousand cuts; finally another technical team analysed the individual frequencies and vowel sounds of each note, digitally fusing them to create the form and texture of a single voice with a vast range. The results — both in terms of sound and spectacle — are quite exceptional. Farinelli opens at the Glasgow Film Theatre and Edinburgh Film/rouse on Fri 3 Nov; the soundtrack is available from Auvidis. See Screen Test for review.
21hr: List 'HO Nov I995